Created: 21 February 2022

SAFe 5: Is It Right for Your Organisation?

What is the Scaled Agile Framework or SAFe 5? What are its core competencies, and will they benefit your organisation? Read on to find out more about SAFe 5.

Keyword(s): safe 5

The ability to react and adapt are two of the most important qualities when it comes to making quick decisions in business. The larger the scale of an organization, the tougher the decision-making process. SAFe 5 seeks to mitigate many of the workflow and decision-making issues so often found in larger corporate environments.

Although there are plenty of reasons to explain why a business may be floundering, bureaucratic red tape is one of the easiest. That red tape leads to lost time, slower development cycles, and poorer communication.

All of that stagnation in your ability to continue optimizing workflow and development can be an insidious killer for a business. Going forward we will cover all of the benefits of SAFe 5, and how it can be like the fountain of youth for your organization.

Understand SAFe Fundamentals

Whereas a smaller, younger company has far less trouble staying nimble and flexible, larger organizations aren't so lucky. Scaling the size and scope of any operation often carries the risk of losing those qualities. SAFe exists as a remedy to that issue, using a specially designed framework.

The name SAFe means scaled agile framework. The framework was first devised in 2011, but there have been multiple developments upon the original since then. What hasn't changed is the fundamental ideas that gave birth to SAFe.

The fundamentals are a set of ten principles, borrowing the best bits of other frameworks designed to increase productivity. A productivity increase is something that any organization can get behind, regardless of its size.

The Core Tenets

If you look at the tenets of SAFe, you'll see that there's a major focus on the economy of time and simplifying processes. The principles also encourage taking a sober look at what you are working with, to evaluate efficaciousness.

In addition to the economic view, SAFe also encourages you to apply systems thinking. This involves taking a deeper look at the relationships between the multiple stages of development that teams will go through.

The Current Iteration of SAFe

Since its inception, SAFe has had a focus on improving an organization or team's ability to adopt the practices found in lean. It's part of the economic viewpoint, to be able to create as much value as possible with as few resources.

It has also become more and more well-suited to larger organizations. Courses don't only offer a wide range of options for content, but also cater to teams of varying sizes.

Lean and Agile

Wasting fewer resources translates to better profits, but it has an even more valuable function. Lean thinking forces out-of-the-box solutions. The usefulness of this ability translates well into any level of an organization.

Whether it's marketing or development, you could argue that this lean agility is vital. That's why SAFe 5.0 training has made it such a priority.

Lean development is very similar to the core values we mentioned earlier, making it a perfect accompanying partner to SAFe. Not only that, but other systems also go very well hand-in-hand, like Scrum.

Implementing SAFe in Your Organization

Managing to implement a lot of the strategies and principles that we have covered may seem like a difficult task. There is a set of basic guidelines for the successful deployment of the framework. We will go over a few of them, to get a general idea of what SAFe requires when it is fully implemented.

The first step should be to identify your goals with SAFe to the rest of the organization. If there are weak spots in the way you conduct business, focusing on them will help to realize the expected benefits.

The next step is to figure out who in your organization would make the most efficient agent attain a SAFe 5.0 certification. These members will be key to your organization, as they will have to express the goals to other leaders and members.

Starting from the top can be an effective strategy to implement the framework. Having a manager with a full understanding of what a 'lean agile' framework looks like in practice will help to facilitate your goals.

Managing to successfully transform your organization's views and mindset through these practices may sound difficult. The difference it makes in the delivery speed and progress of projects will speak for itself, though.

Start a SAFe 5 Training Course

There are plenty of services offering up SAFe 5 training courses, but how do you know which one to pick? To best benefit your organization, you need to look at the pass rate of the course to get a good feel for how quality the trainers are.

A service boasting high pass rates means highly-skilled professionals as consultants that will offer top-notch skill training. The training is only as good as the consultant, and you want to provide the best chance of passing the SAFe 5.0 exam as possible.

The other factor to keep an eye out for is the breadth of different courses on offer. A service that has taught courses in multiple agile and lean skills means you'll be in capable hands. So much of the scaled agile framework makes use of those systems, it would be a waste not to fully take advantage of it.

Who Offers the Best Courses?

Advised Skills are the perfect place to start for your organization, offering multiple SAFe 5 courses in 30+ countries. Advised Skills are licensed in all of the top training courses with a wealth of experience. If a course is nearby, it's the ideal way to attain a SAFe agilist 5.0 certification.

You can head over to the site now to look at what courses are available and start your SAFe 5 journey today.