Differences Between SAFe Agile Vs Agile
It was only a relatively few years ago that traditional waterfall project management was pretty much the only way to go. And while it worked well for many projects – especially ones considered ‘predictive’ – it didn’t work so well for ones we will call adaptive. And so, over the past 20 years and especially the last 10 or so, agile has been increasingly used in projects, primarily software-based ones.
To define our terms, according to the Project Management Body of Knowledge Sixth Edition, “in a predictive or waterfall life cycle, the project scope, time, and cost are determined in the early phases of the life cycle. In an adaptive or agile life cycle, the “deliverables are developed over multiple iterations where a detailed scope is defined and approved for each iteration as it begins.”
In this post, we’ll look at Agile vs scaled Agile, specifically the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) developed by Dean Leffingwell.
The Scrum Guide states that, the “essence of Scrum is a small team of people.” Which would be fine if all our projects were small and didn’t need to scale beyond that small team. We can handle scaling between functions or teams by using native Scrum of Scrums. But once we scale much beyond that then it is necessary to begin considering a scalable framework.
So, the main difference between Agile and Scaled Agile is that Agile was designed for small teams with specific roles, whereas Scaled Agile is designed to scale all the way up to the enterprise.
According to the Agile Alliance, Agile is “the ability to create and respond to change. It is a way of dealing with, and ultimately succeeding in, an uncertain and turbulent environment.”
It is a set of values and principles as expressed in the Agile Manifesto. While it can be used for a variety of projects it typically refers to a group of approaches to software development using iterative (repeated processes) and incremental (successively added functionality) development.
The Agile Manifesto states that:
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
There is also an underlying set of 12 principles. The first two principles state that “our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software” and that we “welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.”
Some of the more common Agile methods include Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, and Feature-Driven Development (FDD.) Of these, Scrum is by all accounts the most popular, so we’ll focus there.
For the most part, all Agile methodologies have certain things in common – they use timeboxes, which Agile Alliance describes as “a previously agreed period of time during which a person or a team works steadily towards completion of some goal.”
They employ iterations to “develop the product through a series of repeated cycles and increments to successively add to the functionality of the product.” The graphic below displays the Agile Scrum process. 
At the end of a timebox – or sprint – the entire Scrum Team is accountable for creating a valuable, useful increment. Regular interactions with stakeholders, small batches of work, regular reviews and retrospectives improve process and therefore, product.
The Scrum variant of Agile defines three important roles:
Scrum uses several events or “ceremonies” to inspect progress toward the sprint goal and adapt the sprint backlog (items to be worked on) as needed:
Instead of command and control as practiced in traditional waterfall, agile employs servant leadership which is a philosophy and practice of leadership based on listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment, and community building.
As mentioned above, Agile was designed for small teams and SAFe® was designed to scale to various levels, from essential to full SAFE®. It rests on the Agile foundation and expands on it.
Cprime recently published a report called Agile at Scale 2020. The report was based on a survey of companies who are scaling Agile beyond small teams and often to the enterprise. The size of development teams ranged from <50 (32%) to an astonishing 1001+ (18.4%).
According to the same study, the leading framework at 34% is SAFe® while “Scrum only” is at 24%. The study doesn’t dig deeper into those numbers but it’s realistic to think that as companies scale to the enterprise, they require something more than Scrum only.
SAFe® for Lean Enterprises is a knowledge base of proven, integrated principles, practices, and competencies for achieving business agility using Lean, Agile, and DevOps. It has several levels to which one can scale:
Essential SAFE® – contains the minimal set of roles, events, and artifacts required to continuously deliver business solutions via an Agile Release Train (ART) as a Team of Agile Teams.
Large Solution SAFe® describes additional roles, practices, and guidance to build and evolve the world’s largest applications, networks, and cyber-physical systems. It incorporates an additional competency called Enterprise Solution Delivery.
Portfolio SAFe® aligns strategy with execution and organizes solution development around the flow of value through one or more value streams. It is the smallest configuration that can be used to achieve Business Agility and adds the core competencies of Lean Portfolio Management, Continuous Learning Culture, and Organizational Agility.
Full SAFe® represents the most comprehensive configuration. It supports building large, integrated solutions that typically require hundreds of people to develop and maintain.
Like Agile, the SAFe® framework has several defined roles, some of which are dependent on the level to which one aspires.
The key SAFe® roles and main responsibilities at Essential level are:
The key SAFe® roles and main responsibilities at large solution level include all of the above and:
The key SAFe® roles at portfolio level are:
Full SAFe® has no new defined roles.
Planning
While both Scrum and Agile plan their work at the beginning of each sprint, SAFe® has a unique event, called a Program Increment. Key to this is the Agile Release Train (ART) which is a long-lived team of Agile teams, which, along with other stakeholders, incrementally develops, delivers, and where applicable operates, one or more solutions in a value stream.
A Program Increment (PI) is a timebox during which an Agile Release Train delivers incremental value in the form of working, tested software and systems. PIs are typically 8 – 12 weeks long.
Typically, there are four development Iterations, followed by one Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration. A PI is to an Agile Release Train (ART) (or Solution Train), as an Iteration is to the Agile Team. It’s a fixed timebox for planning, building, and validating a full system increment, demonstrating value, and getting fast feedback.
Each PI
The Program Board is used when teams come together for two-day planning sessions:
It should be noted that SAFe® utilizes a concept called Value Streams. Value Streams represent the series of steps that an organization uses to implement Solutions that provide a continuous flow of value to a customer.
A SAFe® portfolio contains one or more value streams, each of which is dedicated to build and support a set of solutions, which are the products, services, or systems delivered to the Customer, whether internal or external to the Enterprise.
Scrum, like XP and Kanban is a type of Agile. So, all Agile types are similar in that they work in short bursts of work and stay in close contact with customers. So, the real comparison is between Scrum and SAFe®.
Scrum/Agile and SAFe® are similar in that they use roles outlined in the Scrum Guide such as Product Owner, Scrum Master and Teams. The same rules apply about using sprints, sprint reviews and retrospectives.
Benefits
Some of the benefits of Agile include:
SAFe® has all those benefits but also adds the ability to not only look at work in terms of value streams but also to take into consideration the portfolio that is connected to the strategy of the enterprise.
Conclusion
Agile has developed over time into a framework that provides business agility, allowing organizations to remain flexible in their approach to getting work done. Defined roles, small batches of work and regular cadence all contribute to a focus on product delivery while minimizing risk.
However, Agile focuses on small teams and once work expands to the enterprise, a scaling methodology is required to enable teams to work while still focusing on the larger strategic picture. Scaled Agile Framework is one such methodology. It maintains the core ideas of Agile but adds roles and ceremonies that allow it serve at whatever level of the organization is required.
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