Its important that all solution teams and stakeholders are able to visualise the work to be completed, where they are and if there are any impediments in the process. Trust and honesty is paramount in this so teams have core values such as admitting their mistakes without apportioning blame and learn from them.

Ensuring the build software is visible to others and includes metrics to demonstrate the progress and control as well as flow is important, for example Program, Kanban boards and system demos.

In SAFe quality is never compromised and is built into the product, this is a pre-requisite step. All aspects of the build should ensure quality including the techniques used to build it, if there is any re-work of code or functionality this will result in the flow being interupted hence business value will be compromised.

Integration is also an objective for quality, using techniques such as test driven development (tdd) or behavourial driven development (bdd) and automated testing. Continuous integration is also an important factor, infact integrating code early and frequently as possible is a must.

Program execution is about delivering value to the solution at all levels of SAFe, and in doing so encompasses all the other values such as Transparency, Built in Quality and alignment. The objective for program execution is to have not only value but stability and there should be no bottlenecks or impediments.

The work done by the team should be aligned at every level of SAFe, at the highest level the business strategy is aligned to the portfolio. The Program increment (PI) planning objectives and iteration goals align the portfolio to the program level. The PI objectves align the rest of the SAFe team to the overall business strategy and how we going to get there. Also in SAFe cadence and synchronisation is used to ensure aignment between teams.

For alignment to work the vision and business strategy and high level objectives are understood by all, this is key to SAFe.

This competency addresses the mindset for leadership for executives and managers with the need to lead the transformation and driving the following concepts to the organisation:

1. Lean Core competencies
2. Agile Manifesto
3. Agile principles
4. House of Lean
5. SAFe principles

This is based on 2 foundations, the first is the team agility this is based on the SAFe principles and values; the second is technical agility which focuses on the system releases and the quality of the product. For team agility the following agile principle is adopted:

 Agile Principle #5

	"..Build projects around motivated individuals.  
	Give them the environment and support they need,
	and trust them to get the job done.."
				

The focus is on self organised, collaborative approach to agility adhering to the Agile concept of motivated individuals and trust them to get the job done. Team agililty focuses on the Built in Quality core values, so focus on good design, good architectural approach using technical concepts such as Continuous Integration, Extreme Programming and code quality reviews.

DevOps from a SAFe perspective is part of the culture to provide shared responsibility and accountability using a set of principles that are geared towards automation of coding, testing and release cycles. One of the main practices are Continuous Integration which is an Extreme Programming concept.

DevOps also incorporate Continuous Integration and Delivery, where the pipeline is scoped towards release on Demand. Its here the concept of Agile Release trains start during Continuous Exploration, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery and features as the Delivery pipeline.

This core competency helps us to conceptualise the Agile Release Train (ART), this is the whole teams exploring, building and deploying the business value as a flow.

When we talk about business Solutions we are focused around multiple Agile Release Trains (ART), and managing the build of small components, validating the hypothesis and then building out the features. Co-ordination of the various ARTs to ensure the integration of those components in to the business.

Compliance is also a key feature ensuring there is some governance to validate the business value, processes in the delivery.

This is the alignment of your enterprise strategy to your organisation (or portfolio). This encompasses three main pillars Strategy, Lean Governance and Agile Portfolio Operations. Portfolio canvas is introduced and The concept of identifying value streams that bring benefit to the customer are modelled here, and lean budgets to establish the flow at portfolio level which will resonate lower down the models.

Value

sits on the roof of the organisation it delivers the maximum customer value in the shortest sustainable lead time and provide the highest quality. A SAFe organisation will embrace customer value in delivering its services or products and sees its customer as the main priority.

Respect for people and culture

SAFe recognises that its the culture and the people that are the most important factors in an organisation and particular the respect towards the workers or people. Trust is a strong driver for this, so trust the people on what they do and how they do it and without blame. Culture change is matured within the organisation where SAFe core values and principles will sit.

Flow

This can be described as "... the flow of customer Value and benefits" and the focus is in the Value stream. The flow is continously optimised to drive the maximum benefit and remove any impediments or blocker that my hinder the sustainability of flow. Quality within the flow should never be compromised and should be optimised using WIP limits, reducing batch sizes and queue lengths as well as eliminating delays in the process.

Innovation

This pillar focuses the organisation to use innovative techniques to stay ahead of the market to push products to the right limit. By adopting an innovative mindset will allow organisations to be ahead of the competition. Organisations are encouraged to use mentors or coaches to help support these changes and drive the creativity needed. Innovation should encourage workers to go in to the workplace to see how things are being done in order to understand what needs to be innovated.

Relentless Improvement

Pillar 4 is about adapting to the environment in pursuit of improvement in both the organisation and development. To improve relentlessly requires a depth of retrospection and reflection on most activities. Reflection involves honest and admit mistakes made without apportioning blame and a good level of collaborative problem solving skills.

Leadership

The foundation phase for the House of Lean underpins all the pillars for Leadership. Leadership is embraced from all parts of the organisation and are collective in there approach of the lean-agile mindset. Leaders are expected to promote lean-agile approach to everything they work on or do. There are two main principles that lock into Leadership - Decentralise decision making and Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers.

Take Economic View

SAFe encourages to take an economic view on decision making, by taking this approach greater value can be attained from the delivery. Value is delivered in the form a value streams and is delivered incrementally, with an 'Deliver early and often' approach. With incremental delivery fast feedback loops are incorporated so smaller sets of delivery have larger value than larger chunks.

Apply System Thinking

SAFe acknowledges the importance of system thinking in terms of architecture and design, a solid foundation of the systems working should exist to get into the mindset as to what has been built. This focus will allow the end to end understanding of the system and the expertise to optimise the value stream and reduce waste or delays in the process. Each component of the architecture needs to be understood in order to achieve this.

Assume variablilty; preserve options

Both analysis and design approach must be flexible from the offset, this is due to the emerging detail that comes transparent as the journey unfolds and the learning increases.

By creating options on the design process allows alternatives on approach as more is understood on the requirements or challenges. Each option or branch will have its own economic benefit but it allows an organisation to change if it needs to based on further understanding.

Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles

Fast feedback is a pre-requisite in most agile frameworks, this allows better decision making as the solution evolves, by having integration points within the feedback mechanisms, learning cycles can then be incorporated to make the right choices. This approach reduces the risks and presents contigency that the development is on track and gives the organisation the maximum business value.

Base milestones on objective evaluations of working systems

Waterfall is based on phase gate milestones, this is where the analysis, design and build is tested before a demo is given to the users. SAFe takes a view that if we take a phase gate approach we compromise the value stream achieving its goal and delivering the right benefit.

By adding integration points with system demos allows a more economic benefit to be realised early and the right approach taken at the earliest point. The benefit of integration points on working systems facilitate learning towards optimal solutions.

Visualise and Limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths

This relates to Kanban and kanban metrics by forcing a pull system in the Kanban by setting work In progress limits (WIP) and applying Little'law we can do three of the following things:

1. Visualise the workflow
2. Limit work in Progress (WIP)
3. Reduce batch sizes
4. Manage Queue lengths

Apply cadence, synchronise with cross-domain planning

Cadence provides events in SAFe as a rhythmic pattern, a steady heartbeat of the process, such events are like ceremonies or meeting that become predictable as nature. By applying cadence allows planning and predictability thus reducing variance and allows integration points for inspection and transparency.

Synchronisation of events ensures that teams work in alignment with each other so that multiple events occur at the same time and aligns the business to the delivery. Both cadence and Synchronisation are working alongside each other help in shared activity of predictability. Synchronising with cross-domain planning is associated with PI planning.

Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers

This principle focuses on giving more responsibility or autonomy to workers to make decisions without having to escalate them to higher levels and unlocks quality and productivity. Knowledge workers are deemed to be doing the work and should have the ability to make decisions and take responsibility on the approach. SAFe embraces and promotes the platform for Mutual Influence.

Decentralise decision-making

Lean thinking empowers decentralising decision making so that right people can make the right decision at the right time and not become a bottleneck to the flow. Delivering value to the shortest sustainable lead time requires the flow to be continuous waiting on decisions will only lead to waste or delays. The decision making process is broken down to empower teams to make strategic decisions and be responsible.