Scaled Agile Framework - Need of The Hour

IPASJ International Journal of Information Technology (IIJIT)
Web Site: http://www.ipasj.org/IIJIT/IIJIT.htm

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Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 ISSN 2321-5976
Scaled Agile Framework - Need of the Hour

Deepti Juneja Thakral
Assistant Professor
School of Engineering & Technology,
Apeejay Stya University, Gurugram, India
ABSTRACT
Now a days, we have seen that many organizations have shifted from traditional software development approach to
scaled agile framework, aka SAFe. We can say that SAFe has become the need of the hour. Scaled Agile
Framework is a software development framework for enterprise scaled lean agile development. Through this
approach various organizations have achieved successful delivery goals as well as much more benefits. Here in this
paper we have discussed about whether SAFe has been proved as a boon or a bane.
Keywords: SAFe, Scaled Agile Framework, Agile Software Development, Lean Agile
1. INTRODUCTION
Agile is a software development methodology to develop software incrementally so that development is aligned with
changing business needs. Agile refers to the ability to move quickly and easily. In software development methodology
agile is a software development model being adopted for software development. Slowly and steadily agile is gaining its
importance in market. This is because of its flexible working environment as well as ability to develop quickly. In agile
we follow a mixture of iterative as well as incremental approach. In this we totally depends on the customer perspective
for the software they want to develop. In traditional software development methodologies like Waterfall model, a
project can take several months or years to complete and the customer may not get to see the end product until the
completion of the project. Traditional approaches allocates extensive time periods for gathering requirements, analysis,
design, development as well as in testing before the project is being finally deployed, whereas in Agile projects we
works on sprints or iterations which have shorter time durations (generally it can vary from 2 weeks to 2 months)
during that pre-determined features or mini-projects are being developed as well as delivered. Agile projects can have
many iterations, sometimes even only one iteration as well and in this complete product is being delivered at the end of
final iteration. In this approach customer is meant to be at the highest priority as they have direct involvement in
evaluating that software. The manifesto reads as follows, “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by
doing it and helping others to do it”.
2. RATIONALE FOR AGILE ADOPTION

There are various problems with the traditional approach in software development. Like in traditional waterfall model
approach the problem is that we have to sequentially follow each and every stage. And after completion you are not
allowed to look back at the previous stage, which comes here as the main issues. Similarly, there are many problems
with other approaches as well like if we talk about Linear Sequential approach, here the main problem that lies is
mainly inflexibility (like changes in customer mindset) as well as bugs also sometimes keeps propagating from one
phase to another. Whereas the Agile environment keeps on changing and updating as per the business values and
market needs. Similarly if we look in the Prototype model then here the major fear/problem is with cost and time. Like
if the prototype is being thrown away after being reviewed by the customer then there will be a huge loss of cost as well
as time. In contrast with this, Agile provides customer interactions which plays an important role in this methodology
for improving the quality of software due to which changes are being adapted on the regular basis and thus at least
customer is being satisfied with the model because it is designed as per the user’s needs. In agile, builds are being
gradually created. In front of existing team members or product owners review is being possible.
3. EVOLVING MARKET AND AGILE

Agile technology is making a boom in today’s evolving market .Various case studies have proved it. Further in this
topic we have discussed about the case studies related to companies who have adopted SAFe and are gaining benefits
Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 Page 19

through it. For ex: In a case study of Amdocs they have quoted that “ Amdocs Cuts Project Time by Almost
Half[1]”.The Amdocs organization was earlier working on the traditional approach of software development. Then in
2014 around the organization’s team members which also include managers, executive and leaders began SAFe
certification training, and learning agile methodologies followed by teams. Earlier when Amdocs delivery was based on
some traditional methods, the Amdocs-case-study revealed that it would take a year for the team for only scoping the
requirements with customers. Only after that they can start their next phases (which also takes long phase of around 8
months of design, development and testing). But then they realized that by that time customer will already have some
new plans or new requirements that they needs to be addressed. Hence the organization needed to be much more
flexible as per customers changing minds and needs.
Therefore after evaluating various options for adapting and being scaled to Agile, Amdocs delivery finally decided to
adapt and work on Scaled Agile Framework (SAFE) for so many reasons. After adopting Agile they found that
customers were really happy as well as delighted .They were even giving great feedback about seeing the system in such
early stage. Now they understand that what their key towards success is? Earlier if they took around 1.5 years for
reaching production, now it would be around eight months only because of this new approach and process. As in Agile
changes are most welcome at every stage which is proved to be very useful and beneficial to the organization. They give
demos of the project in every two weeks to two months, instead of four months as a minimum. Hence system
stabilization time is being shortened with quality improvements. Thus in such a way Agile makes a boon for Amdocs
delivery organization.
Another case study is of Nokia Company. The mobile phones market was one of the fastest growing in the late 1990’s,
and the company grew at a phenomenal rate at this stage [2]. During five years, the turnover almost five folded, from
6,5 billion euros in 1996 to 31 billion euros in 2001[]Nokia in 2008 was the largest mobile manufacturer in the world
with the most popular operating system Symbian OS[3].It has around 1500 technical staff and around 150 teams across
three continents. As it was a highly-competitive market with companies like Blackberry and new entrant like Apple.
Looking ahead at further innovation, the company decided to change their working environment and they adopt Agile
methodologies like Scrum + XP across its 1500 technical staff and 150 teams across three continents as well as
stakeholders. For this Radtac was selected as agile coaching, consulting and training partner for Nokia organization. By
2010 almost the entire organization was being evolved to Agile. The results were awesome. The work done at Nokia
was ground-breaking use of Agile at a scale never before achieved [4].After this success Nokia launched its MeeGo OS
which was also very successful. Though it was being used for a very short span of time but it was very much successful.
Hence this is the success story behind Nokia's journey from Symbian to MeeGo and so on.
4. WHAT ACTUALLY SAFe IS?

Behind every Agile case study there is a term “SAFe” which revolves around. But what SAFE does actually means do it
means something related to safety or security, absolutely not. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) helps businesses
address the significant challenges of developing and delivering enterprise-class software and systems in the shortest
sustainable lead time [5]. Scaled Agile Framework (or SAFe) is an agile software development framework consisting of
a knowledge-base of integrated patterns intended for enterprise-scale Lean-Agile development [6]. SAFe synchronizes
three facts which can be termed as collaboration, alignment and delivery [7]. This framework supports smaller
organizations as well as very complex organization which has the need of around thousands of peoples. Basically,
SAFE website provides an interactive feature of 'Big Picture' graphic, which is the kind of user interface for the
knowledge-base. SAFe has nine fundamental features which are as follows
 Apply systems thinking
 Assume variability; preserve options
 Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
 Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
 Visualize and limit work-in-progress, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
 Apply cadence (timing), synchronize with cross-domain planning
 Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
 Decentralize decision-making[8]

Figure 1 Scaled Agile Framework
There are two different methods for Agile SAFe implementation, 3- Level SAFe and 4-Level SAF. In 3- Level SAFe we
have “team”, “program” and “portfolio” whereas in 4-Level SAFe we have all these three things including value
stream.
Now, if we talk from the perspective of team work in SAFe then we found that SAFe is not very much different from
other agile methodologies of software development. In this we have cross-functional as well as self-organizing teams
which consists of around 3-9 developers, product owner and one scrum master. The product owner maintains the team
backlog together with the team, and the scrum master acts as a servant-leader to the team, removing obstacles and
facilitating the improvement of the work processes of the team [9].
Scaled Agile Framework aims to incorporate the practices of agile and lean principles at the enterprise level [10].
5. WHY SAFe SHOULD BE CONSIDERED?

Generally the organizations starts by adopting agile for only one or two teams. Basically they firstly wants to
experiment agile. But after seeing the success that they have gained from agile developing environment, they wants to
replicate this success over whole organization and here the question arises that how to achieve this. SAFe addresses
each of these questions and more by identifying key Lean, Systems Thinking and Agile principles and practices that
scale well and must be held in common across your teams and programs for scaling success[11].
Suppose, there are multiple teams which all are using different styles for implementing and using Agile. In such
scenario you may experience some obstacles, failure as well as delays when different teams are dependent on each
other. For avoiding such cases SAFe framework is required.
SAFe does provide a framework for implementing Lean, Systems Thinking and Agile consistently from portfolio
though team levels.At each level, key roles, responsibilities, practices and metrics are identified that embody Lean
Agile principles, and when applied consistently can help you establish flow and alignment of work top to bottom [12].
SAFe basically focuses on the four building blocks which are alignment, built in quality, transparency, program
implementation.

6. ADVANTAGES OF SAFe
 Many traditional organizations have projects in which delivery goals are months. Basically SAFe emphasizes on
shorter delivery times. Safe focuses on by default delivery period of 10 weeks, and through this it basically
achieves adaptive planning and regular feedbacks.
 While Scaled Agile, the company behind SAFe, does offer numerous training courses to help individuals or
organizations get up to speed on SAFe, at the fundamental level, the use of SAFe is free of charge [13].
 For many organizations, teams are being created for only short span of times that is sometimes for only a single
project, and after which teams are disbanded. But SAFe aims to maintain the teams for longer period of time
to scale as many projects as they can.
 SAFe suits best for the large organizations as it focuses heavily for supporting very large organizations as it
provides both training as well as implementation with the help of training and courses from various SAFe
professionals.
However, despite of all these benefits there are also some flaws with this framework. Critics of SAFe will contend that
the methodology suffers from a few flaws, and depending on the size and needs of your organization, would argue that
other methodologies may better serve you throughout the software development life cycle[14].Some of them are like, to
adapt with SAFe framework you should have to properly certifications and trainings. Many critics argue that SAFe fails
to truly implement Agile principles, but instead gives the illusion of true Lean and Agile principles by layering Agile
on top of a pre-existing organizational hierarchy [15].
7. CHALLENGES OF SAFe
 SAFe is not purely Agile: Many people think that SAFE is not purely Agile. They thinks that it directly goes
against the agile methodology because in individual and interaction process SAFe does not works properly.
 Staffing: It means providing staff or people for completing the work. Staffing is really a very big problem
because finding people for scrum master role in long term process is difficult .It is really difficult to find right
people for product owner role and also the user who will give the feedback for each iteration. In agile there is a
close interaction between customer and team members so finding the right people for this work is really a big
challenge.
8. CONCLUSION
SAFe framework is gaining its popularity in the evolving market and industry. We have found that from the last few
years’ research that SAFe framework is effective as well as suitable for many situations and environment. This paper
mainly focuses on Scaled Agile Framework, why it is needed in the market, its advantages and some of its challenges
as well as drawbacks.
REFERENCES
[1] https://www.scaledagileframework.com/amdocs-case-study/
[2] https://www.radtac.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Nokia-and-Radtac-case-study.pdf
[3] http://n4s.dimecc.com/publication/review-less-and-safe-agile-scaling-approaches-at-nokia/
[4] https://www.sdjug.org/docs/SAFeForTechnologyLeaders-SDJug.pdf
[5] http://www.scaledagileframework.com/what-is-safe/
[6] Hayes, Will; Lapham, Mary Ann; Miller, Suzanne; Wrubel, Eileen; Capell, Peter (2016). Scaling Agile Methods for
Department of Defense Programs. Software Engineering Institute. CMU/SEI-2016-TN-005.
[7] http://www.scaledagileframework.com/safe-lean-agile-principles/
[8] Agile/master_Carlson_Patrik_2017
[9] Assessing the adoption level of scaled agile development: a maturity model for Scaled Agile Framework
[10] https://www.solutionsiq.com/resource/blog-post/5-reasons-to-consider-safe/
[11] https://www.solutionsiq.com/resource/blog-post/5-reasons-to-consider-safe/
[12] https://airbrake.io/blog/sdlc/scaled-agile-framework

[13] https://airbrake.io/blog/sdlc/scaled-agile-framework
[14] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/problem-scaled-agile-safe-mike-macisaac
[15] https://content.intland.com/blog/agile/safe/facing-criticism-is-safe-the-fast-food-of-agile
AUTHOR
Ms. Deepti Juneja Thakral is working as Assistant Professor in computer science department of School
of Engineering & Technology, Apeejay Stya University, Gurugram. She has submitted herPh.D in
Semantic Web. Her academic background spans across M.Tech (CE), M.Phil (Computer) and M.Sc.
She has also qualified GATE. She has 12+ years’ experience of teaching graduate and post graduate
students. She has published numerous research papers in National/International Journals and
participated in many National/ International Conferences.

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IPASJ International Journal of Information Technology (IIJIT)

Web Site: http://www.ipasj.org/IIJIT/IIJIT.htm

Scaled Agile Framework - Need of the Hour

2. RATIONALE FOR AGILE ADOPTION

3. EVOLVING MARKET AND AGILE

Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 Page 19

4. WHAT ACTUALLY SAFe IS?

Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 Page 20

Figure 1 Scaled Agile Framework

5. WHY SAFe SHOULD BE CONSIDERED?

Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 Page 21

Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 Page 22

Volume 7, Issue 2, February 2019 Page 23

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