The SAFe framework continues to evolve from year to year. What does this next SAFe 5.0 version presented by its authors bring?
If you’re not familiar with SAFe, you can read our article that introduced the framework in its 4.5 version:
SAFe 5.0 – What’s New
As with each version, the SAFe 5.0 canvas has evolved. Here’s how it looks in this new version:
However, this time it presents a new view not previously included in the SAFe canvas:
The framework revises some of its principles to align with market trends.
SAFe 5.0: Measure and Grow
The framework aims to measure the agility of companies and accelerate their growth, leading to improved economic results. Portfolio managers and the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) now have a way to self-assess their progress during this journey:
Two New Skills
This new version of SAFe seems to embrace increasingly strong agile approaches:
The Continuous Learning Culture: Describes a set of values and practices that encourage continuous improvement in individuals or organizations, including knowledge, skills, performances, and innovation. The goal is to cultivate a learning organization committed to improvement and innovation.
The Organizational Agility: Explains how individuals and teams can optimize business processes, develop strategy with clear commitments, and quickly adapt the organization to seize new opportunities.
These aspects align closely with the concept of continuous evolution and innovation, and they have become popular in many companies, even outside of SAFe.
Review of Certain Skills
This more classic part of SAFe brings changes to the framework. However, it should primarily interest the most experienced users, as not all companies fully implement the entire framework.
The Team and Technical Agility: This area has been rewritten and reorganized as shown below:
The Agile Product Delivery: The DevOps and Release on Demand skills have been renamed “Agile Product Delivery” and expanded to include new dimensions:
The Lean Portfolio Management: This area has been rewritten and reorganized as shown below:
The Enterprise Solution Delivery: The Business Solutions and Lean Systems Engineering expertise area has been renamed Enterprise Solution Delivery and expanded to include new dimensions:
The Lean-Agile Leadership: The article on Lean-Agile Leadership has been rewritten and reorganized based on the dimensions presented below:
Enhanced Innovation and User Dimension
SAFe is adapting to new market trends, and “Design Thinking” has become an important focus along with the “user-centric” approach.
SAFe 5.0: Revised Implementation
SAFe 5.0 offers some evolutions to its well-known “Implementation Roadmap” which explains how to implement SAFe in companies. Here’s an overview of the proposed changes:
Conclusion: SAFe 5.0
In conclusion, critics of SAFe might not change their stance and will have additional arguments to claim that SAFe is capitalizing on market trends.
On the other hand, SAFists will likely appreciate these changes, although the updates might not be significant enough to warrant an immediate upgrade to the new version.
Those who wish to renew their annual certification (SPC) and obtain the prestigious certification for version 5.0 will certainly do so. However, opponents of SAFe are unlikely to change their opinion based on this new version.
Useful link about SAFe 5.0: SAFe 5.0 in French
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