Everything is a priority
How the QBR decides per Epic on evidence, persevere, pivot or stop, so that something is actually stopped and capacity is released.
Scaled agile, without business as usual underneath
How to save SAFe
Many organisations implement SAFe and change nothing underneath. The events land in the calendar and the roles get new names, while business as usual carries on: the steering committee becomes the QBR, the PMO becomes the VMO, the project becomes an Epic. Only the vocabulary changes, and the results stay the same.
The map below is a scaled agile system that works on three levels. Click any of its 25 parts to see what it is for, what it turns into when it is mapped onto business as usual, how you notice, and how to make it work.
Decisions are taken as late as responsibly possible, at the lowest level where the best information is.
No need for the whole map first
Start with your problem
Pick the symptom you recognise. Each one leads to the part of the system where it is usually fixed, and to a related part worth reading next.
Reviews are status meetings
What a System Demo is for: the integrated increment, working, in front of Business Owners, with feedback that changes the backlog the same week.
Teams wait for decisions
How to give every feedback loop an owner and the decision it feeds, so decisions are taken at the lowest level where the best information is.
Every block, picture, level title and dashed line is clickable. On a phone, scroll the map sideways or use the list below.
One pattern on every level
Five events, three levels
Every level runs the same five events. Together they scale Scrum's pillars of transparency, inspection and adaptation from the team to the portfolio.
Refine
Make the next work decidable, just in time.
Plan
Align on goals and commit to valuable increments. Plans stay adjustable.
Sync
Make progress visible, surface exceptions early, correct course.
Review
Inspect the outcome against the goals, on evidence.
Retrospect
Inspect the way of working and adapt it.
About
Why this site exists
SAFe gives an organisation a vocabulary and a calendar. Whether it works depends on what happens to governance, funding, decision rights and measurement. This site is written by Martijn Oost of Beyond Agile, after more than twenty-five years of Lean and agile work, including scaled transformations with more than a hundred teams.
Since 2015 I have worked in organisations that scale agile in some form: often SAFe, sometimes the Spotify model, or a mix of the two, SpotiSAFe. Many of them I found in disarray, despite a transformation that had started under expensive large consultancy firms. What I learned over those years about getting a transformation back on the road is what led to this site.