Building, Operating, and Scaling AI-Enabled Solutions with SAFe
SAFe Enterprises often encounter challenges integrating AI technology into their production solutions. Early adopters of AI have found ways to address the common barriers to building, operating, and scaling AI-enabled products.
When:
November 15, 2023, 10:00 am – November 15, 2023, 11:00 am MST
Where:
Zoom
Who:
Agile Coach, Product Manager, Product Owner, Program or Project Manager, Release Train Engineer, Scrum Master
This webinar will examine the impacts of AI solution development on people, processes, and technology, as well as the commitments SAFe organizations should be prepared to make for creating desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable AI solutions.
• Identify the new roles needed in Agile teams and ARTs, and the upskilling needed across all SAFe roles.
• Understand the new processes that must be added to the product development lifecyle to support AI solutions.
• Explore the new classes of tools that form the architectural runway needed to support AI development.
Speakers
Marc Rix
Methodologist & SAFe Fellow at Scaled Agile, Inc.
Harry Koehnemann
Methodologist & SAFe Fellow at Scaled Agile, Inc.
Dr. Wiselin Mathuram
SPCT, Chief Transformation Officer at International Business Consultants, LLC
Jeff Shupack
SAFe Fellow, President of Advisory Practice at Project & Team, Inc.
SAFe 6.0 featured new guidance providing a basic introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how enterprises can improve their AI adoption using patterns in the Framework.
When:
November 8, 2023, 10:00 am – November 8, 2023, 11:00 am MST
Where:
Zoom
Who:
Agile Coach, Product Owner, Program or Project Manager, Release Train Engineer, Scrum Master
SAFe 6.0 featured new guidance providing a basic introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how enterprises can improve their AI adoption using patterns in the Framework. With the recent explosion of Chat GPT and Generative AI, new opportunities and challenges have emerged for organizations wanting to embrace this rapidly evolving technology. This webinar will examine the current state of AI and how SAFe is also evolving to provide new guidance for adopting AI safely and effectively.
• Understand how Chat GPT and the explosion of Generative AI has launched a new technological revolution.
• Explore the three new dimensions of AI guidance that will be added to the Framework in the weeks ahead.
• Learn about the insights gained from recent research on AI adoption by SAFe enterprises.
Speakers
Dr. Steven Mayner
VP Framework, Methodologist & SAFe Fellow at Scaled Agile, Inc.
To survive in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organisations must respond to market changes and expedite delivery cycles without compromising quality. However, implementing an Agile approach across all levels of the organisation to accelerate flow can be challenging within a complex enterprise. How can you achieve visibility? And how do you measure success?
The latest iteration of SAFe, version 6.0, highlights SAFe principle #6 – Make Value Flow Without Interruptions and the eight “flow accelerators” as the means to accelerate value flow across all enterprise levels. At this upcoming fireside chat, Mik Kersten, CTO of Planview, will discuss this principle’s practical applications to accelerate flow at all levels.
The event will consist of 45 minutes of panelist content, followed by 30 minutes discussion and Q&A.
Applying OKRs in SAFe® to Create Clear Goals and Measure Outcomes
Join Amit Kaulagekar and Rohini Sharma, Industry Lead monday.com online session to help you deconstruct the concepts and provide practical application to bring it from concept to execution.
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a collaborative framework for establishing clear goals and measurable outcomes. When used within SAFe, OKRs can help to support the Core Values of transparency and alignment between the Enterprise and Portfolio strategy and the work of the Agile Release Trains and Agile Teams to deliver on this strategy. Additionally, OKRs can be applied to measure organizational improvement activities, including the desired outcomes for the SAFe transformation. Join Amit Kaulagekar and Rohini Sharma, Industry Lead monday.com online session to help you deconstruct the concepts and provide practical application to bring it from concept to execution.
Discover SAFe® 6.0 – The Next Evolution with Dean Leffingwell
Here at Scaled Agile, we were thrilled to announce the launch of SAFe® 6.0 and SAFe Studio this month. These new updates will deepen SAFe’s impact, help you build resiliency and reshape the way you approach transformation. On 30 March, Dean Leffingwell is joining us for a deep dive into what these changes mean for you in the APAC region.
When:
March 30, 2023, 11:12 am – March 30, 2023, 11:25 am
The Scaled Agile APAC team is thrilled to host our Co-founder and Cheif Methodologist, Dean Leffingwell, to share his insights about SAFe 6.0. Learn directly from Dean about how these updates enable you to work differently and build the future.
11:30 am AEDT 6:00am IST 8:30am SGT 8:30am CST 9:30am JST
Recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on Lean-Agile best practices, Dean Leffingwell is an entrepreneur and software development methodologist best known for creating SAFe®, the world’s most widely used framework for business agility.
His best-selling books, Agile Software Requirements, Scaling Software Agility, and SAFe® Distilled, form much of the basis of modern thinking on Lean-Agile practices and principles. Founder of several successful startups, including Requisite, Inc. (acquired by Rational), Mr. Leffingwell also served as Chief Methodologist to Rally Software, and prior to that, as Sr. Vice President at Rational Software (now part of IBM). He currently serves as Chief Methodologist to Scaled Agile, Inc., which he co-founded in 2011.
“SAFe was the right fit because of the dynamics and goals at EdgeVerve. It helps bring the alignment and cultural change needed to deliver faster results in an organization with many dependencies across products.”
—Dr. Ronen Barnahor, Head of Agile Business Transformation, EdgeVerve Systems
Challenge:
With releases every 6-18 months, the company set a goal of further improving time-to-market, quality, flexibility, and predictability.
Industry:
Information Technology
Results:
Release time improved by 50 – 66%
Planning every 10 weeks sharpens predictability
Feature cycle time went down by 50 percent
The cost per feature point dropped by eight percent from one PI to the next
Reduction in escaped defects and increased customer satisfaction
Best Practices:
Managers first – By beginning training with managers, EdgeVerve gained essential buy-in that helped influence the C-level and team level
Merging Testing and Engineering – Bringing these groups together reduced what were distinct silos
Common cadence – EdgeVerve kept everyone on a common cadence, even before bringing all teams into the Framework
Hybrid model of implementation – ARTs and managers of non-ARTs aligned on the same cadence and planning activities
Introduction
Banks across 94 countries, serving 848 million consumers, rely on Finacle, an industry-leading universal banking suite from EdgeVerve Systems Ltd. A wholly-owned subsidiary of the global IT company, Infosys, EdgeVerve develops software products that enable businesses across multiple industries to innovate, accelerate growth, and have deeper connections with stakeholders. Gartner and Forrester consistently name EdgeVerve at the top of their rankings for banking platforms.
In 2015, the company set an aggressive goal of improving time-to-market, quality, flexibility, and predictability.
SAFe: a framework for faster results
For guidance, the management brought on Dr. Ronen Barnahor, now Head of Agile Business Transformation. Barnahor recommended the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) to help instigate real change, quickly.
“Our mission is to adopt a Lean and Agile mindset and practices, and become a learning organization focused on continuous improvement to provide better value to our customers,” Barnahor says. “SAFe was the right fit because of the dynamics and goals at EdgeVerve. It helps bring the alignment and cultural change needed to deliver faster results in an organization with many dependencies across products.”
Prior to adopting SAFe, the teams at EdgeVerve were working in cadence, however, their approach wasn’t effective in meeting new organizational goals.
Building a coalition from the ground up
To bolster internal buy-in, EdgeVerve appointed Jasdeep Singh Kaler, an AVP and 20-year veteran of the company, to help Barnahor lead the effort. Through a contest, the transformation earned the name “Mach 1”—a nod to the importance of speed.
In alignment with SAFe, EdgeVerve began with training, choosing first to focus specifically on managers. VPs and directors, and about 30 leads across all functional areas attended two days of Leading SAFe®. The SAFe training created a buzz about the agile transformation and gave the C-level confidence that moving to SAFe was accepted by internal leaders. By the end of the class, participants signaled they were ready to move forward with SAFe, with confidence scores of 4 and 5.
With positive feedback from leaders, C-level executives attended a one-day management workshop that included principles from Leading SAFe. There, they set implementation goals and approved the new direction. Knowing they would begin with the Finacle banking solution, they identified dependencies, defined all Value Streams and established who would join in the first two Agile Release Trains (ARTs).
“This was a crucial meeting with leads from product strategy, delivery, architecture, and testing, to help them embrace the concepts of the Value Stream and the ART, optimize the whole process, gain a systems view, decentralize decisions, and more,” Barnahor says.
Quick Wins
In April 2016, EdgeVerve kicked off the first Program Increment (PI) using SAFe with a 2-day planning meeting in Bangalore, India. The event brought together 60 individuals from multiple locations across India. The CTO attended, sending a message about the importance of the change for EdgeVerve.
In subsequent ART launches and PI planning events, the heads of engineering, product strategy, product management and other senior leaders participated with great commitment—bolstering the adoption at a grassroots level.
The event itself excited and motivated team members: “We had fun as a team in PI planning and that enabled us to do better work,” says one team member.
Hybrid implementation model—ARTs + Non-ARTs
As the company launched two ARTs, it did so with just two coaches. For that reason, EdgeVerve continued running non-SAFe teams on the same cadence—in what it calls a “hybrid model.”
“We didn’t have the coaching capacity to structure everyone into SAFe, but they all aligned on the same cadence with a centralized backlog,” Barnahor explains.
While EdgeVerve began implementing SAFe, managers of other products outside of ARTs were trained concurrently in Program-level activities. Under the hybrid approach, all product teams (ARTs and non-ARTs) aligned in several ways:
The same cadence (sprints and PI)
Working in IBM Rational Team Concert
Pre-planning + PI Planning (For non-ARTs, only managers joined in PI planning)
Execution (For non-ARTs, there was no coaching. Leads managed the work as previously but with a focus on demos in cadence with ARTs.)
Product and solution-level demos
Retrospectives (In non-ARTs, only managers joined.)
“The hybrid model of implementation of a full ART plus managers first in non-ART teams contributed to faster alignment and predictability across products within the integrated banking solution,” Barnahor says.
Very quickly, teams began delivering on cadence, demonstrating early value to management. SAFe also sharpened visibility, enabling them to predict more accurately. As a result, the Product Management Organization began to understand the power of “velocity” as a prediction metric and began using the Agile dashboard that EdgeVerve developed.
Changing the Culture
As EdgeVerve launched trains, the company concurrently focused heavily on changing the culture, with the belief that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” According to Kaler, since EdgeVerve focused on ‘managers first,’ these individuals became key influencers in the cultural change. The main focus was around breaking the silos, establishing common ownership on quality, managing and improving through data, and an emphasis on outcome and business value instead of on utilization.
The new, common terminology of SAFe (ARTs, ceremonies, and cadence) ensured everyone spoke the same language. With a common language, they could more easily understand expectations and minimize misunderstandings.
“From a change management perspective, everyone understood that EdgeVerve had embarked on something important at the organizational level that is based on a proven industry framework,” Barnahor says. “We had fewer arguments on definitions. I told them, ‘Let’s adapt SAFe definitions and practices, observe the impact on the ground during execution, and then change. Why reinvent the wheel?’”
The company also altered its success measures to help influence behavior, asking questions such as…
Are we delivering desired value to customers?
Are we on time? If not, when can we deliver the committed scope?
Are we on scope? If not, what we will not deliver on due date?
Are we on top of quality?
Are we on flow? Any bottlenecks? Starvation? Backlog readiness for the next PI? What is the average cycle time?
Can we predict well?
How do employees feel about the change?
As attitudes changed, EdgeVerve collected feedback from the field and shared positive comments from team members and managers widely on posters and in videos—with the goal of spreading enthusiasm.
Additionally, the company adjusted the organizational structure to support the change. From developer to head of engineering, EdgeVerve reduced the number of organizational layers from seven layers to just four layers.
Perhaps the biggest difference came in moving the distinct testing organization, which was under delivery, into engineering—a decision that quickly improved relations between developers and testers. In line with SAFe, testing also now happens concurrently with development with greater focus on acceptance automation.
Reducing cycle time, increasing quality
Today, the company runs eight ARTs with approximately 800 people across three value streams and one portfolio. They launch a new ART every six weeks. At the same time, they run five teams of teams that are not part of the SAFe transformation.
Less than a year after deploying SAFe, EdgeVerve reported significant gains:
Reduced time-to-market – For large enterprise products, release time dropped from 12 – 18 months to six months, and for small products, from six months to three months
Improved predictability – The company plans consistently every 10 weeks, which increases flexibility for changing scope with minimal cost
Expedited feature speed – Feature cycle time went down by 50 percent
Elevated efficiency – The cost per feature point dropped by eight percent from one PI to the next
Fewer defects – The company significantly improved early detection of defects, leading to fewer escaped defects and increased customer satisfaction
Dissolving silos
As the PIs progressed, team members could clearly see the advantages of the new approach. Most notably, communication and collaboration improved, with evidence that silos were dissolving.
“The way teams were working, even a minor downtime was clearly a cascading effect in the team’s progress,” says one team member. “Teams identified it, they came up with solutions, and they worked together.
“If code was not working, we got the right contacts, spoke to the code team and got the issue resolved,” says another team member. “This is a big change from the software developer’s perspective on how they approach their work.”
“The developer-tester relationship was better,” says another. “You can directly check with them for the issues you’re facing.” Additionally, anonymous participant surveys reflected progress. The company asked approximately 300 people about the impact of SAFe. Most notably, there was an 89% improvement in trust and communication across different functions while 73% believe that SAFe helped increase productivity/throughput.
Even as EdgeVerve sees positive results and culture shifts, transformation leaders find it is an ongoing process. With demonstrated results, they gained backing to hire more coaches. Looking ahead, the main challenge, Barnahor says, is middle management’s mind-set—transforming managers to act as Agile leaders and mentors to the teams by focusing on an Agile leadership program.
“It’s a transformation of hearts and minds,” Kaler says. “We made sure that managers believed in what we’re doing and slowly the culture is changing.”
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