This is an excerpt from Adopting SAFe at Small- or Medium- Scale a chapter from my upcoming book “Achieving Business Agility at Small- to Mid-Scale.
Essential SAFe, the smallest option of SAFe, was designed for programs within a large organization. It was not designed for an entire organization that is the size of a program. Here are examples of challenges that come with this.
- The planning pace for SAFe is two to three months. At the small-scale, it is more reasonable and Agile to plan one to two months ahead.
- Different type of organizations often require different methods of planning
- Having an innovation and planning iteration should not be required at small- to mid-scale (not to mention that the cost of it would be proportionately long given the shorter planning increments.
- Many concepts needed at small- to mid-scale are not in Essential SAFe (in particular, how to go from strategy to the product backlog)
Fortunately, what to add, modify or leave out can be guided using Lean-Agile principles – most of which are ironically included in Essential SAFe.
This enables those wanting to use Essential SAFe as a core to have a framework that is effective, efficient and most importantly, is the right for them.