The 7 core competencies of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) are essential capabilities that enable organizations to achieve Business Agility, allowing them to adapt quickly and deliver value in a rapidly changing market. These competencies represent the knowledge, skills, and behaviors necessary for a Lean-Agile enterprise.
Here's a breakdown of the seven core competencies:
Understanding the 7 Core Competencies of SAFe
These competencies provide a comprehensive roadmap for organizations to successfully implement and scale Lean and Agile practices across their entire enterprise.
| Competency Name | Brief Description |
|---|---|
| Lean-Agile Leadership | Empowers leaders to drive and sustain organizational change by embodying Lean-Agile values, principles, and practices. |
| Team and Technical Agility | Focuses on high-performing Agile teams and teams of teams, using Lean-Agile principles and practices to create high-quality solutions. |
| Agile Product Delivery | Defines how to define, build, and release valuable products and solutions to customers with speed, quality, and a customer-centric approach. |
| Enterprise Solution Delivery | Describes how to apply Lean-Agile principles to develop and deploy large-scale, complex software and cyber-physical systems. |
| Lean Portfolio Management | Aligns strategy and execution by organizing around value, funding value streams, and governing investments to achieve strategic goals. |
| Organizational Agility | Enables organizations to optimize their business processes, evolve strategy with new opportunities, and rapidly adapt to change. |
| Continuous Learning Culture | Fosters a set of values and practices that encourage individuals and the enterprise to continually gain knowledge, innovate, and improve. |
1. Lean-Agile Leadership
This competency describes how leaders drive and sustain organizational change by modeling Lean-Agile values, principles, and practices. It emphasizes a shift from traditional command-and-control leadership to a servant leadership approach, empowering teams and fostering a culture of trust and psychological safety.
- Key Aspects:
- Embodying the Lean-Agile Mindset and Principles.
- Leading by example and coaching teams.
- Fostering a culture of continuous improvement and learning.
- Empowering individuals and teams to make decisions.
- Practical Insight: Leaders are not just managers; they are facilitators and coaches who remove impediments and nurture an environment where creativity and problem-solving can thrive.
- Example: A VP of Engineering shifts their focus from dictating solutions to enabling teams to find their own solutions, providing necessary resources and removing organizational blockers.
2. Team and Technical Agility
This competency focuses on the critical skills and Lean-Agile principles that high-performing Agile teams and Teams of Teams (Agile Release Trains) use to create high-quality solutions. It stresses the importance of cross-functional teams, built-in quality, and modern development practices.
- Key Aspects:
- Composing and organizing Agile Teams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs).
- Applying Built-in Quality practices (e.g., Test-Driven Development, Behavior-Driven Development, Pair Programming).
- Fast flow of value through effective teamwork and collaboration.
- Practical Insight: Technical excellence is not an afterthought; it's integrated into every step of the development process to ensure sustainable delivery of high-quality software.
- Example: Development teams adopt a "Definition of Done" that includes automated testing and code reviews, ensuring that every increment released is shippable and meets quality standards.
3. Agile Product Delivery
This competency describes how to define, build, and release valuable products and solutions to customers with speed and quality. It combines customer centricity with the principles of Design Thinking and a Continuous Delivery Pipeline to ensure that the organization delivers the right solutions to the right customers at the right time.
- Key Aspects:
- Customer Centricity and Design Thinking for understanding user needs.
- Continuous Exploration to refine product vision and roadmap.
- Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, and Release on Demand through a robust Continuous Delivery Pipeline.
- Practical Insight: The focus is on a constant flow of value, from understanding customer needs to delivering features frequently, gathering feedback, and iterating.
- Example: A software company utilizes A/B testing and direct user feedback channels to validate new features before a full release, ensuring they meet market demands.
4. Enterprise Solution Delivery
Applicable for developing and deploying large-scale, complex software and cyber-physical systems, this competency addresses the unique challenges of building and evolving the world's largest and most sophisticated solutions. It focuses on coordinating multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Suppliers to deliver massive, integrated solutions.
- Key Aspects:
- Building and evolving large, complex systems.
- Coordinating multiple ARTs and Suppliers.
- Continuous integration and validation of disparate components.
- Managing the solution train and its backlog.
- Practical Insight: This competency is crucial for organizations dealing with highly regulated environments or systems that combine hardware, software, and other components, such as in aerospace or defense.
- Example: An automotive manufacturer uses SAFe's Enterprise Solution Delivery to coordinate development of its new electric vehicle platform, integrating contributions from multiple internal ARTs (e.g., infotainment, powertrain) and external suppliers.
5. Lean Portfolio Management
This competency aligns strategy and execution by organizing around value, funding value streams, and governing investments. It replaces traditional project-cost accounting with Lean Budgets and Guardrails, providing flexibility while maintaining financial governance and strategic alignment.
- Key Aspects:
- Connecting the portfolio to enterprise strategy.
- Funding value streams, not projects, to enable agility and flexibility.
- Establishing Lean Budgets and Guardrails to manage investments.
- Portfolio flow and operations.
- Practical Insight: By funding value streams rather than temporary projects, organizations can adapt quickly to changing market conditions without constant re-planning and budget approvals.
- Example: Instead of funding individual software projects, a financial institution allocates a budget to its "Digital Banking" value stream, empowering the teams within that stream to prioritize and deliver features based on customer needs and market opportunities.
6. Organizational Agility
This competency describes how organizations optimize their business processes, evolve strategy with new opportunities, and rapidly adapt to change. It extends Lean-Agile principles beyond IT to the entire business, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and responsiveness across all functions.
- Key Aspects:
- Applying Lean-Agile practices to all business operations, not just IT.
- Strategizing for a changing future and reacting quickly to market shifts.
- Achieving business process agility.
- Building a learning organization that continuously adapts.
- Practical Insight: True organizational agility means that every part of the enterprise, from HR to finance to marketing, embraces Lean-Agile principles to deliver faster and more effectively.
- Example: A marketing department adopts Kanban boards and daily stand-ups to manage campaigns, allowing them to respond to real-time market trends and optimize their messaging more rapidly.
7. Continuous Learning Culture
This competency describes a set of values and practices that encourage individuals—and the enterprise as a whole—to continually gain knowledge, innovate, and improve. It emphasizes the importance of a learning organization, relentless improvement, and fostering an innovation culture.
- Key Aspects:
- Encouraging lifelong learning for all employees.
- Fostering a culture of relentless improvement and feedback.
- Promoting innovation through dedicated time and resources.
- Shared knowledge and experimentation.
- Practical Insight: An organization that continuously learns and adapts is better equipped to navigate uncertainty and discover new opportunities. This often involves dedicated time for innovation, knowledge sharing, and structured reflection.
- Example: Teams regularly hold 'Innovation Days' where they can explore new technologies or ideas outside their regular sprint work, leading to potential new features or process improvements.
These seven core competencies collectively provide a holistic approach to achieving Business Agility within a large enterprise, ensuring that the entire organization is aligned and optimized to deliver value efficiently and effectively.
