Essential SAFe was intended for large orgs adopting SAFe at the program level. But many mid-scale companies have adopted it as well.
Mostly they’ve done this because of:
- its Holistic view
- SAFe’s product management role
- Using WSJF to prioritize work
- How to manage shared services
- Using Kanban for product management
- Program increment planning event
Good reasons. But many aspects of SAFe that are useful for mid-scale orgs are mostly discussed at the portfolio level & above- levels beyond the need of a mid-scale org. This is where the minimum business increment (MBI) (discussed in #14) can be useful.
An MBI has the following qualities:
- Smallest functionality that can be delivered with value realized
- Contains all aspects of solution being provided
- Built in slices with validation of hypothesis early if needed Essentially, an MBI contains all the aspects of MVPs, MMFs, Solutions & value streams. SAFe at mid-scale can therefore be accomplished by:
- Having the role of the product manager
- Using MBIs to focus on what needs to be built
- Use ATDD to decompose the MBIs into features & stories
- Use the program increment planning event to coordinate teams
Tomorrow – how to do Essential SAFe in large orgs