Welcome back to our ‘Mastering SAFe’ series! We’re here with Part 2, you can find Part 1 here.
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Enterprises stay focused on their most important initiatives when corporate goals cascade seamlessly into the workstreams of individual contributors. A key to success in any enterprise is focusing everyone on the most important things they should be using effort and resources to complete.
What’s most important?
When leaders set a corporate vision, goals or objectives, they are looking forward in time to the future of the company. To maintain their place in the world, they must look ahead to things like serving customers better, responding to market changes and ensuring compliance to changing regulations.
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) seamlessly facilitates enterprise scalability through two main avenues: vision forecasting and scalable structured workflows.
Cascading Vision & Roadmaps
Vision forecasting involves creating a clear roadmap that outlines the long-term goals of the organization. SAFe recommends cascading the vision through several layers down to individual contributors.
- Portfolio Vision and Roadmap: Executives will define strategic themes and objectives for the Enterprise as a whole for the next several years and outline when specific objectives should be achieved in a Portfolio Roadmap.
- Solution Vision and Roadmap: Each part of the organization contributes to the overall vision for the areas they will be responsible for implementing with a Solution Vision and Roadmap showing their expected deliverables and milestones.
- Planning Increment (PI) Roadmap: SAFe implemented the idea of a Planning Increment to focus teams on the implementation plans for 8-12 weeks at a time. The PI Roadmap includes the specific committed objectives for the Planning Increment showing the team’s committed objectives toward the Solution and Portfolio Visions.
Scalable Work Structuring
Work to achieve the Vision is cascaded directly onto the workload of individual employees through structured backlogs. Each Backlog cascades into the next as initiatives are broken into smaller pieces and are tracked in a Kanban system to create a visual representation of all work in progress and transparency.
- Portfolio Backlog: Work in the Portfolio Backlog mirrors the work outlined in the Portfolio Vision and Roadmap. They are outlined in Epics, which are the highest level and most significant initiatives. Approval of Epics to be prioritized and resources allocated requires executive level oversight and approval.
- ART Backlog: Epics are broken down into Features and tracked in ART Backlogs that mirror the Portfolio Vision and Roadmap. Features contain a full set of functionality and provide direct value to customers. An ART (Agile Release Train) is a group of teams who work on similar functionality. Features are prioritized and tracked by the shared product and architectural leadership on an ART. They should be sized so that a single ART can complete it in a Planning Increment; this allows teams to ensure deliverable action toward the vision multiple times a year. (Note: If the enterprise uses Solution Trains, there is an additional layer between the Portfolio and ART Backlogs.)
- Team Backlog: Features are broken down into Stories and tracked in individual Team Backlogs used by delivery teams. Stories are an individual piece of functionality and should be small enough to be finished within an Iteration. This allows completion of work every few weeks that contribute to the committed objectives for the Planning Increment.
Future vision is best achieved when everyone is aligned to the same outcome. With this alignment, every person contributes to the overall vision of the company. In this way, resources are naturally aligned; effort, money and resources are focused on the highest priority work. This results in minimal waste without extensive budgeting and reorganization efforts.
When everyone is directly involved in achieving big goals, everyone feels satisfaction during big launches or when goals are met. As an added bonus, cascading vision could increase job satisfaction and engagement and decrease employee turnover.
At TMG, our focus is in helping enterprises achieve their vision for their goals. We want to hear from our clients about their biggest wishes and work together to cascade that work into actionable pieces. The best part is when we can celebrate alongside clients as their vision becomes a reality.
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