SAFe 6.0 Expert Upgrade

Work Differently. Build the Future

Notes on the SAFe 6.0 learning plan needed to receive an updated SAFe 6 Practice Consultant certification.

Summary

SAFe 6.0 represents the newest version of SAFe, the Framework, along with all its associated materials.

It’s a complete system that supports SAFe professionals and SAFe participants, which includes:

The Framework
SAFe Courses
Connected assets in SAFe Studio

While SAFe always included the Framework and the SAFe courses, additions such as SAFe online collaboration tools, online learning series, workshops, and toolkits have enriched the offerings in recent years. SAFe Studio is a place for learning, practicing, and managing SAFe that encompasses these additional assets.

SAFe Studio offers practical information through on-demand online learning options, curated information, and relevant tools to help both SAFe professionals and SAFe practitioners by answering the question of how they can execute following the SAFe guidance.

SAFe 6.0 Brief Overview

Welcome to this brief overview of what’s new in SAFe 6.0. Now, our mission here at Scaled Agile has always been to continuously unlock better ways of working, and this mission continues with the release of 6.0. Now, in this release, the Framework, the articles, courses, downloadable materials, online learning series, and instructional videos have all been updated, and I’ll go through some of these updates. Now, SAFe 6.0 is significant, and it’s different, and it’s going to challenge everyone to be more Agile in their work, to accelerate the flow of value, to operate more efficiently, and to deliver better outcomes for the business, their users, and their customers. Now, it’s easiest to think of 6.0 in terms of six major release themes.

Theme #1- Strengthening the Foundation for Business Agility

The first theme is strengthening the foundation for Business Agility. The foundation includes the Mindset, the Values, and the principles. And organizations that embrace these are the ones that ultimately change their ways of working and achieve Business Agility.

Lean Thinking Principles

Starting with the Lean-Agile mindset, this now incorporates the five Lean Thinking principles. Why is this important? Because it creates a foundation of product and Value Stream thinking, which is critical to optimizing the flow of value.

Precisely specify value by product.
Identify the Value Stream for each product.
Make value flow without interruptions.
Let the Customer pull value from the producer.
Pursue perfection.

SAFe Core Values

The SAFe Core Values have been refined and restated, elevating Respect for People and Relentless Improvement to this, the most prominent position in SAFe.

Transparency
Respect for People
Relentless Improvement
Alignment

The SAFe Core Values surrounds the Big Picture.

And the focus on making value flow without interruptions has also been captured in the updated SAFe Principle #6. Now, SAFe courses, such as Leading SAFe and SAFe for Teams, have all been updated to include these important changes.

Principle #6

Make value flow without interruptions.

Theme #2 – Empowering Teams and Clarifying Responsibilities

The second theme is empowering teams and clarifying responsibilities. For every role on the Big Picture, we ask the question, “What are the key responsibility areas for this role to be successful?”, and then we’ve illustrated these through what we call responsibility wheels, immediately bringing more clarity around the work to be done for someone to be successful in their role. These responsibility wheels are being incorporated into all our role-based courses. Additionally, for some of the key roles on the Big Picture, such as Solution and Product Management and Solution and system architecture, we’ve also defined the key collaborations required for them to be successful.

Theme #3 – Accelerating Value Flow

The third theme is accelerating value flow, and accelerating the flow of value is critical to the success of SAFe Enterprises in beating their competition and satisfying their Customers. Now, SAFe has always been a flow-based framework, and in SAFe 6.0, we define eight properties that determine the effectiveness of that flow.

These include things such as batch size, queues, policies, bottlenecks, and even the people doing the work. Critically, once we understand these properties of flow, we can create strategies to improve them.

Eight Flow Properties & Accelerators

Work-in-Process (WIP) → Visualize and Limit WIP
Bottlenecks → Address Bottlenecks
Hand-off → Minimize Handoffs and Dependencies
Feedback → Get Faster Feedback
Batch → Work in Smaller Batches
Queue → Reduce Queue Length
Worker → Optimize Time “In the Zone”
Policies → Remediate Legacy Policies and Practices

These are what we call the Eight Flow Accelerators, and these are included in SAFe 6.0 in practice-based articles, one in each level of the Framework: Team Flow, Art Flow, Solution Train Flow, and Portfolio Flow. Now, specifically in Implementing SAFe and SAFe for Teams, we’ve added some great activities on these Eight Flow Accelerators. And we’ve also created some new videos that help to explain these new concepts. Additionally, we’ve got a Value Stream Mapping Workshop that can be used to help teams and ARTs and the whole Value Stream identify opportunities for improving flow.

Theme #4 – Enhancing Business Agility with SAFe Across the Business

The fourth theme is enhancing Business Agility with SAFe across the business. Although the goal of SAFe for some time has been Business Agility, in SAFe 6.0, we now have the patterns to help SAFe Enterprises make this a reality.

Five Business & Technology Patterns

Supported by guidance and case studies, we introduce five business and technology patterns: business-enabled ARTs with one or more business teams, Agile business trains that run an entire business on SAFe, a combined operational and development portfolio, an Agile business function, and finally, an Agile executive team.

Business-enabled ARTs with one or more business teams.
Agile Business Trains that run an entire business on SAFe.
Combined Portfolio includingoperational and development value streams.
Agile Business Function with lean-agile mindset and principles.
Agile Executive Team that is cross-functional with team coach and Product Owner.

Additionally, we’ve curated a collection of articles that describe real-world Business Agility experiences contributed and written by SAFe professionals. And these articles describe successes and challenges in extending Lean, Agile, and SAFe practices in areas such as finance, marketing, HR, legal, operations, and other functions beyond IT.

Theme #5 – Building the Future with AI, Big Data, and Cloud

The fifth theme is building the future with AI, Big Data, and Cloud. Now, all organizations that develop digitally enabled solutions can unleash the potential of these three synergistic technologies.

In SAFe 6.0, we’re aiming to help Enterprises harness these technologies successfully. Whether it’s applying AI to improve Customer insights, improve operational processes, or deliver intelligent Solutions, we’ve included the critical decision-making guidance alongside suggestions for how to organize to deliver AI and how to develop an AI competency.

Big data is a portfolio concern as it requires vision, investment, centralization, and governance at the highest levels in the organization.

The SAFe upgrade guidance says… “Additional topics such as AI, Big Data, and Cloud aren’t included in this upgrade as they aren’t part of the critical moves needed to implement SAFe. However, they’re still important, and it’s recommended that you read the articles.” even though it’s one of the themes??? So, while it’s a theme, it’s not actually part of the framework.

In support of that, we also describe how to apply DataOps in SAFe and the important role that the Cloud plays in infrastructure, DevOps, and AI.

Theme #6 – Better Outcomes with Measure and Grow and OKRs.

And then finally, delivering better outcomes with Measure and Grow and OKRs. Now, Business Agility sets new performance standards for organizations, requiring fast, effective responses to emerging opportunities. Measurement, therefore, becomes a critical enabler of continuous business performance improvement.

Competency
Flow
Outcomes

In SAFe 6.0, we continue to add more guidance around our Measure and Grow model. This is a comprehensive yet simple approach that can be applied at all levels of the Framework, which recognizes three critical measurement domains.

Competency: are we increasing our proficiency in Lean-Agile ways of working measured by the SAFe Assessments?
Flow: how effective and efficient are we at delivering value?
Outcomes: are we meeting the needs of our business stakeholders and Customers?

Staying with the outcomes measurement domain, we’ve also incorporated OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) into SAFe 6.0. For some time now, we’ve been asked the best way to bring OKRs into SAFe since Enterprises have seen the positive role they play in creating alignment and helping to steer strategy. Now additionally, a brand new Facilitating SAFe Assessments extended guidance article has been added, and the SAFe Assessments workshop toolkit has also been updated. And coming soon is an updated Measure and Grow workshop. Stay tuned for that one.

SAFe Studio – Learn, Manage, and Practice SAFe

Now, we know that managing organizational change has a lot of moving parts: translating SAFe guidance into execution, helping employees adopt a different way of working, achieving this across a large Enterprise, across multiple countries, and potentially in multiple languages.

To handle this change effectively, you’ll need more on-demand learning options, curated information, practice assets for all SAFe roles, and Enterprise-centric tools to manage the transformation. So, to support all your needs in the field and the great opportunities of SAFe 6.0, we’re happy to introduce the next evolution of our platform: SAFe Studio.

SAFe Studio

SAFe Courses
Facilitation Guides
Collaboration Tools
On-demand Learning Materials
SAFe’s Virtual Classroom
Access to the SAFe Community
Pragmatic Guidance

So, we hope you enjoy completing your upgrade to SAFe 6.0 and that you’ll share your new digital badge with pride. And as always, we appreciate your feedback in helping us improve.

Some SAFe 6.0 products are accessible exclusively with a SAFe Enterprise Subscription (SES). These items are labeled (SES only). ←Need to find out what this means.

SPCs Must Complete Ten Modules to Upgrade to SAFe 6.0

SAFe 6.0 Upgrade Series Overview
The SAFe 6.0 Big Picture and Terminology
Lean-Agile Mindset, Core Values, and Principles
Accelerating Value Flow
Empowering Teams and Clarifying Responsibilities
The SPC Role in 6.0
The Implementation Roadmap
Measure and Grow
SAFe Studio
SAFe 6.0 Upgrade Next Steps

Reference

Terminology Changes

In previous versions of SAFe, the terms Program and ART were fairly interchangeable. SAFe 6.0 standardized this terminology to improve simplicity and clarity.

Phasing Out “Program” Terminology

From	To
Agile Program Management Office	Value Management Office
Program Backlog	ART Backlog
Program Board	ART Planning Board
Program Epic	ART Epic
Program Execution	ART Execution
Program Increment	Planning Interval
Program Kanban	ART Kanban
Program PI Objectives	ART PI Objectives
Program Predictability Measure	ART Predictability Measure
Program Risks	ART PI Risks
SAFe Program Consultant	SAFe Practice Consultants (SPCs)

Standardizing Use of Solution Terminology

The names of Solution Train artifacts and events were also standardized for consistency as shown in the table.

From	To
Solution Arch/Eng	Solution Architect
Solution Backlog	Solution Train Backlog
Solution Board	Solution Train Planning Board
Solution Epic	Solution Train Epic
Solution Kanban	Solution Train Kanban
Solution PI Objectives	Solution Train PI Objectives

Other Terminology Changes

Other changes made for consistency are shown in the table.

From	To
Daily Standup (DSU)	Team Sync
Kanban	SAFe Team Kanban
Lean Systems and Solution Engineering	Lean Systems Engineering
Scrum Master	Scrum Master / Team Coach
Scrum of Scrums (SoS)	Coach Sync
ScrumXP	SAFe Scrum

Big Picture Changes

Changes to the graphics and iconography on the Big Picture can be categorized into these key themes:

Strengthening the Foundation for Business Agile

There are several changes to the foundation of the Big Picture in SAFe 6.0.

The Lean-Agile Leadership competency was moved to the head of the foundation to emphasize its importance to the entire foundation.
Core Values and Lean-Agile Mindset icons have been reordered. Both the Lean-Agile Mindset and Core Values articles have been updated. The House of Lean is retired in 6.0 and replaced with Lean Thinking principles. For that reason, the icon for Lean-Agile Mindset is updated to represent Lean Thinking principles and the Agile Manifesto. Lean Thinking is embraced with each of its principles and explained in the article which strengthens the foundation of SAFe. The four Core Values are also updated to include Respect for People and Relentless Improvement to replace Built-in Quality and Program Execution which are now assumed as part of the daily operations.
Continuous Learning Culture (CLC) was added to the foundation making it part of all SAFe configurations. This emphasizes its importance as the modern management paradigm, creating resilient organizations adaptable to change.
The SPC icon was redesigned to focus on the SPC’s role in coaching in addition to teaching.
At the top of the Big Picture, the Operational Value Stream has been placed under the Enterprise and Government icons, since it represents how they deliver value to their Customers.
Measure and Grow is now part of the spanning palette on the lower right corner and combines both the Metrics article and the previous Measure and Grow article, which described how to apply the SAFe Assessments.
The Business Agility icon was updated to include the Business Agility Value Stream which describes the steps required for organizations to compete and thrive in the digital age. Each step is underpinned by one of SAFe Seven Core Competencies.

Empowering Teams and Clarifying Responsibilities

The role icons have been updated in SAFe 6.0 to ensure each one was unique and identifiable to a particular role.

The Scrum Master / Team Coach icon has been updated to reflect the coaching responsibilities of this role.
The Solution Architect and the System Architect icons were renamed from Architect/Engineering for simplicity.
You might also notice the positioning of the product roles and Architect and team roles have been swapped, with the product roles now on the left and the Architect and team roles now on the right side. This creates alignment with the Business & Technology label at the bottom of the Big Picture.

Accelerating Value Flow

SAFe 6.0 focuses on flow. Flow is now visible in several places on the Big Picture.

An icon and label have been added to each level which provides access to an article that describes how to apply the Eight Flow Accelerators specifically at that level of the Framework.
The ScrumXP and Kanban icons at the team level were updated to reflect their name changes: ScrumXP to SAFe Scrum and Kanban to SAFe Team Kanban. Additional information about these changes is covered in the module “Accelerating Value Flow.”
Built-in Quality has been moved closer to the team-level practices, to highlight that building quality into every increment of their work is an important responsibility of each team and crucial for achieving flow.
Value Stream Management (VSM) has been added to the portfolio level to emphasize that it is an LPM responsibility. The VSM article has been updated to include new guidance about leaders whose responsibility it is to manage Value Streams. There’s a link to the updated article in the Next steps section of this module.

Enhancing Business Agility with SAFe Across the Business

n SAFe 6.0, there is a strong focus on Business Agility across the entire organization. While the change on the Big Picture appears minor: from “Business | Technology” to “Business & Technology”, the change to the content in the article is significant.

The new Business & Technology article includes five emerging Agile business and technology patterns for extending Agile across the business.

These are:

Business Enabled ART
Agile Business Train
Agile Executive Team
Agile Business Function
Combined Portfolio

The article describes the benefit and applications of each pattern, alongside case studies. To learn more about this valuable content, read the Business & Technology article.

Building the Future with AI, Big Data, and Cloud

SAFe offers new guidance on harnessing three innovative technologies that dramatically change the nature of software and systems development: artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Cloud. Applying these technologies is becoming critical for competing now and in the future. There are three new articles and icons on the 6.0 BP.

AI is placed on the spanning palette since it can be applied at all levels of SAFe to build intelligent customer solutions, automate Value Stream activities, and improve Customer insights.
Big data provides fact-based insights that portfolio stakeholders use to make strategic business decisions.
The cloud enables DevOps capabilities, which fuels the Continuous Delivery Pipeline and accelerates Agile teams and ARTs.

Delivering Better Outcomes with Measure and Grow and OKRs

To improve speed and agility, organizations need a way to reliably measure the current state and identify what they can do to improve. The Measure and Grow and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) articles provide methods for gathering that information. The SAFe 6.0 Big Picture highlights their importance at all levels of SAFe.

In SAFe 6.0, the Roadmap and Milestones articleshave been combined into a single Roadmap article since the content was closely related. The Milestones icon is therefore no longer on the spanning palette.
Metrics has been renamed to Measure and Grow, to focus on the need to use data to drive improvements.
Lean UX has been moved off the spanning palette and is now positioned next to Design Thinking, recognizing its role in helping to create a culture of Customer Centricity.
The OKRs icon has been added to the spanning palette, highlighting the role that objectives and key results play in helping to connect strategy and execution.

Lean-Agile Mindset, Core Values, and Principles

To support organizations to work differently and build the future in an ever-changing market and technology landscape, SAFe 6.0 implements changes and strengthens the foundation for Business Agility. This foundation describes the Lean-Agile Mindset, the SAFe Core Values, and the SAFe Principles. Each of these is critical for embracing a new way of working.

Lean Thinking Principles replace the House of Lean

Lean Thinking in SAFe is now represented by the Lean Thinking principles rather than the House of Lean. This shift is because Lean Thinking principles are rooted in Value Stream thinking. SAFe has been using Value Streams, knowing they’re critical to Enterprises’ success in organizing and accelerating value delivery.

Additionally, it directly supports “project to product” thinking, focusing on outcome vs. output. Also, applying Lean Thinking shifts the mindset from the traditional batch-and-queue production system to continuous flow with an effective pull by the Customer, which can lead to dramatic improvements.

However, all the aspects of the House of Lean remain and are elevated in SAFe 6.0.

Respect for People is now a SAFe Core Value.
Flow has a new treatment as the focus of SAFe 6.0, starting with SAFe Principle 6. It’s also highlighted in the Value Stream Management article.
Innovation is part of the Continuous Learning Culture competency that supports the foundation as one of two anchors in addition to Lean-Agile Leadership.
Relentless Improvement is also a SAFe Core Value.

The goal of Lean Thinking is to deliver the maximum value (a Solution) to the Customer in the shortest sustainable time from the trigger (the identification of the need or opportunity) to the point at which the Customer receives the value. But how value is created matters too. High quality, respect for people and society, high morale, safety, and Customer delight are also essential aspects of Lean Thinking.

Precisely specify value by product.

It’s the Customer who determines what value is. So, understanding Customer needs is an important element of Lean Thinking to deliver it. The process of specifying value is aided by Customer Centricity and Design Thinking.

Delivering value that is determined by the Customer returns to the Enterprise through cost savings or revenue.

Identify the Value Stream for each product.

The second principle of Lean Thinking is identifying how the Enterprise creates that specified value from the idea stage to its delivery to the Customer. This flow of work is called a Value Stream and contains all the people, processes, tools, and information necessary to deliver the value.

Make value flow without interruptions.

Delivering value continuously to the Customer supports incremental delivery with constant feedback and adjustment of the Solution. Achieving this continuous flow of value requires an understanding of the Eight Flow Accelerators and an intentional effort to identify and remove delays in the system. The Eight Flow Accelerators are proven approaches that reduce interruptions and enable continuous flow.

The Eight Flow Accelerators are:

Visualize and limit work-in-process (WIP).
Address bottlenecks.
Minimize handoffs and dependencies.
Get faster feedback.
Work in smaller batches.
Reduce queue length,
Optimize time “in the zone.”
Remediate legacy policies and practices.

The updated SAFe Principle 6 article explains these flow accelerators in detail.

Let the Customer pull value from the producer.

This principle explains the value of letting the Customer pull what they want and need instead of pushing Solutions that the organization assumes the Customer wants. The purpose is to prevent waste that delivering Solutions that the Customer doesn’t desire would create.

Pursue perfection.

The last principle of Lean Thinking, pursue perfection, supports the idea behind continuous improvement. To stay current with changing market and Customer needs, organizations must be aware that none of these efforts are one-time activities. Even if they tightly follow the previous four principles of Lean Thinking, they’ll need to revisit those efforts, such as defining the Value Streams.

An organization pursuing delivery perfection continuously assesses its Value Stream against defined performance targets using flow Metrics.

Lean-Agile Mindset in SAFe 6.0

SAFe 6.0 describes the Lean-Agile Mindset as a combination of beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and actions of SAFe leaders and professionals who embrace the concepts of Lean Thinking.

It’s crucial to this new way of working. The Lean-Agile Mindset enhances the company culture that enables Business Agility. It provides leaders and change agents with the tools to drive a successful SAFe transformation, helping individuals and Enterprises achieve their goals.

The core building blocks of SAFe are Lean Thinking and Agile Values. When paired, they form the Lean-Agile Mindset.

Evolving Core Values

The SAFe Core Values have also been updated to align with some of the changes highlighted earlier in this module.

In summary, Respect for People and Relentless Improvement replaced Built-in Quality and program execution as SAFe Core Values.

SAFe’s Four Core Values

Although they aren’t new to SAFe, SAFe 6.0 elevates Respect for People and Relentless Improvement to Core Values. That’s because these two values result in healthier ways of working by grounding behaviors and practices in the right direction.

Respect for People

People do the work in an Enterprise. They’re the ones implementing a Lean-Agile approach. Creating respect for people is essential in every aspect of human interaction, including this new way of working.

As a basic human need in a work environment and a team, trust, commitment, and success follow when respect exists.

To help cultivate a culture of respect for people in an organization:

Hold precious what it is to be human.
Value diversity of people and opinions.
Grow people through coaching and mentoring.
Embrace “your Customer is whoever consumes your work.”
Build long-term partnerships based on mutual benefit.

Relentless Improvement

Pursue perfection is one of the core principles of Lean. Although reaching perfection is known to be impossible, continuous improvement in pursuit of perfection creates better products and Solutions.

To build a culture of Relentless Improvement in a SAFe Enterprise:

Create a constant sense of urgency.
Build a problem-solving culture.
Reflect and adapt frequently.
Let facts guide improvements.
Provide time and space for innovation.

While Built-in Quality and program execution remain essential, the Framework highlights them in other areas.

Built-in Quality

Built-in Quality is no longer a Core Value to avoid repetition since it’s enhanced as a dimension of the Team and Technical Agility core competency.

Program Execution

Program execution is removed following the updates. The mindset of SAFe’s audience is now at a state where execution is assumed, and there’s no longer a need to reiterate it as one of the Core Values. The Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP) and Agile Release Train (ART) articles explain the successful implementation of the ART. In addition, the word “program” is eliminated from SAFe terminology to prevent confusion with its industry-wide use.

Principle 6 – Make Value Flow without Interuptions

In SAFe 6.0, Principle 6 evolved from “Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths” to “Make value flow without interruptions.“

SAFe Lean-Agile Principles

Take an economic view.
Apply systems thinking.
Assume variability; preserve options.
Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles.
Base Milestones on objective evaluation of working systems.
Make value flow without interruptions.
Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning.
Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers.
Decentralize decision-making.
Organize around value.

In SAFe 5, Principle 6 highlighted three flow accelerators:

1. Visualize and limit WIP.

5. Work in smaller batches.

6. Reduce queue lengths.

In SAFe 6.0, Principle 6 now encompasses all eight of the flow accelerators. The article for Principle 6 also defines flow and encourages measuring flow.

Reference

Accelerating Value Flow

Everything moves fast in digital business. Customer desires. Business expectations. Revenue opportunities. Competitive threats. Technology choices. Workforce demands. And it’s accelerating.

Significant: Introduces the Eight Flow Accelerators to improve the flow of value, provides additional guidance for adopting SAFe Team Kanban, introduces a new model for Built-in Quality

What is flow?

Flow is characterized by a smooth transition of work through the entire Value Stream with minimal handoffs, delays, and rework. In SAFe, flow is present when teams, trains, and the portfolio can quickly, continuously, and efficiently deliver quality products and services from trigger to value.

Flow requires all individuals and teams in the Value Stream to be tightly synchronized around value-creating activities. Otherwise, delivery is impeded by unnecessary interruptions.

Eight Flow Accelerators

SAFe 6.0 brings renewed focus to flow and introduces the Eight Flow Accelerators. While the details of any flow system are based on its context, all flow systems have eight common properties.

To thrive in the digital age, Enterprises must continuously deliver value to their Customers.

This requires flow: a smooth progression of work across the entire Value Stream, with minimal delays, handoffs, and rework.

The faster the flow of value, the more responsive and competitive your business can be.

So, how can your Enterprise achieve a faster flow of value? By applying eight techniques, or “flow accelerators,” accelerators that have been proven to improve flow:

Visualize and limit WIP.
Address bottlenecks.
Minimize handoffs and dependencies.
Get faster feedback.
Work in smaller batches.
Reduce queue length.
Optimize time “in the zone.”
Remediate legacy policies and practices.

Let’s look at these flow accelerators one by one.

Overloading teams and ARTs with too much work confuses priorities, increases overhead, and causes delays and frustrations.

#1 Visualize and limit WIP

To increase flow, start by making work in progress, or WIP, visible to all stakeholders.

Then, you’ll be able to match demand to capacity by setting WIP limits, making any necessary adjustments over time.

In the flow of value, bottlenecks represent people or resources whose demand is greater than the available capacity.

#2 Address Bottlenecks

Rethinking workflows, adding more people, or prioritizing different work can help resolve bottlenecks and keep value moving. Reducing batch size helps too.

Handoffs occur when work must be transitioned from one person, team, or process step to another.

#3 Minimize Handoffs and Dependencies

Dependencies happen between teams when one team can’t continue until another team completes its work.

Excessive handoffs and dependencies result in waiting and rework that interrupts the flow of value.

The solution?

Make handoffs and dependencies visible so you can manage them effectively, ensure teams and trains are truly cross-functional and as self-sufficient as possible, apply team topologies to organize teams and ARTs around value, and consider restructuring and simplifying processes.

Agile depends on two types of fast feedback:

Technical feedback to know whether we’re building the Solution right
And Customer feedback for understanding if we’re building the right Solution

Getting that feedback, faster, accelerates flow.

#4 Get Faster Feedback

To get faster feedback, you can:

Apply the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust cycle
Engage with Customers more frequently
Make improvements to your Continuous Delivery Pipeline
Establish built-in-quality practices to identify and fix problems sooner

Another way to get faster feedback and accelerate flow is by working in smaller batches.

#5 Work in Smaller Batches

The smaller the batch of work, the sooner teams can collect feedback and make adjustments.

Smaller batches also reduce WIP and queues and go through the system faster and with less variability. Long queues mean long wait times.

#6 Reduce Queue Length

To accelerate flow, reduce the queue length of the committed work in your system, even if you can process work quickly.

Reducing the queue of committed work will minimize delays, improve predictability, and reduce waste.

We all know how good it feels to be “in the zone.”

#7 Optimize time “In the Zone”

Work feels effortless and time passes quickly.

Not surprisingly, working “in the zone” accelerates flow. And just as important, people who spend sufficient time “in the zone” demonstrate higher productivity, as well as better creativity, happiness, and personal fulfillment.

To optimize this flow state, create work environments with periods of uninterrupted focus, provide autonomy and a sense of purpose, and limit unnecessary meetings, overhead, and task-switching.

#8 Remediate Legacy Policies and Practices

Lastly, consider any legacy policies and practices that inhibit flow.

Many of these simply became part of the culture and are often described as “the way we’ve always done things around here” even when they’re no longer needed and inhibit value flow.

Enterprises should remediate legacy waterfall practices, excessive reporting, unnecessary meetings, and any other obsolete policies that impede flow.

In the end, these Eight Flow Accelerators not only help the flow of value; they give people more control over their work and result in higher levels of employee engagement and Customer satisfaction.

It’s a win for both the Employee and the company.

To learn more, read the “Make Value Flow Without Interruptions” article at scaledagileframework.com.

Applying the Eight Flow Accelerators

SAFe 6.0 provides a new set of four primary articles, available from the flow icons at each level of the Big Picture. They describe how to apply the Eight Flow Accelerators across the Framework.

Each article has specific applications of each flow accelerator designed to work effectively in that context: Team Flow, ART Flow, Solution Train Flow, and Portfolio Flow.

Applying the flow accelerators across the entire portfolio supports the goal of continuously delivering value at ever-increasing rates.

SAFe Scrum

SAFe ScrumXP has been renamed to SAFe Scrum. The SAFe Scrum article has been updated for 6.0 and includes a new keystone image that better illustrates how a Scrum team operates within a SAFe context. For more information, read the SAFe Scrum article linked in the Next steps section of the module.

SAFe Team Kanban

SAFe Team Kanban is a Lean-Agile method. It helps Agile Teams facilitate the flow of value by visualizing workflow, establishing WIP limits, delivering value continuously, measuring throughput, and improving their process.

While Kanban is generally less specific on team roles, SAFe Team Kanban applies the two specialty roles of Scrum, the Product Owner (PO) and the Scrum Master / Team Coach (SM/TC). These roles have emerged in practice as equally helpful to Agile Teams applying SAFe Team Kanban.

Elements of Built-in Quality

SAFe 6.0 provides an improved approach to building-in quality across all technology and business domains. The new model supports a culture of Built-in Quality by specifically addressing multiple application domains.

The model starts with Basic Agile Quality practices that apply universally to every team, whether business or technology.

Shift learning left: Reveal problems sooner, take corrective action with minimum impact.
Pairing and peer review: Multiple viewpoints enhance work quality and grow knowledge.
Collective ownership and T-shaped skills: Reduce bottlenecks and increase flow.
Artifact standards and definition of done: Ensure consistent quality for each work product.
Workflow automation: Enable small batches and reduce errors.

The model then builds on this foundation with specific Agile quality practices that apply to software, IT system, hardware, and other engineering disciplines and cyber-physical system.

Reference

Empowering Teams and Clarifying Responsibilities

Successfully implementing new roles is critical to the SAFe transformation within the Enterprise. In this module, you’ll learn about significant updates to the way the roles and responsibilities are presented in the Framework. This helps clarify the responsibilities of these roles and spotlight their key collaborations.

SAFe 6.0 Changes

Significant: Identifies additional responsibilities for Scrum Master / Team Coach, Product Owner, and the Agile Team; defines and provides visualization of the key collaborations between specific roles
Other additions: Provides new visualization of the responsibility areas of specialty roles and the Agile Team

Responsibility wheels

SAFe 6.0 introduces responsibility wheels for every role on the SAFe Big Picture. A responsibility wheel is a visual representation of the key areas of responsibility for that role. Each responsibility wheel typically has five or six responsibility areas.

Visualizing responsibilities in this manner makes it easy to provide clarity and supports individuals moving into these roles for the first time.

Each responsibility area has a set of core responsibilities which are described in the relevant Framework article. Links for these articles are in the Next steps section of the module.

Besides the addition of responsibility wheels, there are also important enhancements to each key role.

Scrum Master / Team Coach

Many advanced skills and capabilities extending beyond Scrum are previously covered under the Scrum Master umbrella.

This role has gone through some important updates. First, the Scrum Master role has been renamed to Scrum Master / Team Coach in SAFe 6.0. The purpose of this change is to expand the responsibilities and introduce an inclusive language to cover individuals supporting teams that use SAFe Team Kanban. Organizations can choose the role name, Scrum Master or Team Coach, best suited for their context.

Second, the SM/TC responsibility wheel visualizes the responsibility areas of the role, including previously defined responsibilities like Facilitating PI Planning, Supporting Iteration Execution, and Building High-Performing Teams. It also recognizes the two advanced skills and critical responsibility areas: Improving Flow and Improving ART Performance.

Product Owner

SAFe 6.0 includes updates to the responsibilities for POs. PO responsibilities now emphasize Customer Centricity and Design Thinking. They also highlight their contribution to the Vision and Roadmap.

PO responsibilities are now grouped into five primary categories. These groupings highlight the PO as:

an extended member of the Product Management function
a voice of the Customer for the team
an active leader and participant in many SAFe events who contributes directly to the continuous delivery of Customer-centric Solutions.

The PO responsibility wheel visualizes these responsibilities and more, including Managing and Prioritizing the Team Backlog, Supporting the Team in Delivering Value, and Getting and Applying Feedback.

Agile Team

Updates to Agile Teams include guidance on the team size and the responsibilities that align with accelerating flow, a key focus of SAFe 6.0.

Delivering Great Products

Often, an ART is best equipped to deliver whole products to Customers, while Agile Teams contribute to product delivery by building value as part of the product. However, every team should recognize that whatever value they deliver, all benefit from treating their work as a product and knowing their Customer.

This is why “Delivering Great Products” is at the center of the Agile Team’s responsibility wheel.

Team size: The team size is recommended to be 10 or fewer individuals to align with the changes in The Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. Smaller teams have fewer communication channels and are more productive.
Responsibilities: The new visualization of the Agile Team’s responsibilities helps identify them at a glance. Connecting with the Customer and Getting Feedback are two highlighted responsibility areas for teams. Teams are also responsible for Planning the Work, Delivering Value, and Improving Relentlessly.

Key Collaborations

Specific roles in SAFe require significant collaboration with others to lead the organization in the right direction. To help individuals in these roles be successful, SAFe 6.0 clearly defines these key collaborations. Key collaborations have been defined and visualized for Product Management, System Architect, Solution Management, and Solution Architect.

Product Management

The key collaborations for Product Management are visualized by area for ease of reference.

Each branch in the diagram represents collaborations Product Management uses to guide Solutions through the product life cycle, such as steering the ART, aligning on the outcomes, and evolving the Solution.

System Architect

System Architects significantly influence the Solution while supporting a system architecture that meets the evolving business needs. This requires collaboration with several roles in and outside of the ART.

Reference

The SPC Role in 6.0

SAFe Practice Consultants (SPCs), formerly known as SAFe Program Consultants, are change agents that play a critical role in successfully implementing SAFe. SPCs provide coaching for many of the practices and critical moves described in the SAFe Implementation Roadmap. They also must work beyond the roadmap as part of a guiding coalition with unrelenting energy, bringing Business Agility to the organization over time through executing the areas of responsibilities.

The two upcoming modules will cover the SAFe Implementation Roadmap and Measure and Grow updates. These are more advanced topics that SPCs must know and apply in their day-to-day work and are optional for other SAFe professionals and participants. This series is a high-level summary of the updates to SAFe 6.0. It’s highly recommended that SPCs read the Framework articles referenced throughout the series to understand the updates fully.

Significant changes: Updates to the SPC article to clarify the responsibilities of SPCs, introduces responsibility wheels for SPCs.

Responsibilities of SPCs

The responsibilities of SPCs are now categorized into five different responsibility areas visualized by the SPC responsibility wheel. Understanding each responsibility area will help SPCs coach their organization, articulate their role to its leaders, and position them well for a successful transformation.

Since it is unlikely that a single SPC can cover all five responsibility areas, multiple SPCs often work as part of a guiding coalition to support a SAFe transformation.

Coaching flow

Improving flow is one of the six themes of SAFe 6.0 Framework updates. It’s a high-focus area to support organizations while achieving Business Agility, and the content on accelerating value flow is in many areas of the Framework.

SPCs have a critical role in supporting the organization at every level of the Framework to improve value flow. Coaching flow effectively throughout the organization requires SPCs to do the following:

SPCs facilitate Value Stream Mapping (VSM) workshops to improve flow efficiency. They use data from the teams, tools, and systems and collaborate with the right people to identify bottlenecks and improve the flow of value.
SPCs help the organization understand and establish Kanban systems at every level of the Framework. They create connections throughout these Kanban systems to ensure the flow of value from strategy to execution.
SPCs measure flow using the six flow metrics alongside competency and outcome metrics to help identify opportunities for improvement and validate that previous changes have improved the flow of value.
SPCs understand how to apply the Eight Flow Accelerators to improve flow and accelerate value delivery continuously.
Grounded in a Lean-Agile Mindset, SPCs help teams and stakeholders grow a flow mindset by helping them take ownership of improvements. They continue to cultivate a culture of relentless improvement and continuously empower the organization to improve the flow of value through the system.

Reference

The Implementation Roadmap

SAFe is continually evolving and adapting to support Enterprises as they navigate the challenges of succeeding in the digital age. The SAFe Implementation Roadmap, which provides the critical moves for adopting SAFe, has been updated in SAFe 6.0 to reflect those changes.

Understanding the steps of the Implementation Roadmap and the reasons behind the changes to some of those steps will inform and empower you while implementing SAFe and coaching Enterprises and individuals.

Significant changes: Removal of the Waterfall/Ad Hoc Agile step, addition of Reach the tipping point, addition of SAFe Executive Workshop, addition of the new Leading in the Digital Age step, updates to the Accelerate step content,
Additional changes: Removal of Agile Software Engineering (ASE) course from the Roadmap, renaming the Extend to the Portfolio step to Enhance the Portfolio.

Getting started with the Implementation Roadmap

The SAFe Implementation Roadmap consists of an overview graphic and a 13-article series describing a strategy and an ordered set of activities that have proven effective in successfully implementing SAFe.

The five stages of the SAFe Implementation Roadmap support the critical moves you’ll need to make along your implementation journey.

They are:

Reaching the tipping point
Building a guiding coalition
Designing the implementation
Launching more ARTs and Enhancing the Portfolio
Accelerating towards Business Agility

Let’s take a closer look at each stage and the steps involved.

Stage 1: Reaching the Tipping Point

Before beginning a successful change effort, you must have a clear and compelling reason for change. Organizations that can establish such a shared awareness typically meet one of two conditions:

A burning platform, where the organization is failing to compete, or visionary leadership, where change is proactive, and leaders are taking a stand for a better future state.

But while necessary, a compelling and well-understood reason to change is insufficient by itself for an organization to reach the tipping point. A clear Vision for the future is also critical for effective change. The Vision provides three benefits:

The purpose and direction for the change
The motivation that gives people a compelling reason for the change
The alignment necessary to ensure everyone is working toward the same goal

The most consistent, effective way for organizations to reach the tipping point is the shared experience of leaders and key influencers attending a Leading SAFe course. A follow-up SAFe Executive Workshop can be used to allow more time to explore specific problems and challenges. When the leaders reach the tipping point, the organization is sure to follow.

Stage 2: Building a Guiding Coalition

Once your organization reaches its tipping point, the next stage is to form a guiding coalition to initiate the change. In our experience, this requires three steps:

First, train knowledgeable Lean-Agile change agents—SAFe Practice Consultants, or SPCs. They provide the knowledge and drive needed to implement the change. This is accomplished by having them attend the Implementing SAFe course.

Second, train executives, managers, and leaders. They sponsor the change and support the implementation. Leading SAFe is designed for this purpose.

Third, develop a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence, or LACE, to guide the transformation, share success patterns, and, if needed, onboard a partner to help with training and coaching.

Once the guiding coalition is in place, it is time for them to lead the change by following the guidance outlined in the Roadmap’s Leading in the Digital Age step.

Stage 3: Designing the Implementation

The goal of the Scaled Agile Framework is to help Enterprises satisfy Customers by delivering high-quality, innovative digital and business Solutions quickly.

The first step in achieving this goal is to identify the Enterprise’s Value Streams and organize people and activities around them. Certified SPCs can use the SAFe Value Stream and ART Identification Workshop to help with this activity. Agile Release Trains, or ARTs, are then organized to support the identified Value Streams.

Once this step is complete, your Enterprise can set priorities and create an implementation plan for launching these ARTs.

Prepare to launch your trains by training the ART leaders in Leading SAFe and taking the teams through SAFe for Teams. Specific roles on the ART will benefit from attending SAFe Scrum Master, SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager, and SAFe for Architects training.

Once your trains launch, continue to coach ART execution through Inspect & Adapt activities and offer advanced classes such as SAFe DevOps and Agile Product Management.

Stage 4: Launching More ARTs and Enhancing the Portfolio

Continue to execute your implementation by launching more ARTs and extending SAFe practices to additional Value Streams.

More significant Value Streams, often for developing very complex systems, may require coordinating multiple ARTs and Suppliers as part of a Solution Train.

Experience has shown that many organizations start exploring some basic Lean Portfolio Management, or LPM, practices earlier in their journey, such as implementing a Portfolio Kanban system to provide visibility of current and future initiatives. This is why the LPM training is recommended during the “Train the Executives, Managers, and Leaders” step of the Roadmap.

Now is the time to enhance that LPM practice and establish Agile Portfolio Operations and Lean Governance.

Stage 5: Accelerating Toward Business Agility

The last step in the Implementation Roadmap is Accelerate.

Even after the new ways of working start producing positive results, it is not the end of the journey. Instead, it is the beginning of another journey, one that starts with a focus on creating a Continuous Learning Culture (CLC). And one that you can achieve by becoming a learning organization, committing to Relentless Improvement, and promoting a culture of innovation.

The Lean-Agile practices are further extended across the organization. Everyone involved in Solution delivery is trained in Lean and Agile methods and embraces their values, principles, and practices.

At this stage, the organization is also regularly measuring the progress towards Business Agility and determining its next improvement steps.

Removing the Waterfall/Ad Hoc Agile Step

In SAFe 6.0, the “Waterfall/Ad Hoc Agile” chevron has been removed from the Implementation Roadmap. Its removal prevents a misinterpretation that the SAFe implementation always begins from one of these two starting points. Perhaps the organization has attempted to implement Agile practices previously, but with limited success. Maybe part of a large organization is using SAFe successfully, and that’s helped bring the whole organization to the tipping point. Regardless of the starting point, the first step of the Roadmap is clear, reaching the tipping point to “Go SAFe.”

New Leading in the Digital Age step

Leadership is critical to successfully implementing SAFe, and effective Lean-Agile leaders understand why the organization is adopting SAFe and take responsibility for leading the change. Evidence from thousands of SAFe implementations shows that with engaged leadership, achieving better business results from new ways of working can happen very quickly. It also requires leaders to demonstrate the needed behaviors to be successful in the digital age and to be proficient in the practices of leading successful change.

Without the active involvement of leaders, a large-scale Agile transformation is far less likely to succeed. Leaders must invest in their own change journey and proactively work to shift old mindsets and habits before they can help others do the same. Tera Allas, Will Fairbairn, and Elizabeth Foote reported that McKinsey & Company research found “transformations where leaders model the change themselves are more than four times more likely to succeed than transformations where they do not.” Leadership buy-in can help increase the chances of a successful transformation from 30 to 75 percent.

Organizations often begin their SAFe journey without strong leadership support. They fall short of the desired improvements in business outcomes that justified the investment in SAFe, and in many cases the transformation stalls.

A brand-new step, “Leading in the Digital Age,” was added to the SAFe Implementation Roadmap for SAFe 6.0 to recognize the importance of strong leadership. Read the Leading in the Digital Age Framework article for more information about this step. A leadership development program offered to SES members supports this step. The program is composed of two modules:

Leading by Example (SES only): This module takes a deep dive into the four critical behaviors essential for leading in the digital age: insatiable learning, authenticity, emotional competence, and courage.
Accelerating Change Leadership (SES only): This module, built with Kotter International, introduces attendees to best practices for accelerating change. It enables your Enterprise to focus on Dr. John Kotter’s four critical change leadership principles and eight key accelerators.

Attendees will learn how to:

Drive Agile transformation at a large company.
Promote a continuous learning environment.
Build a trust-based environment through authentic leadership.
Inspire a generative culture by leading with emotional competence.
Overcome barriers to successful transformation.

Identify Value Streams and ARTs step renamed Organize Around Value

The third chevron after “Go SAFe” has been renamed from “Identify Value Streams and ARTs” to “Organize Around Value.” Although the content of the associated guidance article remains mostly the same, the reason behind this labeling change is significant.

The desired outcome of this step is to put SAFe Principle #10 Organize Around Value to work and identify the significant Value Streams within the Enterprise and form ARTs around those. Although the associated workshop is a critical activity on the road to achieving this, it’s not the only work likely to occur.

Additional activities might include:

Working with stakeholders to generate buy-in for the change.
Analyzing the impact on the existing technology landscape.
Reviewing how to integrate suppliers.
Starting to consider how SAFe portfolios might be structured.

Extend to the Portfolio step renamed Enhance the Portfolio

For many years, SAFe organizations didn’t begin implementing Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) until several ARTs had been launched. Better business results achieved by Agile Teams and trains put pressure on the senior leaders to explore applying Lean-Agile practices at the portfolio level. There’s a significant change in this pattern. However, today’s prevailing trend is to launch LPM from the beginning of the transformation in parallel with the activities needed to launch the first ART. This is why the course badge for LPM appears in two places on the roadmap; above Train Executives, Managers, and Leaders and above Enhance the Portfolio.

More specifically, early implementations of LPM focus primarily on the practices of Strategy and Investment Funding and less on the other two collaborations of LPM. During the “Enhance the Portfolio” step, organizations re-engage with LPM by focusing on the practices associated with Establishing Agile Portfolio Operations and Lean Governance.

With this emerging pattern, the term enhance is more applicable than extend given that some portfolio practices would have been initiated long before reaching this step in the Roadmap.

Updating Accelerate Content

The final step of the Implementation Roadmap describes the critical activities to accelerate the organization toward Business Agility. It has always focused on the core competencies of Continuous Learning Culture and Organizational Agility. Additional activities are also critical.

The first is understanding how to effectively measure the progress toward the goal. So, applying the guidance provided in the Measure and Grow article to implement a comprehensive measurement model across three measurement domains: outcomes, flow, and competency becomes essential. The insights delivered support for better decision-making and helped identify improvement opportunities.

The pressure to accelerate the flow of value and deliver measurable business outcomes is unrelenting. This step of the Roadmap now includes a focus on coaching flow. This is a critical responsibility of SM/TCs, RTEs, and SPCs.

The activities that support this are:

Facilitate Value Stream mapping.
Establish the Kanban systems.
Measure flow.
Apply the Eight Flow Accelerators.
Foster a flow mindset.

This step also describes opportunities to apply the Eight Flow Accelerators and the importance of fostering a flow mindset across the organization. Developing a flow mindset involves training teams and stakeholders in flow concepts and helping them take ownership of flow improvements. All these updates better prepare the Enterprise in pursuit of its goal of business agility.

Activity

Focuses on developing strong leadership through two modules	Leading in the Digital Age
Includes additional activities such as reviewing now to integrate suppliers	Organize Around Value
Acknowledges that some portfolio practices may exist before this step	Enhance the Portfolio
Includes a focus on coaching now	Accelerate

Reference

Measure and Grow

Business Agility sets new performance standards. It requires fast, effective responses to emerging business opportunities. To improve speed and agility, organizations need a way to reliably measure the current state and identify what they can do to grow. Therefore, choosing what and how to measure is critical to continuously improve business performance.

This module describes a comprehensive approach that can be used to measure and grow the performance of a SAFe Portfolio and the teams and ARTs within it.

Significant: Defines the three measurement domains for Business Agility, introduces flow metrics and suggests which to use for every level of the Framework, provides expanded guidance for Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
Other additions: Updates to the Business Agility and SAFe Core Competency Assessments

Measuring Outcomes, Flow, and Competency

Regarding Metrics, the most important thing is understanding what to measure. SAFe defines three measurement domains that provide a comprehensive yet simple model for measuring progress toward Business Agility: outcomes, flow, and competency.

These three measurement domains deliver insights that support better decision-making and help identify improvement opportunities.

The measurement domains are defined as follows:

Outcomes: Do the Solutions meet the needs of Customers and the business?
Flow: How efficient is the organization at delivering value to the Customer?
Competency: How proficient is the organization in the practices that enable Business Agility?

Each measurement domain contains a set of specific Metrics.

Furthermore, these three measurement domains are applicable at every level of the Framework. They can be used to measure performance within a SAFe Portfolio, a Solution Train, an Agile Release Train, or even a single Agile Team.

Outcome Metrics

Outcomes help determine whether an organization’s efforts produce the desired business benefits. They may measure external concerns, such as revenue increase or Customer retention, and so on, and internal considerations, such as employee engagement.

Examples of outcome Metrics often include:

KPIs: KPIs are used to measure a SAFe Portfolio’s outcomes. Each KPI is a specific and quantifiable measure of business results for the Value Streams within that portfolio.

Strategic Themes and OKRs: Strategic themes are portfolio-level business objectives that provide competitive differentiation and strategic advantage. Defining the strategic themes using the OKR format helps to create alignment and engagement around measurable goals.

Employee Engagement: Employee engagement measures the amount to which individuals feel motivated and actively engaged in supporting the achievement of the organization’s goals and values. Refer to the Measure and Grow Framework article for more information about how employee engagement is measured.

KPIs

KPIs are one set of outcome Metrics. Each KPI is a specific and quantifiable measure of business results for the Value Streams within a SAFe Portfolio. Outcome Metrics of this kind are typically context-specific and depend heavily on the organization, business model, and the nature of Solutions delivered to the Customer.

KPIs are typically context-specific,

Operational Value Stream Type	Example KPIs
Software product (Consumer-facing website example)	AARRR, or “Pirate Metrics” Acquisition, Activation, Revenue, Retention, Referrals
Fulfillment (Consumer loan example)	Conversion funnel analytics, average time to decision, automated approval rate, Net Promoter Score, default rate, Customer lifetime value
Supporting (Customer support example)	Tickets outstanding, Net Promoter Score, first response time, mean time to resolution, cost per ticket, Customer experience score
Manufacturing (USB streaming microphone example)	Units sold, cost of goods sold, Supplier health, throughput, cycle time, inventory turns, cash-to-cash cycle time

Strategic Themes and OKRs

In addition to KPIs, a SAFe portfolio also measures outcomes via its Strategic Themes, defined as OKRs. Whereas KPIs represent ongoing health Metrics that can be used to measure overall business performance, Strategic Themes, defined as OKRs, describe the specific outcomes the portfolio is working toward to achieve future success. Therefore, the key results associated with these objectives determine another set of critical outcome Metrics typically measured quarterly.

Key results measured quarterly.

Objective	Key Results	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Achieve a dominant position within the autonomous delivery market	Increase serviceable market to 75% within 18 months	45%	55%	47%	52%
Increase Net Promoter Score from 35 to 60	35	49	54	57
Improve repeat business rates from 60% to 80%	60%	64%	67%	72%
Acquire 15% new Customers over the next 12 months	2%	7%	4%	10%

Within a large portfolio, it can be useful to create specific OKRs for each Value Stream that align with the portfolio’s Strategic Themes. And further, for large Value Streams that contain multiple ARTs, this process can be repeated to create a set of OKRs that define the goals for each specific ART.

This approach also allows those at each level of the organization to see the direct impact of their work against the key results of the OKRs they are aligning to.

Additionally, there are two other recommended use cases for applying OKRs in SAFe. The first is using OKRs to define business outcomes for Epics and Lean Business Cases. And the second is using OKRs to set the improvement goals for the SAFe transformation. To learn more, read the OKRs article.

OKRs	Define specific objectives that we are working toward.Define how we are trying to change the business.Communicate initiative’s strategic purpose.
KPIs	Represent ongoing “health” metrics.Are used to measure overall business performance.Are static performance indicators.

The six flow Metrics

Flow Metrics determine an organization’s effectiveness at delivering value. SAFe defines six flow Metrics.

Metric	Description
Flow Distribution	The proportion of each backlog item type in the flow
Flow Velocity	Number of items completed in a given time
Flow Time	Time elapsed from when an item enters the workflow to when it is released to the Customer
Flow Load	Total work-in-progress (across all steps of the flow)
Flow Efficiency	The portion of time backlog items are actively worked on to the total time elapsed
Flow Predictability	Overall planned vs. actual business value

Delivering a continuous flow of value ensures Enterprises remain competitive and keep their Customers happy.

SAFe is a flow-based Framework and flow occurs when work moves smoothly and efficiently through Value Streams.

But how do you know how well value flows in your organization?

You measure it.

How? With the six flow Metrics:

Flow Distribution
Flow Velocity
Flow Time
Flow Load
Flow Efficiency
Flow Predictability

Flow Distribution measures the number of work items by type in the system at any one time.

Healthy Flow Distribution ensures a balance of new Features while also reducing technical debt and allowing time for maintenance and innovation.

Flow Velocity is the average number of completed work items over a period of time, usually an Iteration or PI. It measures team and ART throughput and helps forecast future deliveries.

Flow Time measures how long it takes for a work item to make it through the system.

You can measure flow time between any two steps in a workflow, but typically, it’s used to measure the time from when you start working on something until you release it. This ensures organizations and teams focus on the most important thing, delivering value to Customers in the shortest possible time. But it also helps identify opportunities for improvement.

Flow Load measures the amount of work in process, or WIP, in the system.

It helps match demand to capacity, thereby optimizing throughput.

Flow Efficiency shows how much time teams and ARTs spend in value-added work versus waiting between steps in a workflow. This helps you identify bottlenecks and delays, and addresses them to improve the rate of value flow to the Customer.

And finally,

Flow Predictability measures how reliably teams and ARTs are achieving the objectives they set for themselves. You can calculate Flow Predictability by determining the ratio of actual business value delivered compared to the planned business value. 80% to 100% predictability allows the business to plan effectively. If predictability is low, there may be underlying problems that you need to address. If you reliably deliver all or more than you planned, then perhaps you could take on more risk or scope.

Together, these six flow Metrics provide insights into:

How efficient your organization is at delivering value
How to support better decision-making
How to identify opportunities for improvement

Selecting which Flow Metrics to Apply

Although deciding which flow Metrics to apply is specific to each organization, some common patterns appear.

Portfolio Level

Flow Time: It’s helpful to measure Portfolio Flow time from when an Epic is pulled into the ‘review’ state until its hypothesis has been evaluated. This illustrates how quickly new ideas can be tested.

Flow Load: Keeping a healthy, limited number of active items in portfolio WIP is critical to enabling the fast flow of strategic value.

Flow Distribution: A helpful view of Portfolio Flow distribution illustrates the trend of money allocation across investment horizons.

ART Level

Flow Predictability: For a business to plan and execute effectively, ARTs should generally be able to satisfy most of the committed objectives.

Flow Time: The shorter the flow time, the less time your Customers spend waiting for new Features and the lower the cost of delay incurred by the organization.

Flow Load: Illustrates the current state of the ART Kanban System and is used to ensure the ART does not get overloaded.

Flow Efficiency: Helps to identify bottlenecks and delays in the Continuous Delivery Pipeline that will need to be addressed.

Team

Flow Velocity: All other things being equal, higher velocity implies a higher output and is a good indicator that the teams are applying process improvements successfully.

Flow Distribution: Helps teams visualize and balance their capacity allocation across Enablers and User Stories.

Competency Metrics

Achieving Business Agility requires a significant degree of expertise across the Seven SAFe Core Competencies. While each competency can deliver value independently, they’re also interdependent. True Business Agility requires Enterprises to master all seven competencies.

Business Agility and Core Competency Assessments

Two separate assessments are used to measure the level of organizational competency. They are designed for different audiences and purposes.

Business Agility Assessment measures overall progress across all Seven Core Competencies.
SAFe Core Competency Assessments identify areas of opportunity for each specific core competency.

Facilitating Assessments

Facilitating the SAFe assessments isn’t a trivial feat. Those being assessed will have different levels of experience and understanding of the new ways of working. Moreover, context is critical when assessing the current state.

Therefore, simply sending the assessment out to various participants and asking them to fill in the data probably won’t provide the right experience or accurate results. Instead, have an experienced SPC facilitate a workshop. Attendees can discuss the assessment statements, agree on their context-specific meaning, and ask questions before they assess. The conversation in these workshops is as important as the assessment scores in focusing the enterprise on the work needed to implement Lean-Agile behaviors and practices.

Analyzing the Data

After collecting the data, it can be helpful to analyze it in the following three ways:

Highest and lowest average scores represent those areas where there is the greatest success from previous improvement efforts and highlight the next areas of improvement.
Greatest and least standard deviations show areas of broad agreement and disagreement on the progress.
Comparison to benchmark, as a significant benefit of the assessments, helps identify improvement trends over time.

Identifying improvements

For each opportunity that’s uncovered, the next step is to identify activities that will increase proficiency. These activities are called growth recommendations.

Typically, the group would collectively brainstorm growth recommendations, then affinity group and dot vote to get to one to three growth recommendations per assessment statement.

Growth recommendations for an assessment statement

Statement	Growth recommendation
The teams of Agile Teams regularly demonstrate the integrated Solution	Create an integration environment for all teams to use
Create a set of automated integration tests
Make synthetic test data available to support more accurate testing

To limit WIP, it’s helpful to prioritize these opportunities and choose one or two that will provide the most value immediately. Refer to the Facilitating SAFe Assessments Framework article for more information on three ways of analyzing data.

Critical Success Factors

Measuring organizational performance is a sensitive area in every business because of politics and various dysfunctions. Since measurement involves the interpretation of data and is subject to cognitive bias, it may also lead to misalignment and communication issues. For that reason, if not correctly implemented, Metrics can do more harm than good.

The following critical success factors will help guide the Enterprise to more effective measurements and better business results:

Use measurement in conjunction with other discovery tools.

Any measurement system only provides a partial picture of reality. Simply adding more Metrics doesn’t always improve visibility. Each number has a story behind it, and a powerful tool is direct observation (Gemba) of the work environment.

For example, lower team productivity could be caused by a team member getting sick or changing priorities, etc.

Apply Metrics where they support improved decision-making.

A common trap when applying Metrics is over-measuring for fear of not measuring enough.

When considering whether to include an additional metric in your measurement system, it can be useful to ask the question, “What decisions will this Metric help inform that isn’t supported today with our existing Metrics?” or “Do we need to measure this right now?”

Understand the effect of Metrics on behaviors.

When too much emphasis is put on a number, and if that number is tied to compensation or career growth opportunities, Metrics can start to alter behaviors.

Additionally, the pressures to succeed can often lead to misusing Metrics.

Teams may start gaming the system, blaming other teams, or even achieving specific Metrics at the expense of delivering value with high quality.

Interpret metrics carefully.

Just collecting Metrics is not enough. If interpreted without proper understanding, an indicator might be misleading.

For example, flow time is decreasing at the expense of quality; flow predictability is increasing, but flow velocity is going down, etc.

Use Complementary Metrics to ensure that improvement in one Metric isn’t achieved at the expense of another.

For example, when measuring flow time, it may also be useful to measure Customer NPS to ensure that reductions in time-to-market are not coming at the expense of Customer satisfaction.

Reference

SAFe Studio

Welcome to SAFe Studio! SAFe continues to support you as a SAFe professional or SAFe participant by providing:

Thoughtfully curated learning and professional growth content.
Easy-to-use tools to help while practicing your day-to-day work.
An environment to exchange knowledge and expertise with the SAFe community.

Trainer-led Courses

Trainer-led courses empower individuals and teams in their SAFe journey. These courses provide the opportunity to:

Build your foundational knowledge about SAFe in courses like Leading SAFe and SAFe for Teams
Grow expertise about your role and responsibilities in courses like SAFe Product Owner / Product Manager and SAFe Release Train Engineer
Expand your understanding of advanced SAFe practices in courses like SAFe Lean Portfolio Management, SAFe Agile Product Management, and SAFe for Architects

You can find descriptions of the available trainer-led courses to help you decide which ones best support your professional growth at scaledagile.com. Passing the exam associated with each course earns you a SAFe Certification and a digital badge to publish on social media and share with your network.

Self-directed Learning

Self-directed learning methods such as participating in an online learning series, watching subject-specific videos, and reading articles are also available for learners.

Online Learning in SAFe

Online learning is one of the modern, on-demand learning methods SAFe uses to deliver highly requested features such as SAFe Jumpstart (SES only), SAFe RTE Essentials, and Ready to Train.

Examples of Online Learning

SAFe Jumpstart helps new team members, who may be part of an ART or support one as a stakeholder, become familiar with Agile and SAFe to prepare them for their first couple of weeks in the organization. Starting with the benefits of Agile, SAFe, and a Lean-Agile mindset, this online learning walks learners through the dynamics of an Agile Team and ART and team events, so that they are more comfortable with this new way of working.
SAFe RTE Essentials supports new RTEs in their role by providing critical knowledge, techniques, and tools to improve their skills while they prepare and facilitate PI Planning and execute the PI.
Ready to Train prepares new SPCs to teach SAFe courses. The series begins by helping trainers discover their personal style. Then, trainers refine that style for maximum impact in the classroom. SPCs will find helpful, practical information about course content, flow, timeboxes, and tools as well as support for soft skills to help with classroom management and learner engagement.

Media

In addition to online learning, SAFe also offers blogs, podcasts, and videos to support learners interested in learning more about SAFe.

Blogs

SAFe offers two blog series:

The SAFe Blog is from Scaled Agile’s Framework team and explains Framework topics in depth.
The Scaled Agile blog brings real-life SAFe implementation experiences from the field and shares them with the SAFe community.

Podcasts

Listen to the latest news and experiences about SAFe and SAFe implementations on the SAFe Business Agility Podcast created for the SAFe community of professionals, trainers, and everyone who engages with SAFe daily.

Videos

The Community Video Hub provides on-demand learning opportunities covering various topics like roles and responsibilities, how-to style videos organized by level, and webinars and recordings from SAFe Summit events.

SAFe articles

Another option for self-directed learning includes reading articles. Framework articles can be accessed by linking from the Big Picture or by searching the website.

Framework articles provide detailed explanations of the values, roles, practices, and other information associated with the Framework.

On the Extended SAFe Guidance page, there is a collection of articles that go beyond the Framework articles linked from the Big Picture. These articles offer additional information regarding Lean-Agile practices and SAFe.

Trainer-led Courses	Leading SAFeSAFe for TeamsSAFe POPMAgile Product Management
Self-directed Learning	SAFe JumpstartSAFe Business Agility PodcastSAFe BlogSAFe Articles

Practice

Guides, workshops, and toolkits help you save time while implementing SAFe and executing your daily work. They’re curated by experts who gathered tips and practices from their successful
SAFe implementations.

Guides

There are two types of guides available to support SAFe professionals:

Practice Guides walk you through the step-by-step execution of advanced SAFe practices such as Organize Around Value (OAV) (SES only) and Adopt Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) (SES only).
Facilitator’s Guides provide detailed guidance and tips on facilitating team or ART-level events such as Team Sync, Iteration Planning, ART Sync, System Demo, and more.

Workshops

Workshops designed for specific purposes support SAFe Professionals during SAFe implementation. Resources make it easy for facilitators to gain buy-in before the workshop, prepare for and run a workshop, and take action afterward.

A few examples of popular workshop toolkits include:

Conflict Resolution
Value Stream and ART Identification
Value Stream Mapping

Toolkits

There are two main types of toolkits:

Execution Toolkits for actions such as facilitating a PI Planning, executing a PI, creating a LACE, and others are readily available to support SAFe professionals.
Learning Toolkits, including SAFe Executive Workshop, SAFe for Hardware, and Introducing SAFe, support SAFe professionals in teaching different topics to different audiences.

SAFe Assessments

Measure and Grow tools and guidance help evaluate progress toward Business Agility. They include assessments, videos, and toolkits to determine your progress, improvement areas, and recommended next steps.

Collaboration Tools

The online collaboration tools offered in SAFe Studio empower SAFe professionals to facilitate any collaborative event remotely. Preloaded templates for PI Planning, Participatory Budgeting, retrospectives, Design Thinking, and more help facilitators lead any SAFe event.

SAFe Virtual Classroom is a comprehensive, collaborative online system for trainers and learners to interact and access course materials and activities. Classroom activities are automatically created for each course and are included with membership. The Virtual Classroom includes a class page as well as activities for real-time collaboration. Try it for your first SAFe 6.0 class to save time and produce a rich, interactive environment for your learners. Learn more about using the Virtual Classroom by taking Ready to Train.

Community Sharing

SAFe has a strong, supportive community. You can leverage the knowledge base created by the global SAFe community over the years via Forums and by participating in the SAFe Summit.

Forums

Communities of practice help participants learn and grow. In turn, you can help others when you share your experiences. You can find forums by topic such as Accelerating Flow with SAFe, Agile Marketing, and Measure and Grow, or by roles such as RTE and Product Management.

SAFe Summit

SAFe Summit is a conference event that brings together a passionate community of SAFe professionals. You can learn about the recent successful method developments, hear technical talks and Customer stories, and connect with like-minded professionals.

Reference

Next Steps

Certifications for certified members, except SPC certification, will be automatically upgraded if they:

Hold a current SAFe 5 certification.
Finished SAFe 6.0 Upgrade Series learning content and activities.

To see your upgraded SAFe 6.0 certification, navigate to My Learning, select Achievements, and then select Certifications on the Community Platform.

Your badge will automatically upgrade if you’ve opted in to receive a digital badge.
If you’ve not opted in to receive digital badges and want to, toggle yes to “Digital Badge Opt-In” from your profile.

SPCs and SPCTs

SPC or SPCT certifications will be upgraded if you:

Hold an active SAFe 5 SPC or SPCT certification.
Finished SAFe 6.0 Upgrade Series learning content and activities.
Complete the quiz on your learning plan.
- You can take the quiz as many times as you want.

To see your upgraded SAFe 6.0 certification, navigate to My Learning, select Achievements, and then select Certifications in SAFe Studio.

Your badge will automatically upgrade if you’ve opted in to receive a digital badge.
If you’ve not opted in to receive digital badges and want to, toggle yes to “Digital Badge Opt-In” from your profile.

Validation for Teaching

If you are validated to teach a SAFe 5.1 course, you’re exempt from taking the validation exam for 6.0. Scroll down to the bottom of the learning plan and click the “Exempt” button.
- You’ll need to complete all required steps of the learning plan that you haven’t completed to earn your 6.0 validation for each course.
You must complete the learning plan and take the validation exam if you weren’t already enabled to teach a course in 5.1.