The following is an excerpt from the chapter Adopting SAFe at Small Scale in Al Shalloway’s new book – Achieving Agility at Small to Mid-Scale
The Challenge of Essential SAFe
SAFe proponents suggest Essential SAFe be used for small companies. The reason for this is that small companies don’t need the complexity that full SAFe entails. But even small companies have the issue of taking their strategies to fulfillment. This means that the concepts of strategies, epics, solutions, capabilities, and MVPs are still needed. The challenge, of course, is that these are defined at the levels above Essential SAFe.
Most small companies adopting SAFe are mostly attracted to:
- the program increment and its planning event
- the role of the release train engineer (RTE) to coordinate teams
- having teams work in cadence with synchronization
These can be used as the cornerstone of their SAFe adoption. However, a simple Agile Product Management approach that takes the company from strategy to realization of value is still required.
See chapter above for more.