SAFe Planning and Execution Series Overview

Welcome to the third post in our SAFe Planning and Execution Series. In this post, we will delve into Program Management, exploring the Agile Release Train (ART), product management, program flow, and more. This post builds on the knowledge shared in

Introduction to SAFe Program Management

In this third installment of our blog series, we dive into the world of Program Management in SAFe to understand its impact on Business Agility and Customer Centricity. We’ll explore the Agile Release Train (ART), key roles, events, and metrics that contribute to successful program management, and how these elements enable organizations to respond effectively to market changes and customer needs.

Defining Program Management

Business Agility

Business Agility is the capacity to excel in the digital age by rapidly adapting to market changes and seizing emerging opportunities with innovative, digitally-enabled business solutions. The digital era has accelerated the pace of customer demands, competitive threats, technology choices, business expectations, revenue opportunities, and workforce requirements. To delight customers at the speed of the market, it is essential to validate innovations with customers and pivot quickly when the hypothesis needs to change. Additionally, technological advances such as AI, Big Data, Cloud, and DevOps empower enterprises to expand product lines, modernize existing offerings, scale to mass markets, make data-driven decisions, and streamline solution development.

Agile Product Delivery

Business agility demands that Agile Teams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs) enhance their ability to deliver innovative products and services swiftly. This capability necessitates striking a balance between execution and customer focus, guaranteeing the development of the right solutions for the right customers at the right time. Agile Product Delivery (APD) comprises three dimensions:

  • Customer Centricity and Design Thinking
  • Develop on Cadence, Release on Demand
  • DevOps and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline

The Agile Release Train (ART)

The Agile Release Train (ART) is a long-lived, cross-functional team of Agile teams that incrementally develops, delivers, and often operates one or more solutions in a value stream. ARTs are virtual organizations, typically consisting of 50-125 people, that plan, commit, develop, and deploy together, aligning to a shared business and technology mission.

Organized around the enterprise’s significant Development Value Streams, ARTs eliminate functional silos, enabling faster value flow. In traditional functional organizations, developers, testers, architects, systems engineers, and operations work in separate silos, which slows down progress. However, ARTs apply systems thinking and organize around value, creating an optimized cross-functional organization that facilitates value flow from ideation through deployment and release into operations.

This fully cross-functional organization, whether physical or virtual, is self-organizing and self-managing. It has all the necessary resources to define, deliver, and operate solutions, resulting in a leaner organization with faster value delivery and reduced overhead.

Customer Centricity

Customer Centricity is a mindset that focuses on creating positive user experiences and customer engagement with an organization’s products and services. It puts the customer at the center of every decision, considering the impact on end-users. This mindset fosters long-term customer relationships, enabling increased customer value, often in unexpected ways. Customer-centric businesses enjoy greater profits, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction, while customer-centric governments and nonprofits create resilience, sustainability, and mission alignment.

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is essential to customer centricity. It’s an iterative development process that ensures solutions are desirable, feasible, economically viable, and sustainable throughout their lifecycle. Applying design thinking during development guarantees that solutions are customer-focused and economically sound.

Lean UX

In SAFe, Lean UX extends the traditional user experience design process, focusing on why a feature exists, its required functionality, and its intended benefits. Immediate customer and end-user feedback help determine if the system meets their needs and business objectives. Lean UX provides a closed-loop method for defining, hypothesizing, building, measuring value, and learning. Designers take on a more facilitative role, relying on collaboration, iterative approaches, and empathy for problem-solving.

Develop on Cadence, Release on Demand

Establishing routine development activities on a fast, synchronized PI cadence is a proven strategy to manage variability in product development. Releasing on demand offers a significant strategic advantage by making value available when customers, the market, and the business need it. Product Management collaborates with stakeholders to determine when a release should happen, what elements should be released, and who should receive it.

SAFe Program-level key Inputs & Outputs

Product Management

Product Management is responsible for defining solutions that meet customer needs, are desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable, and support development throughout the product life cycle. The role can vary depending on the complexity of the solution, ranging from a single Product Manager to a team of Product Managers.

Product Management guides solutions through the four stages of the product life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline, ensuring maximum business value is achieved. Whether a solution is consumed internally or sold externally, Product Management plays a vital role in enabling continuous and sustained value delivery in SAFe.

Product Management Key Collaborations

Transforming ideas into valuable products and services requires ongoing coordination and communication across the organization. Product Management is central to this process but relies on collaborative partnerships to enable efficient product development flow.

These relationships include:

  • Align on outcomes: Product Management collaborates with Customers, Business Owners, and Solution Management to understand market forces, desired economic outcomes, and broader solution vision influencing product strategy.
  • Steer the ART: Product Management works closely with System Architects and the Release Train Engineer (RTE) to guide the ART toward successful delivery. They form a leadership triad that maintains synergy between product strategy and implementation.
  • Evolve the solution: Product Management syncs with Product Owners of Agile Teams, providing business context and receiving feedback on implementation feasibility, ensuring the teams can develop, deliver, and enhance solutions effectively.

Product Management Responsibilities

Product Management’s responsibilities in SAFe fall into five main areas. Each area of responsibility is outlined below:

  • Exploring Markets and Users: Product Management continuously investigates the Solution Context, gathering insights about market dynamics and user preferences to inform business and technical strategies.
  • Conduct primary and secondary research: Product Management uses primary data (specific questions about product-market fit) and secondary data (macro-level trends) to inform product strategy and design.
  • Apply market segmentation: Product Management divides users into segments based on common characteristics and tailors solutions to the most appealing segments.
  • Identify market rhythms and events: Product Management considers predictable and unpredictable events to plan release schedules and adapt to changing circumstances.
  • Understand end-user needs: Product Management uses techniques like Lean UX, human-centered design (HCD), and journey mapping to ensure product strategies align with the evolving needs of end users.

Connecting with the customer

Product Management maintains an ongoing connection with customers throughout the product life cycle, ensuring that customer needs are consistently integrated into the product strategy. Key aspects of this connection include:

  • Adopt a customer-centric mindset: A customer-centric mindset puts the customer at the center of every decision. This approach helps create desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable solutions.
  • Empathize with the customer: To deliver valuable experiences, Product Management utilizes personas, empathy interviews, and empathy maps to understand and communicate customer wants and needs from their perspective.
  • Apply design thinking: Design Thinking is a comprehensive, iterative approach to ensure solutions are desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable. Product Management uses design thinking practices and tools to understand problems and design effective solutions.
  • Involve the customer continuously: Agile product development requires ongoing planning, doing, checking, and adjusting. Product Management fuels this feedback loop by involving customers in Continuous Exploration, PI Planning, and System Demos.

Product Strategy, Vision & Roadmaps

Product Management plays a critical role in connecting portfolio strategy with execution. This involves translating customer needs into solution concepts that can be delivered by Agile Teams and achieve measurable business outcomes. Key tasks include:

  • Align strategy to business objectives: Product Management aligns product strategy, vision, and roadmap to the portfolio’s Strategic Themes, Portfolio Vision, Lean Budgets, and Guardrails. Epic Owners also define and govern the Epic’s Lean Business Case.
  • Establish equitable value exchange models: Following SAFe principle #1 – Take an economic view, Product Management identifies the specific value desired by customers and the value the enterprise requires in return, ensuring solutions provide mutual, sustainable benefits.
  • Create and communicate a compelling vision: Product Management refines and communicates the product vision to the ART, presenting it during PI Planning sessions. When necessary, they work with Solution Management during Pre-PI Planning to communicate the product vision to Solution Train stakeholders.
  • Manage flexible roadmaps: Product strategy and vision are reflected in roadmaps that guide implementation. Product Management adjusts roadmaps accordingly as product strategy and vision change in response to evolving business objectives and customer needs.

Artifacts

In this section, we’ll explore various SAFe Artefacts that play a crucial role in the development and communication of planned deliverables and milestones within the SAFe framework. These artifacts include Features, Capabilities, PI Objectives, Vision, Solution Context, and Roadmaps. Each artifact uniquely guides and aligns Agile teams, trains, and stakeholders throughout development, ensuring that solutions are customer-centric, adaptive, and responsive to changing needs.

  • The Vision describes the future state of the solution, reflecting customer needs and proposed features. It sets the context for new features and nonfunctional requirements and applies to any level of SAFe. Continuously developing and communicating the vision ensures a shared understanding of ART goals and objectives.
  • The Solution Context identifies critical aspects of the environment in which a solution operates, impacting development priorities, solution intent, and more. Understanding and aligning the solution with the context requires a customer-centric mindset and close collaboration between stakeholders. The customer should participate in PI Planning and Solution Demos for optimal alignment.
  • The Roadmap is a visual tool that communicates planned deliverables and milestones over time, linking strategy to execution. There are three types of roadmaps in SAFe: PI roadmap (for an ART or Solution Train), Solution roadmap (longer-term view), and Portfolio roadmap (aggregated multiyear view). Roadmaps help to adapt and evolve planned activities in response to changing needs.
  • A Feature is a piece of solution functionality that delivers business value, addresses stakeholder needs, and can be completed by an Agile Release Train (ART) within a PI. Each feature includes a benefit hypothesis and acceptance criteria and is appropriately sized for a single ART. Features are suitable for the Lean UX process model, incorporating a Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF) to limit scope and investment, increase agility, and enable fast feedback. Capabilities function similarly to features but at a higher level of abstraction, supporting the development of large-scale Solutions.
  • Capabilities share characteristics with features, such as being described with a phrase and benefit hypothesis and being sized to fit within a PI. However, they often require multiple ARTs for implementation. Managed using the Solution Train Kanban, the Solution Train Backlog holds approved capabilities, which are supported by enablers to ensure efficient development and delivery. Solution Managers accept capabilities based on the acceptance criteria. Capabilities may arise from the local solution context, portfolio epics across multiple Value Streams, or the Solution Context that demands additional functionality.
  • PI Objectives summarize business and technical goals for the upcoming PI, providing a common language for communication, near-term focus, and a way to assess ART performance. Created during PI Planning, these objectives highlight team contributions, expose dependencies, and help maintain alignment and trust between development and business stakeholders.

Creating and managing the program backlog

The Program and Solution Kanban

In this section, we’ll delve into the Program and Solution Kanban systems, which are vital tools for visualizing and managing the flow of Features and Capabilities throughout the Continuous Delivery Pipeline. These Kanban systems help Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Solution Trains balance demand with capacity by using Work in Process (WIP) limits while pinpointing bottlenecks for continuous improvement. With the support of Product and Solution Management, implementing these Kanban systems involves understanding Lean and Agile development, as well as how capacity is allocated for various activities. By adopting these systems, organizations can reap numerous benefits such as increased visibility, continuous refinement, enhanced collaboration, informed decision-making, and establishing connections between ARTs, Solution Trains, and the Portfolio.

The Epic Kanban System

The Epic Kanban System is designed to manage larger initiatives or Program Epics that cannot be completed within a single Program Increment (PI). Program Epics may also arise when Portfolio Epics need to be split into smaller Solution and Program Epics for incremental implementation. This Kanban system aims to analyze and approve Program Epics, then split them into Features for further exploration and implementation using the Program Kanban.

The Program Epic Kanban System may sometimes require engagement from large solution or portfolio stakeholders. The process states in this Kanban system typically follow those in the Portfolio Kanban:

  1. Funnel: This stage welcomes all significant program initiatives, with no Work in Process (WIP) limit.
  2. Reviewing: Subject matter experts and stakeholders review, prioritize, and determine which epics should move forward for in-depth exploration using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF). WIP limits apply.
  3. Analyzing: In this stage, experts and stakeholders refine size estimates, consider solution alternatives, identify Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and Minimum Marketable Features (MMFs), and determine costs using a Lean business case. Approved epics are split into features and transitioned to the Program Kanban for prioritization based on WSJF. WIP limits apply in this state as well.

Program Epics may require Epic Owners to assist with definition, exploration, and implementation. The Program Epic Kanban System may not be necessary for all ARTs, depending on the frequency of Program Epics in the local context.

The Program Kanban Workflow States

The Program Kanban system is designed to streamline the flow of Features through the Continuous Delivery Pipeline. It consists of several workflow states that guide Features from their inception to their final release. Here’s a rundown of the typical workflow states in the Program Kanban:

  1. Funnel: This stage welcomes all new ideas, including new functionality, system enhancements, and enabler work.
  2. Analyzing: Ideas that align with the Vision and support the Strategic Themes are further explored and refined by Agile Teams when they have available capacity.
  3. Program Backlog: High-priority, analyzed, and approved Features advance to this state, where they’re prioritized using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) and await implementation.
  4. Implementing: Features are pulled into this state as teams begin working on them during the Program Increment (PI), splitting them into stories and planning them into iterations.
  5. Validating on staging: Features ready for feedback are integrated, tested, and presented to Product Management and stakeholders for approval in a staging environment.
  6. Deploying to production: Features are moved to production when deployment capacity is available or immediately in a fully automated continuous delivery environment.
  7. Releasing: Features are released to customers based on value, market need, and opportunity, and their benefit hypothesis is evaluated.

Keep in mind that this Kanban system should be customized to suit the needs of individual ARTs, including defining appropriate WIP limits and policies for each process state.

Building and Refining the Backlog

Building and Refining the Backlog is a crucial process in the SAFe framework, led by Product and Solution Management. They employ a continuous, flow-based approach to ensure features and capabilities are ready for implementation with the right level of discovery and risk. Activities involved in refining the ART and Solution Train backlogs include:

  1. Discovering new features and capabilities
  2. Reviewing and updating backlog item definitions, such as developing acceptance criteria and benefit hypotheses
  3. Identifying enablers needed to support new features and capabilities
  4. Applying Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) techniques or holding specification workshops for clarity
  5. Prioritizing backlogs using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) in collaboration with stakeholders like Business Owners, System Architects, Product Owners, and RTEs/STEs
  6. Briefing Agile Teams and stakeholders on upcoming features and capabilities for PI Planning
  7. Deleting outdated or irrelevant items

Refinement activities often take place during the Product Owner (PO) Sync, where Product Management and Product Owners work together to update the backlog. A well-maintained backlog is essential for successful PI planning and execution.

Capacity Management

Balancing Value Delivery and Solution Health with Capacity Allocation is essential for every train in the SAFe framework. It involves maintaining a balance between delivering business features or capabilities and investing in enablers that build and sustain the architectural runway. This prevents velocity reduction and technology obsolescence while supporting exploration of requirements, design thinking, prototyping, and enhancing visibility into opportunities and problem areas.

Collaboration during WSJF prioritization usually helps in achieving a good balance of work. However, if needed, Product and Solution Management may work with Architects to apply capacity allocation, deciding how much effort the ART will reserve for each activity type in the upcoming PI. Capacity allocation should be periodically reviewed and adjusted during backlog refinement in preparation for PI planning.

PI Planning

The PI Planning event is a cornerstone of the Agile Release Train, marking the beginning of each ART PI. It’s a collaborative effort where teams estimate deliverables, identify dependencies, and set PI Objectives for the upcoming PI. This event is crucial for alignment, collaboration, and ensuring a smooth flow of work throughout the PI. Although we’ve briefly touched on PI Planning here, its significance and complexity deserve a dedicated blog post that dives deeper into the process, its agenda, and the key roles involved. This upcoming post will provide valuable insights and guidance for successfully navigating and executing PI Planning within your organization. Stay tuned for the dedicated blog post on this essential topic.

Program Flow

The SAFe Planning Interval (PI)

A Planning Interval (PI) is a timebox, typically 8-12 weeks long, in which Agile Release Trains (ARTs) deliver continuous value to customers aligned with PI Objectives. The most common PI pattern consists of four development iterations followed by one Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration. The PI serves as a fixed timebox for planning, building, validating, and delivering value, while also receiving fast feedback. During a PI, Agile Teams apply cadence and synchronization to merge the work of multiple teams into one or more releasable increments or even release value independently.

The cadence and synchronization of the PI enable the ART to:

  • Plan the ART’s next increment of work
  • Limit work in process (WIP)
  • Summarize newsworthy value for feedback
  • Ensure consistent ART retrospectives

The PI provides a suitable timebox for Portfolio considerations and road mapping. SAFe divides the development timeline into a series of iterations within a PI, starting with a PI Planning event, followed by four execution iterations, and ending with one IP iteration.

Develop on Cadence

PIs establish the development rhythm for trains and the assets they build, allowing them to grow iteratively and incrementally. ‘Develop on cadence’ refers to a coordinated set of practices that support Agile Teams with a regular, predictable schedule of events and activities. However, the planning cadence often differs from the release cadence, helping customer-centric enterprises create continuous value flow for their customers. The business determines release timing based on market and customer needs and the organization’s motivation to provide value. Some enterprises frequently release during the PI, while others may be constrained by compliance, supplier dependencies, or other business and market requirements, leading to less frequent releases. Decoupling development events and activities that support value creation from how and when that value is delivered further promotes Business Agility.

The Continuous Delivery Pipeline

The Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP) is a vital component of the Agile Product Delivery competency in SAFe. It streamlines the process of delivering new functionality from ideation to on-demand release of value. The pipeline consists of four aspects: Continuous Exploration (CE), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), and Release on Demand.

Each Agile Release Train (ART) builds and maintains a CDP to deliver solution value as independently as possible. This pipeline allows ARTs to deliver new functionality more frequently than traditional processes, satisfying market demands and enterprise goals.

The four aspects of the CDP work together to enable organizations to map their current pipeline, continuously improve, and deliver value to customers. These aspects are:

  1. Continuous Exploration (CE) – focuses on aligning what needs to be built using design thinking to understand market problems or customer needs, analyze ideas, and converge requirements for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF). The outcome feeds into the ART Backlog.
  2. Continuous Integration (CI) – involves implementing features from the ART backlog, refining them using design thinking tools, committing completed work to version control, and testing end-to-end before validation in a staging environment.
  3. Continuous Deployment (CD) – deploys changes from the staging environment to production, verifying and monitoring them to ensure correct functionality. The features are available in production, and the business determines the appropriate time to release them to customers.
  4. Release on Demand (RoD) – offers the flexibility to release value based on market and business needs, optimizing release timing and controlling risk. This aspect also includes critical pipeline activities to maintain solution stability and value after release.

Although described sequentially, the pipeline is a continuous learning cycle that fosters value delivery. Throughout every PI and iteration, ARTs and Solution Trains work in parallel across all aspects to explore, integrate, deploy, and release value as needed.

Agile Release Train Flow

ART Flow focuses on delivering a continuous flow of valuable features to the customer through the application of eight flow accelerators. These accelerators help optimize and address issues in the value delivery process:

  1. Visualize and Limit WIP – Excessive Work In Progress (WIP) hinders productivity and value flow. To manage WIP, visualize all features in progress using the ART Backlog Kanban system and establish capacity allocations for a feature and non-feature-related work.
  2. Address Bottlenecks – Bottlenecks constrain the productivity of the entire ART. To improve flow, identify bottlenecks, understand their impact on value flow, and address them by increasing capacity or bypassing them when necessary.
  3. Minimize Handoffs and Dependencies – Excessive handoffs and dependencies impede flow. Use the ART planning board to visualize dependencies, foster incremental execution, synchronize frequently, optimize team structure, and manage dependencies with external parties.
  4. Get Faster Feedback – Accelerate feedback loops to reduce mistakes and ensure that the ART is building the right product with the right quality. Assure both types of feedback, provide solution telemetry, engage with customers early and often, integrate and test frequently, and use research spikes and MVPs.
  5. Work in Smaller Batches – Reducing batch sizes minimizes information decay, rework, and delays. Understand and manage different batch types, use ART cadence, manage team and ART size, automate the delivery pipeline, plan for smaller batches, and use thin vertical slices of work.
  6. Reduce Queue Lengths – Shortening the backlog queue reduces wait times for new features. Keep roadmaps flexible, establish a strong Product Management function, and leave capacity for emergent priorities.
  7. Optimize Time ‘In the Zone’ – Maximize productivity by optimizing focused intellectual effort. Keep work-in-process low, frequently integrate work, maintain solution health, and ensure efficient events.
  8. Remediate Legacy Policies and Practices – Address outdated policies and practices that may hinder flow. Recognize potential impediments when they occur, and take corrective action depending on the specific stakeholders, nature, and context.

Applying these accelerators helps Agile Release Trains optimize their value delivery process, continuously improve business outcomes, and address any challenges or impediments that arise.

Program Operations

Continuous Exploration

Continuous Exploration (CE) is the first aspect of the four-part Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP), which includes Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment, and Release on Demand. CE focuses on generating, refining, and prioritizing Features in the ART Backlog, which are then implemented by Agile Teams.

Agile Product Delivery is one of the seven core competencies of SAFe, and CE is integral to it. CE applies Customer Centricity, and Design Thinking to understand and create alignment on new development opportunities, replacing traditional waterfall approaches with a consistent flow of Features ready for implementation in the ART Backlog.

CE involves various internal and external stakeholders, such as Customers, Suppliers, partners, Business Owners, Agile Teams, Product Owners, and Lean Portfolio Management. Their involvement can be either indirect or direct to align the organization to a shared Vision, a set of Features, and a forecasted Roadmap.

  1. The Hypothesize stage is about generating ideas and defining the measurements needed to validate them with Customers. Teams should consider ideas from Product Management as hypotheses that need to be tested and proven.
  2. Collaborate and Research: Product Management facilitates a continuous and collaborative process to create a compelling and differentiated vision by gathering input from diverse stakeholders.
  3. Architect: CE defines the minimum amount of architecture required for the Solution, ensuring that the Architectural Runway supports the required functionality and enables the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP).
  4. Synthesize: This stage distills the knowledge gained into a new future state for the solution, including an updated Vision, Roadmap, and prioritized backlog of features. The focus is on ensuring these assets are ready for PI planning.

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration (CI) is the second aspect of the four-part Continuous Delivery Pipeline, which includes Continuous Exploration (CE), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), and Release on Demand. CI is crucial for Agile Release Trains (ART) as it improves quality, reduces risk, and establishes a fast, reliable, and sustainable development pace.

Continuous integration ensures the system is always running and potentially deployable, even during development. While it’s easier to apply CI to software solutions, it becomes more complex with larger, multi-platform systems and those that include hardware, components, and services from suppliers.

Despite these complexities, teams need a balanced approach to integrate and test features frequently, thus validating the solution fully. For software-based solutions, CI is relatively easy to achieve using modern tools. A continuous integration approach is required for more complex systems, balancing economic trade-offs between frequency, scope of integration, and testing.

SAFe outlines four activities associated with continuous integration:

  1. Develop: This involves implementing stories and committing code and components to version control.
  2. Build: This includes creating deployable binaries and merging development branches into the main trunk.
  3. Test end-to-end: This encompasses validating the solution through thorough testing practices.
  4. Stage: This entails hosting and validating solutions in a staging environment before production.

Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment (CD) is the third aspect of the four-part Continuous Delivery Pipeline, which includes Continuous Exploration (CE), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), and Release on Demand. CD automates the migration of new functionality from a staging environment to production, enabling Release on Demand.

Continuous deployment allows teams to deploy small, incremental changes to production continually. Separating the deployment process from releasing enables changes to move into production without affecting the current system.

Traditional development practices treat deployment and release as the same activity, whereas continuous deployment separates the deployment and release processes. This separation fosters design thinking and fast value flow, allowing for targeted functionality, experimentation, small batch deployment, and release based on business needs.

ARTs focus on reducing transaction costs and the risk of moving changes to production by automating all aspects of continuous deployment, making it a repeatable, predictable activity without significant incidents.

SAFe describes four activities of Continuous Deployment:

  1. Deploy: The practices necessary to deploy a solution to a production environment.
  2. Verify: The practices needed to ensure solution changes operate in production as intended before releasing them to customers.
  3. Monitor: The practices to monitor and report on any issues that may arise in production.
  4. Respond: The practices to address any problems rapidly which may occur during deployment.

Release on Demand

Release on Demand is the final aspect of the four-part Continuous Delivery Pipeline, which includes Continuous Exploration (CE), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment, and Release on Demand. It involves releasing new functionality immediately or incrementally based on business and customer needs.

Releasing value at the right time is critical for an enterprise to gain the real benefits of agility. Release on Demand allows for the release of new functionality after deployment, either immediately or when it makes the most economic sense for customers and the business.

The Agile Product Delivery competency raises three questions for Product and Solution Management: when should a release happen, what elements of the solution should be released, and which end-users should receive the release? A Customer-Centric mindset guides the answers to these questions, considering market rhythms, market events, customer needs, and targeted release elements.

Decoupling releases promote Business Agility, enabling product marketing and sales teams to target promotional activities and schedule sales activities with greater confidence.

Release on Demand consists of four activities:

  1. Release: The practices needed to deliver the solution to end users, all at once or incrementally.
  2. Stabilize and Operate: Ensuring the solution works well from functional and Non-functional requirements (NFR) perspectives.
  3. Measure: Quantifying if the newly-released functionality provides the intended value.
  4. Learn: Collect feedback and prepare through the Continuous Delivery Pipeline for the next loop.

Key Roles & Responsibilities

In this section, we will explore the key roles in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) that contribute to the successful implementation of Agile practices across an organization. These roles include Product Management, Business Owners, System Architects, Release Train Engineers, and Product Owner. Each role plays a critical part in ensuring effective communication, collaboration, and value delivery throughout the development process.

  • Product Management: This role is responsible for defining solutions that meet customer needs and supporting development throughout the product life cycle. Product Management guides each solution through its stages, ensuring maximum business value is achieved over the solution’s life.
  • Business Owners: Key stakeholders with primary business and technical responsibility for return on investment (ROI), governance, and compliance. Business Owners evaluate fitness for use and actively participate in ART events and solution development.
  • System Architect: This role defines and communicates a shared technical and architectural vision for the solutions developed by an ART. System Architects align Agile Release Train teams to a shared technical direction and collaborate with teams on system architecture elaboration and implementation alternatives.
  • Release Train Engineer: A servant leader and ART coach who facilitates ART events and processes, support teams in delivering value, communicate with stakeholders, escalates impediments, helps manage risk, and drives relentless improvement.
  • Product Owner: The Agile team member is primarily responsible for maximizing the value delivered by the team. As a customer advocate and primary link to business and technology strategy, the Product Owner ensures the team backlog is aligned with customer and stakeholder needs.

ART Events

The Agile Release Train (ART) Events section highlights key ceremonies that foster collaboration, alignment, and continuous improvement within the ART. These events serve as essential touchpoints for teams and stakeholders to synchronize their efforts, review progress, and adapt as needed to achieve the desired outcomes. The events play a crucial role in maintaining the rhythm and momentum of the ART, ensuring that all participants work together effectively to deliver value to customers and the business.

  • PI Planning – PI Planning is a crucial, cadence-based event that brings together all the teams on an Agile Release Train (ART) for face-to-face planning. This collaborative planning session serves as the heartbeat of the ART, ensuring that everyone is aligned with the shared mission and objectives. During this event, teams discuss priorities, dependencies, risks, and establish a plan for the upcoming Program Increment (PI).
  • System Demo – The System Demo offers an integrated view of the latest features developed by all teams within the ART during the most recent iteration. This demonstration is conducted in the presence of ART stakeholders, providing an objective measure of progress and ensuring that the evolving solution meets expectations. The System Demo serves as an opportunity for feedback and continuous improvement throughout the PI.
  • Inspect & Adapt – Inspect & Adapt is a significant event where the current state of the solution is showcased and evaluated by the teams and stakeholders. Following the demonstration, teams engage in a structured problem-solving workshop, reflecting on their experiences and identifying improvement backlog items to enhance their processes and the solution itself.
  • Coach Sync – The Coach Sync event is designed to coordinate dependencies between the ARTs and provide visibility into progress and any impediments. This synchronization helps ensure that all teams on the ART are moving in harmony and that any issues are addressed promptly to maintain a smooth flow of work.
  • Product Owner (PO) Sync – The PO Sync is an event that offers visibility into the progress of the ART in meeting its PI objectives. During this session, participants discuss any problems or opportunities related to feature development, assess potential scope adjustments, and ensure alignment with overall business goals and customer needs.
  • ART Sync – The ART Sync combines both the Coach Sync and PO Sync events into a single, comprehensive session for the ART. This unified event facilitates effective communication and collaboration, providing an overview of progress, impediments, and any adjustments needed to keep the ART on track and aligned with its objectives.

Metrics

Metrics are crucial in evaluating an organization’s progress toward its business and technical objectives in the context of SAFe. The three key measurement domains—Outcomes, Flow, and Competency—provide a comprehensive approach to assessing performance across various levels, from individual Agile teams to the entire portfolio.

  • Outcomes measure how well the organization’s efforts align with customer needs and business goals. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) help track progress on a regular basis, while employee engagement metrics indicate internal satisfaction and motivation.
  • Flow metrics evaluate the efficiency of the organization in delivering value. The Flow Framework offers six key metrics, including Flow Distribution, Velocity, Time, Load, Efficiency, and Predictability. These metrics help identify bottlenecks, balance work types, and ensure reliable delivery commitments.
  • Competency assesses the proficiency of the organization in implementing practices that enable business agility. By understanding and utilizing these metrics, organizations can make informed decisions, drive continuous improvement, and achieve higher levels of performance across all domains.

Conclusion

Mastering Program Management in SAFe is vital for organizations striving for Business Agility and Customer Centricity. By understanding the Agile Release Train, embracing customer-centric approaches, and utilizing key metrics, organizations can drive continuous improvement and achieve higher levels of performance. As we have explored in this blog post, SAFe provides the framework and tools necessary for successful program management, ensuring that businesses are well-equipped to deliver value and innovation to their customers in today’s fast-paced, competitive landscape.