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- Welcome to 7.4 Focus on
Essential SAFe practices.

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In the last lesson, we talked about

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the top of the LPM pyramid,
Strategy and Investment Funding.

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And we talked about how we connect

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the portfolio to enterprise strategy.

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We spent a fair amount of time on

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implementing lean agile budgeting and

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portfolio flow because we needed to show

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how it is that we can connect our work,

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our work in the trenches, the work that

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the developers and testers do everyday

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to the enterprise strategy
how we can do that

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while minimizing cost
accounting and friction

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and overhead associated with traditional

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project cost and establishing
the flow of value.

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Now we're going to move to the second

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element on the pyramid,
Agile Program Guidance.

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And here we're going to
describe three different things.

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We're going to describe how we can focus

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on essential SAFe practices,
support the agile PMO

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and comedial practices
and sustain and improve.

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So LPM has a function here,
it's not the traditional

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program management function, necessarily,

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we may have some aspects
of that, but they have

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an important function
in providing the context

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the business organization
technical and financial

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context were by the arts
can successfully thrive

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and deliver value.

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The first of these is to focus
on essential SAFe practices.

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And the 10 essential SAFe practices

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have come from experience.

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As I mentioned earlier, very early on

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I showed the big picture and I said,

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Ah, we agree, there's
a lot of stuff there.

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Building complex systems
requires more than

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one thought, more than a
couple different thoughts.

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More than just two or three activities.

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But essential SAFe is the simplest thing

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that can possibly work, it's the

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simplest SAFe you can
deploy to support 100

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or a couple of hundred
people building a value

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for solutions of a type.

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And the 10 essential elements that we've

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discovered by going back through various

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retrospectives and then
also doing assessments

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and reassessing programs
in flight, are these.

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Now we've covered most of them so I don't

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need to go into them in
depth here, and I won't.

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But I do want to describe them briefly.

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Number 1 it is essential
that we do understand

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lean-agile principles, can't ignore that.

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I said earlier, that
that's probably the most

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important lesson I believe it today.

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I think everyday it reinforces the fact

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that if we get that right we're good.

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We need real agile teams and trains.

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What's that mean, Dean, you've already

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described teams and trains.

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Yeah, but I mean real
agile teams and trains.

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Let me give you an example,

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I ran into a scrum team
of requirements analysts.

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It's not funny, it's
not an agile team, okay,

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but it was somebody's interpretation of

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what it means to be agile and be scrum.

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I worked in an organization
that's a highly

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technical organization,
very component based

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because they're building
systems built on components.

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You can't wave your hand
and smack 'em and say

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don't be component based, well you tell me

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what that thing is,
that's got software in it

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and there's software over
there in this other thing,

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so yeah, it's true that
value flows through

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those things but we have
to make this component

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work or nothing is going to happen.

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And we looked at their
teams and didn't think

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that the flow was right, didn't seem like

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they were getting the right through put.

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So we asked further questions, and we said

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but what's that team,
tell me about that team.

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Well, that's a team of developers, wow

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I think I'm hearing the same thing again.

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What's that other team?

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Well that team tests their stuff.

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Wow, those are not cross functional teams.

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So right there, at the
get go, it's like, Hmm

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I don't think we've got
this organized right

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and there saying, well,
we've got expertise

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in test and expertise in development

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well let's put the people
with expertise in test

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and expertise in development
in the same team.

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Well that might make a larger team.

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Yeah, it might, maybe the team's too big

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we'll split it some other way.

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But we're not going to split
it on functional lines.

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Real agile teams and real
agile trains are necessary.

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I talked at length about
cadence and synchronization.

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I talked about PI planning, not optional.

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I talked about DevOps and releasability

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and now I've wrapped that
back into the larger story

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of basic lean startup mode and how it is

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we need to take a small batch and get it

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all the way through the system as quickly

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as possible, you need to do that.

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Now, it doesn't mean that you have

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to have completely functional DevOps

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and a full CV pipeline tomorrow.

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It just means that you're
going to start working on it.

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And it means that
whatever isn't working now

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if you're really cycle is too slow,

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if it takes six weeks,
if you can imagine that,

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to do a regression test
on a big, fat application

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set, I've seen that, if
it takes six weeks, okay.

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What's it take to get it to six days.

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What's it take to get it to six hours.

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Because you certainly
don't have any DevOps

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capability until you automate
much of that testing.

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I mentioned ahead of
time that the system demo

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wasn't optional, it isn't.

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Because if you can't demo the
system, it's not sprinting.

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And I've gone in to
organizations that were doing

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pretty well with SAFe that didn't have

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effective system demo,
has some compromised

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teams and trains and lots
of ability to improve

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just by going back to first principles.

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And that's what essential SAFe is about,

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the first principles.

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Inspect and adapt, not optional.

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We do it every 10 to 12 weeks.

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We learn something every time.

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We've been working most
recently on decision making.

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I think we're about
there, I think we now have

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a set of guidelines where a team of a type

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or an organization of
a type knows that they

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can make these types of decisions but

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certain other decisions
need to be centralized.

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Well, we have to create the borders

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and the boundaries for that.

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So the people really know how to behave.

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The IP iteration, we
talked amongst ourselves.

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Maybe we have nine things,
maybe it isn't essential.

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I think it is, cause
if you don't have time

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for planning you won't take it.

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If you don't have time for inspect

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and adapt you won't take it.

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If you don't have time
for ongoing training

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you won't take the ongoing training.

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Architectural runway, talked about that.

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Haven't yet talked about this,

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so trust me we absolutely will.

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Those are the 10 essential elements.

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Now, when you do that, well,
you've already learned them.

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You've studied them somewhat.

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You can read about each of
these things on the web.

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But you can also go to the site,

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go to
scaledagileframework.com/essential-safe

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and you can download an assessment deck

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and that consists of a couple things.

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It consists of a set of power point slides

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you can use to talk about the essentials.

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And a way to kind of
put checks by the things

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that, the symptoms, the
problems that you're having.

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And then you build that
out, and you build your own

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print out chart of things to work on.

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This team has some things
to work on in this area.

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So this is a powerful tool that will help

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you understand how you're
implementation is going.

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And also how to get started.

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So it isn't just a matter
of, gosh, I'm running now

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I need these essentials,
we're going to need

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to do these things well
even for the first arc.

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So that's what essential SAFe is.

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It's a powerful tool in your toolkit.

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It's available online,
it's available for free.

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Feel free to use it, download the toolkit.

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Do the assessment and pick
what you think you need

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to work on next to
improve your through put.