SAFe® Consulting

SAFe®
CONSULTING
PRACTICE

Success in scaling agile is less about a framework and more about the organizational change you need in order to implement within your company. Therefore, leading SAFe alone will not set you up for enterprise-wide agile success.

CyberBahn has developed a SAFe consulting practice, where we can bring proven strategies and patterns for navigating agile transformation within your enterprise with the aid of SAFe. We can help you:

  • Identify the building blocks for agile at scale within your organization
  • Understand the impact agile practices have on your organization's culture
  • Identify which traditional management practices do not map well to an agile organization and learn alternative techniques to modernize those
  • Identify organizational change patterns and understand the role of metrics in your agile transformation
  • Create a change roadmap for agile transformation
STEP 1
  • Introduction to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
  • Overview of lean software development and product development flow
  • Application of agile development in the enterprise context
  • Experiential walkthrough of scrum and Extreme Programming (XP)
STEP 2
  • Identification, implementation, and execution of agile release trains
  • Agile portfolio management pattern
  • Agile architecture principles, patterns, and roles
  • Scaling agile-savvy leaders
STEP 3
  • Finding a path: an end state vs. a change journey
  • Necessary building blocks in creating an agile transformation
  • Techniques for navigating enterprise agility
  • Establishing your change program
ASSESSMENTS & IMPLEMENTATION SERVICE

CyberBahn SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs) take a top down approach to executing SAFe in a large organization by identifying and aligning a team of executives, stakeholders and organizational architects.

Our SPCs will assess your organization's Agile maturity as well as your SAFe adoption maturity before your transformation begins. This team will craft an adoption strategy and a transformation backlog which will include training all levels of your organization, coaching and mentoring teams and executives, as well as aligning your tool to the SAFe framework. Implementation consulting at the portfolio level continues throughout your transformation and ensures a smooth execution of the backlog. You can also take advantage of our SAFe Quickstart program, where 1-2 of or SPCs will take an intense 5-day assessment of your organization towards scaled agile transformation. This is the fastest way to get product, service, or application value streams delivering the benefits of agile at scale.

EXECUTIVE SAFe TRAINING

Our SAFe Executive Agile Overview training is an interactive overview of Scrum and SAFe, along with best practices, tools, and challenges associated with the adoption of both frameworks. It addresses organizational impact, distributed teams, agile leadership, and techniques and metrics for agile transformations, at a level appropriate for executives and managers. This workshop is designed to help your organization's leadership team understand how Agile and SAFe principles and practices benefit the entire organization. Concurrently, it aids the participants in understanding the "rules of engagement" that agile asks them to follow for organizational success.

CyberBahn is flexible with all its training programs and the specific agenda can be devised through direct collaboration with each client. Some of the most successful executive SAFe training programs we have had success with include, but are not limited to these.

SAFe PROGRAM CONSULTANT 5 (SPC)

CyberBahn SPCs do the heavy lifting necessary to help effect organizational change, train managers and others in the principles and practices, initiate release trains, and provide other important services to enable success. Although CyberBahn provides our own SPCs onsite for your transformation, you may choose to have us train additional internal change agents to be SPCs to supplement your transformation team at the top level.

SAFe PROGRAM PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

In this two-day program, attendees will gain the knowledge necessary to organize around value for optimal business results, implement lean-agile program portfolio management, governance and budgeting. You will also learn how to use and implement the portfolio Kanban system to accelerate value flow to the programs.

LEADING SAFe 5 / SAFe AGILIST (SA)

CyberBahn can train your executives, managers and leaders as SAFe Agilists (SA). The responsibility for adoption and success lies with the enterprise's existing managers, leaders and executives. Such a responsibility cannot be wholly delegated to the agile advocates, development teams, or outside consultants; the leaders themselves must own the mission. To achieve this, our leaders must be trained in these new and innovative ways of thinking and operating. Executives, managers, consultants, and agile change agents responsible for leading a lean and agile change initiative in a large software enterprise are all audience of this much acclaimed course.

SAFe FOR TEAMS 5

Our two-day SAFe ScrumXP for Teams course goes well beyond Scrum. It teaches lean thinking tools, roles, processes, and the software engineering practices necessary to achieve the code quality you need to scale scrum to your enterprise business context. The course is intended for new teams in an enterprise agile adoption program or can be used to re-baseline existing scrum teams as required for scaling.

SAFe PRODUCT MANAGER / PRODUCT OWNER TRAINING

This course includes a SAFe® Overview, Product Manager/ Product Owner training, and an optional SAFe PM/PO certification exam. In this two day interactive workshop, we begin with a brief introduction to SAFe principles and a guided tour of the Scaled Agile Framework®. This is an excellent course who actually own the product towards the customers and market and must be an integral part of your scaled agile organization.

ENTERPRISE COACHING

CyberBahn has a very talented pool of SPCs who can work with you throughout your entire transformation and beyond, as an extended part of your team. If you need an expert for a few weeks or for an extended period of time, we have the right talent you need. Once the enterprise has a critical mass of lean thinkers in house, and a few agile release trains started rolling, a variety of additional consulting activities may be applicable and beneficial. These can include:

  • Coaching the teams on the train to enhance scrum and agile skills and prowess
  • Coaching and mentoring Scrum Masters, Product Owners and System Teams
  • Conducting agile architecture workshops
  • Facilitating Release Train readiness and backlog grooming
  • Facilitating portfolio planning workshops
  • Facilitating Inspect and Adapt workshops
  • Implementing relevant metrics
  • Mentoring other program stakeholders
  • Assisting with Continuous Delivery practices
  • Training in Test-Driven Development, Acceptance Test Driven Development and other XP-inspired practices