SAFe-Agilist SAFe 6 Agilist - Leading SAFe (SA) (6.0) Questions and Answers

Lean thinking is the type of thinking that allows the customer to pull value from the producer. Lean thinking is a philosophy and a set of principles and practices that aim to eliminate waste and optimize value delivery. Pull is a concept that means that nothing is built or delivered until there is a demand for it from the customer or the next process. Pull helps reduce overproduction, inventory, and waiting, and ensures that only valuable work is done. References: Thriving in the Digital Age, SAFe Principle #1

Conducting a PI planning event is an example of applying cadence and synchronization in SAFe. Cadence is a regular and predictable pattern of events that provides a rhythm for development. Synchronization is the alignment of multiple perspectives and activities within a cadence. PI planning is a two-day event that occurs at the beginning of every Program Increment (PI), which is typically an 8-12 week timebox. PI planning brings together all the teams in an ART to align on a common vision, identify dependencies, plan features, establish objectives, and commit to a plan for the next PI. References: Develop on Cadence; Release on Demand, PI Planning

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Lean Thinking, a value stream is triggered by a demand for some value, such as a new feature, a change request, or a defect fix1. A feature is a service that fulfills a stakeholder need2. Therefore, a feature request is a valid trigger for a value stream.

A spike request is a type of exploration enabler that addresses technical uncertainty or risk3. A user story request is a type of backlog item that represents an end user goal or function4. These are not triggers for a value stream, but rather work items that flow through a value stream.

Deploy, verify, monitor, and respond are all activities of Continuous Deployment. Continuous Deployment is one of the elements of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline, which is a key enabler of Agile Product Delivery. Continuous Deployment means automatically releasing every update to a production environment or a staging environment that is identical to production. Continuous Deployment involves four activities: deploy (releasing the solution to the target environment); verify (ensuring that the solution meets the quality standards and acceptance criteria); monitor (collecting feedback and data on the solution performance and usage); and respond (taking actions to improve or fix the solution based on the feedback and data). References: Agile Product Delivery, Continuous Delivery Pipeline, Continuous Deployment

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Apply SAFe Principles, when basing decisions on economics, lead time, product cost, value, and development expense are used to:

• Evaluate the economic impact of different design alternatives
• Optimize the flow of value delivery by minimizing delays and waste
• Maximize the return on investment by delivering the most valuable features first
• Balance the tradeoffs between speed, quality, and cost

https://scaledagileframework.com/take-an-economic-view/

User business value and time criticality are components of cost of delay. Cost of delay is a way of quantifying the economic impact of delaying the delivery of a product or feature. Cost of delay consists of four factors: user or customer value, time criticality, risk reduction or opportunity enablement value, and job size or duration. Cost of delay is used to prioritize features using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF), which is a method that maximizes the economic value delivered by a product development flow. References: ART Backlog and WSJF, SAFe Principle #1

Core Values - Scaled Agile Framework

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of SAFe Core Values, alignment is one of the four core values that represent the foundational beliefs that are key to SAFe’s effectiveness1. Alignment includes the following practices:

• Communicate the vision, mission, and strategy
• Connect strategy to execution
• Speak with a common language
• Constantly check for understanding
• Understand your customer
• Establish flow
• Enable decentralized decision-making

Empathy maps are a tool associated with design thinking that help to understand the user’s needs, goals, pain points, and emotions. Empathy maps are visual representations of what the user thinks, feels, sees, hears, says, and does in relation to a problem or a solution. Empathy maps help to create a shared understanding of the user among the team and stakeholders, and to generate insights for designing user-centric solutions. Empathy maps can be created based on user research, interviews, observations, or personas123.

References: 1: Design Thinking - Scaled Agile Framework 2: TEN TOOLS FOR DESIGN THINKING - culturepartnership.eu 3: The Most Complete Design Thinking Tools & Resource Collections - Mockplus

Design thinking is a method that provides a continuous understanding of the target market. Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving that involves empathy, ideation, experimentation, and implementation. Design thinking helps teams discover the real needs and desires of their customers, generate innovative solutions that address those needs, validate their assumptions through fast feedback loops, and deliver value that delights their customers. Design thinking helps teams achieve the core competency of Customer Centricity in SAFe. References: Customer Centricity, Design Thinking

ROAM is an acronym for Resolved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated. ROAM is a technique for categorizing and managing PI risks during the final plan review in the PI planning event. PI risks are potential events or conditions that may have a negative impact on the PI objectives or outcomes. ROAM helps teams address their PI risks by assigning them to one of four states: Resolved (the risk has been eliminated or is no longer relevant); Owned (the risk has been assigned to a person or a team who is responsible for managing it); Accepted (the risk has been acknowledged and its impact has been factored into the plan); Mitigated (the risk has been reduced or its likelihood has been lowered). References: PI Planning, Final Plan Review