Leading SAFe Flashcards
What are the responsibilities of the Product Owner (PO)?
- Connect with the Customer
- Contribute to the Vision and Roadmap
- Manage and Prioritize the Team Backlog
- Support the Team in Delivering Value
- Get and Apply Feedback
What are the responsibilities of Product Management (PM)?
- Explore Markets and Users
- Connect with the Customer
- Define Product Strategy, Vision, and Roadmaps
- Manage and Prioritize the ART Backlog
- Deliver Value
What is a story map?
Story maps are a brainstorming technique that enable a team to ideate, plan, and group activities in a workflow or user journey and affinity group the stories into iterations.
Tip: Happens during the Develop (Diverge) part of Designing the Right Solution of the Design Thinking Double Diamond.
Which roles do Product Managers work with to ensure they understand the technical impact of their decisions?
System Architect and RTE
What is the function responsible for defining desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable solutions that meet customer needs?
Product Management
Which skillsets make-up the essential ART leadership team that maintains alignment between product strategy and implementation and guide the ART toward successful outcomes?
Product Management, System Architects, Business Owners, and Release Train Engineer
What describes the future state of a portfolio’s value streams and solutions?
Portfolio Vision
What artifact defines the portfolio’s business model including development value streams, value propositions, solutions, customer served, budgets allocated, and other vital activities and events?
Portfolio Canvas
What system visualizes and facilitates the flow of business epics and enablers from idea through analysis and decision making to implementation?
Portfolio Kanban
LPM and its stakeholders add new items to the Funnel, update priorities, and remove less promising work to maintain a well-refined what?
Portfolio Backlog
What are 3 things the ART planning board show?
Significant dependencies
Demonstrable milestones
Feature deliery sequence
What is a powerful design thinking tool that illustrates the experience of a user engaging with a company’s Value Stream, products, and/or services?
Journey Maps
Which design thinking tool helps teams identify ways to improve the end-to-end user experience?
Journey Maps
What are the steps needed to create a Story Map?
- Define the Feature
- Outline what the starting conditions are
- Determine the individual activities or tasks required to get to the end conditions
- Affinity grouping the Stories into Iterations
What tool could teams use to help understand or breakdown a sequence of steps in order to achieve a high-level user goal?
Story Maps
What is an example of applying cadence-based synchronization in SAFe?
Teams align the start and end dates of their Iterations.
Trains align the start and end dates of their Planning Intervals (PIs).
What are the 5 key points of uncommitted objective?
- Help improve predictability
- Used to identify work that can be variable within the scope of a PI
- Reflect a team’s low confidence in meeting those objectives
- Reflects items with unknown variables, for which a team can plan spikes early in the PI to reduce uncertainty
- Included in the capacity of the PI because teams agree to do their best to deliver them
What provides the capacity and guard band needed to increase the reliability of cadence-based delivery?
Uncommitted Objectives
What is the teams capacity?
Capacity is a team’s time and space available to get work done.
Tip: Velocity helps to understand a team’s capacity by looking back at actual value
delivered in past Iterations
What is Customer Centricity?
A mindset that helps organizations make decisions that are based on a deep understanding of its effect on customers and end-users.
In the world of RISKs, define ROAM.
Resolved - Addressed, no longer a concern
Owned - Someone has taken responsibility
Accepted - Nothing more can be done, and if risk occurs, release may be compromised
Mitigated - Team has plan to adjust as necessary
What are 4 distinct characteristics of an Agile Team?
- Self-organizing, cross-functional entities
- 10 team members or less
- Optimized for communication and delivery of value
- Define, build, test, and deploy increments of value
What are the SAFe 4 Core Values?
- Respect for People
- Relentless Improvement
- Transparency
- Alignment
SAFe Principle #3 states, Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers. According to Daniel H Pink’s book DRiVE, what 3 elements support true motivation for knowledge workers?
- Autonomy - the desire to be self-directed and have control over what they work on, how they do their work, and who they work with
- Mastery - the urge the get better at what we do and improve our personal and team skills
- Purpose - the desire to do something that matters and has meaning
What are the 4 activities in the Continuous Exploration phase of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP)?
- Hypothesize
- Collaborate and Research
- Architect
- Synthesize
https://framework.scaledagile.com/continuous-exploration/
What are the 4 activities in the Continuous Integration phase of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP)?
- Develop
- Build
- Test End-to-end
- Stage
https://framework.scaledagile.com/continuous-integration/
What are the 4 activities in the Continuous Deployment phase of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP)?
- Deploy
- Verify
- Monitor
- Respond
https://framework.scaledagile.com/continuous-deployment/
What are the 4 activities in the Release on Demand phase of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP)?
- Release
- Stabilize and Operate
- Measure
- Learn
https://framework.scaledagile.com/release-on-demand/
What are SAFe’s 7 Competencies for achieving Business Agility?
- Lean-Agile Leadership
- Team and Technical Agility
- Agile Product Delivery
- Enterprise Solution Delivery
- Lean Portfolio Management
- Organizational Agility
- Continuous Learning Culture
Reading from bottom up from the SAFe’s big picture -
https://framework.scaledagile.com/#full
What are the 3 dimensions of the Lean-Agile Leadership Competency?
- Mindset, Values, and Principles - embedding the Lean-Agile way of working in their beliefs, decisions, responses, and actions, leaders model the expected norm throughout the organization.
- Leading by Example - gain earned authority by modeling the desired behaviors for others to follow, inspiring them to incorporate the leader’s example into their development journey.
- Leading Change - lead (rather than support) the transformation by creating the environment, preparing the people, and providing the necessary resources to realize the desired outcomes.
https://framework.scaledagile.com/lean-agile-leadership/
What is the first SAFe principle?
Take an economic view
What are the value statements of the Agile Manifesto?
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
https://agilemanifesto.org/
What analysis tool helps to brainstorm a way to uncover the current situation of your Value Stream, product, or portfolio?
SWOT
What analysis tool helps to brainstorm strategic options to create a better future state?
TOWS
What are the components of Cost of Delay?
Business Value
Time Criticality
Opportunity Enablement / Risk Reduction
Tip: The numerator for WSJF
What is the ‘dual operating system’?
The dual operating system is based on retaining the traditional hierarchy for efficiency and stability while introducing a second operating system around value streams as a way for enterprises to focus on customers, products, innovation, and growth. A second system that has the flexibility that Business Agility demands, this system can organize and reorganize around value without completely disrupting the existing hierarchy.
What are the 5 basic Agile quality practices?
- Shift learning left - reveal problems sooner, take corrective action with minimum impact
- Pairing and peer review - multiple viewpoints enhance work quality and grow knowledge
- Collective ownership and T-shaped skills - reduce bottlenecks and increase flow
- Artifact standards and definition of done - Ensure consistent quality for each work product
- Workflow automation - enable small batches and reduce errors
What method introduces a clear and continuous understanding of the target market, Customers, the problems they are facing, and the jobs to be done?
Design Thinking
What are the skills and behaviors leaders embrace in the dimension of leading by example?
- Insatiable learning - Depicts how leaders engage in the ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge and growth, and they encourage and support the same in others
- Authenticity - Requires leaders to model desired professional and ethical behaviors
- Emotional competence - Describes how leaders identify and manage their emotions and those of others through self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills
- Courage - Is essential for leaders to guide their organizations through the rapidly changing dynamics of the digital age
- Growing others - Encourages leaders to provide the personal, professional, and technical guidance and resources each employee needs to assume increasing levels of responsibility
- Decentralized decision-making - Moves the authority for decisions to where the information is
What happened when Lean Thinking is applied to product development?
It shifts from the traditional batch-and-queue production system to continuous flow with an effective pull by the customer leading to dramatic improvements.
What portfolio-level business objectives provide competitive differentiation and strategic advantage by providing business context for portfolio strategy and decision making?
Strategic Themes
What types of decisions are optimal for Centralized Decision making?
Infrequent
Long-lasting
Significant economies of scale
What types of decisions are optimal for being De-centralized Decision making?
Frequent
Time critical
Requires local information
An Agile Release Train (ART) is a collection of what?
Teams
A Portfolio is a collection of what?
Development Value Streams
What is PI Planning?
Planning Interval (PI) Planning is a cadence-based event that serves as the heartbeat of the Agile Release Train (ART), aligning all teams on the ART to a shared mission and Vision
How long are Planning Intervals (PIs)?
8-12 weeks
What are the benefits of PI Planning?
- Establishing personal communication across all team
members and stakeholders - Aligning development to business goals with the
business context, Vision, and Team/ART PI Objectives - Identifying dependencies and fostering cross-team
and cross-ART collaboration - Providing the opportunity for just the right amount of
architecture and Lean UX guidance - Matching demand to capacity; eliminating excess work
in process (WIP) - Fast decision-making
What is the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP)?
The workflows, activities, and automation needed to guide new functionality from ideation to an on-demand release of value.
What happens at the end of Day 1 of PI Planning at Management Review and Problem Solving?
Adjustments are made based on challenges, risks, and impediments
What happens on at Team Breakout 1 of PI Planning?
- Teams estimate their capacities for each Iteration
- Identify which backlog items they will need to complete in order to deploy the assigned Features
- Creates their draft plans on an Iteration-by-Iteration basis
- Make these plans visible to the whole ART
- Teams identify risks and dependencies\
- Draft their initial team PI Objectives (incl uncommitted objectives)
- Team adds its Features to the ART Planning Board
What are the 5 Lean Thinking principles?
- Precisely specify value by Product
- Identify the Value Stream for each product
- Make value flow without interruptions
- Let the Customer pull value from the producer
- Pursue perfection
Which implementation step following Coach ART Execution on the SAFe Implementation Roadmap?
Launch more ARTs and Value Streams
What are uncommitted objectives?
These are objectives that have many unknowns or low team confidence, these are moved to uncommitted.
Uncommitted objectives are planned work (not “extra” or stretch assignments) so they count when calculating load.
Tip: teams might consider using spikes early in a PI to help address/reduce uncertainty
What happens during Team Breakout 2 of PI Planning?
- Teams continue planning based on their agenda from the previous day, making adjustments as necessary from the Mgmt Review and Problem Solving from Day 1.
- The teams finalize their PI Objectives, and the Business Owners assign business value
Which ART Event is cadence-based event that creates alignment across the ART where Business Owners provide business and customer insights to the teams, Agile Teams develop a plan to leverage technology and deliver capabilities for maximum business value, and Agile teams create and agree with the ART leadership on the PI Objectives they can commit to delivering in the upcoming PI to achieve that business value?
PI Planning
Which ART Event focuses on identifying risks, managing dependencies, tracking progress, and solving problems for the current PI?
Coaches Sync
Which ART Event focuses on manages the scope of the PI, checks progress, adjusts priorities, and gets ready for the following PI?
PO Sync
Which ART Event brings together the Product Owners and Scrum Masters/Team Coaches because they often deal with similar issues and need to work together, and replaces the Coach Sync and PO Sync for a specific iteration to reduce overhead?
ART Sync
Which ART Event provides stakeholders an integrated view of new features for the most recent iteration delivered by ALL the teams on the ART?
System Demo
In Agile, what provides an objective measure of progress and the opportunity to give feedback?
Demos
Which ART Event includes ART leadership, stakeholders, and the Agile Teams prepare for PI Planning where ART leadership maintains the vision and agrees on priorities for the next PI and Agile Teams refine features, assess capacity, and share emerging efforts, ensuring a smooth backlog flow across the ART?
Prepare for PI Planning
Which ART Event is a significant event held at the end of each PI, where the current state of the Solution is demonstrated and evaluated and teams then reflect and identify improvement backlog items via a structured problem-solving workshop?
Inspect & Adapt
According to John Kotter’s Accelerate, what are the eight stages for guiding organizational transformation and what it takes to make it stick?
Create a sense of urgency
Build a guiding coalition
Form a strategic vision
Enlist a volunteer army
Enable action by removing barriers
Generate short-term wins
Sustain acceleration
Institute change
What are the recommended stages for the Portfolio Kanban?
Funnel
Reviewing
Analyzing
Ready
Implementation (sub states of MVP | Persevere)
Done
Which state of the Portfolio kanban is used to intake all significant business and technology ideas for a specific portfolio (These ideas may originate as strategic concerns, arise from Agile Teams or ARTs, or suggestions from customers and partners. These ideas are anticipated to be large enough to exceed the epic threshold Guardrail or perhaps have some other strategic or business model impact.)?
Funnel
Which state of the Portfolio kanban does an Epic Owner sponsor the epic and define its intent, pull the epic into this state, working with relevant stakeholders to refine and further elaborate the Epic Hypothesis Statement?
Reviewing
In which Portfolio kanban state do the epics deserve more rigorous investigation and investment?
(This state typically requires active collaboration among the business owners, enterprise architects, system and solution Architects, product and solution management, agile teams. The following activities typically occur during this state:
Identification and review of solution alternatives
Defining the MVP
Establishing refined cost estimates for the MVP and its full anticipated scope
Creating the Lean Business Case
Small research spikes to demonstrate potential technical and business viability
Initial customer validation
Updating WSJF relative to other epics in this state
Go/No-go decision by LPM based on the Lean Business Case)
Analyzing
*NOTE: typically, there are only a small number of epics in this state, and they are reviewed routinely by LPM
In which Portfolio kanban low-cost wait state are the epics pulled as soon as space is available based on highest WSJF and are periodically reviewed and prioritized by updating the WSJF and other relevant factors?
Ready
In which Portfolio kanban state is the highest WSJF Epic pulled when sufficient capacity from one or more ARTs is available and the epic owner works with the Agile Teams to begin the activities needed to develop the preliminary work and evaluate its business outcome hypothesis?
Implementing - MVP sub phase
*Tip: Work on the MVP continues until the money allocated for the MVP has been spent or the hypothesis can be evaluated. If the value stream runs out of money to implement the MVP and the need for the epic still exists, a new one can be proposed and placed in the Funnel. The original epic moves to Done. Of course, LPM can adapt this rule (and any others) to meet the needs of their organization.
In what state of the Portolio kanban does the epic move to when the hypothesis is proven true and teams will continue to implement additional features and capabilities?
Implementing - Persevere sub state
*Tip: ARTs manage the additional investment via ongoing feature prioritization in the ART Backlog in various value streams. Eventually, the epic will be ‘done enough’ such that ongoing WSJF will prioritize new capabilities and features from other sources as a higher priority. Epic Owners remain available to assist ARTs and Solution Trains responsible for implementation.
In which Portfolio kanban state does an epic move when sufficient knowledge or value is achieved or it is no longer a portfolio concern?
Done
*Tip: Completing the fully envisioned scope from the Lean business case is not a criterion. Instead, the epic is Done if: (1) It is ejected from the portfolio Kanban by LPM in any of the earlier states (2) The hypothesis is proven, and LPM has determined that additional portfolio governance is no longer required
If the hypothesis is proven, work on the epic may continue by various ARTs responsible for its implementation. The Epic Owner may need to provide ongoing guidance and follow-up. Since the epic is no longer a portfolio concern, leading indicators, value stream KPIs, and Guardrails are used to keep LPM informed of progress.
What are 4 Design Thinking tools we learned about?
Personas
Journey Maps
Empathy Maps
Story Maps
What are PI Objectives?
Summary statements of the business and technical goals that teams and trains intend to achieve in the upcoming PI and are either committed or uncommitted
*Tip: Business Owners assign business value to the objectives to empower teams to make decisions around work
What are Lean Budget Guardrails?
Lean Budget Guardrails describe the policies and practices for budgeting, spending, and governance for a specific portfolio.
What are the 4 Lean Budget Guardrails?
- Guiding investments by horizon
- Applying capacity allocation to optimize value and solution integrity
- Approving significant initiatives
- Continuous Business Owner engagement
Which 2 lean budget guardrails are quantitative?
Guiding investments by horizon
Applying capacity allocation to optimize value and solution integrity
Which 2 lean budget guardrails are qualitative?
Approving significant initiatives
Continuous Business Owner engagement
Who manages the Portfolio kanban?
Lean Portfolio Management
What is Business Agility?
The ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative, digitally-enabled business solutions.
What is the primary goal of SAFe to achieve?
Business Agility
What SAFe approach leverages the stability and resources of the existing organizational hierarchy while implementing a value stream network that leverages the entrepreneurial drive still present in every organization?
the dual operating system
What is the tool that best describes when the audience expresses numerically their assurance in a plan?
Vote of Confidence (aka “Fist of Five”)
What are the 4 types of team topologies?
Stream-aligned team - organized around the flow of work and can deliver value directly to the customer or end user.
Complicated subsystem - organized around specific subsystems requiring deep specialist skills and expertise.
Platform - organized around developing and supporting platforms that provide services to other teams.
Enabling - organized to assist other groups with specialized capabilities and help them become proficient in new technologies.
Which SAFe Lean-Agile Principle emphasizes “deliver early and often”?
Take an economic view
What are the 10 Lean-Agile Principles?
- Take an economic view
- Apply systems thinking
- Assume variability; preserve options
- Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
- Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
- Make value flow without interruptions
- Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning
- Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge-workers
- Decentralize decision-making
- Organize around value
