The Evolution of SAFe: 6.0 is here!

There is an especially crucial element that you will find everywhere and stands out straight away and that is the word: flow. It is connecting the various levels and layers that we have in this big picture. This goes from the portfolio level for instance to the large solutions level et cetera. Why? Because flow matters to everyone and especially from a customer perspective as they can have the value requested and are expecting. You will find the word flow multiples times in SAFe 6.0.

In the framework you will see four new flow articles, named as:

• Portfolio flow
• Solution Train Flow
• ART Flow
• Team Flow

Each offers techniques for addressing, optimizing, and debugging issues with a continuous value flow for that specific level.

Other differences are:

The core competency Continuous Learning Culture now is a fundamental competency for any type of company, since just generating knowledge does not ensure you will use it. Also, the capacity to continuously learn is essential to any organization.

There are not a lot of changes, but the ones that are there are important. Let's see:

Leading in the digital age. This is particularly important for companies, leaders, and the entire organization. Why? Being an instrumental piece for this substantial change, they must understand that it is not only support coming from them that is needed, but also their leadership and influence, their ability to help the teams while helping the people to thrive in this new digital age. It is their role to be there

They are part of all the discussions happening from the very beginning. What comes next depends a lot on how they are going to be supportive of the company and on this whole transformation.

Enhanced portfolio. Many companies do not start with just one ART. What these companies are doing though, is thinking about a portfolio right since its inception. That is also an especially important thing we need to consider.

There is a big change and SAFe 6.0 and that is bringing SAFe across the business.

Successful transformations impact not only development, but all parts of the organization: Finance, HR-compliance, security, among others. And the experience of those successful implementations helps us to follow in the footsteps of those who lead the way.

What do you see in SAFe 6.0?

An introduction on Business and Technology patterns, in a total five

• Business enabled art: that is where we will have business and technology people working together addressing the same concerns of the customer.
• Agile Business Train: probably the biggest leap towards business agility. It contains one or multiple operational value streams, along with all the arts and solution trains that are aligned to common vision and mission. That means that all people within this operational value streams and arts will work together on a common shared cadence that would mean that they would ideate and plan together that they would work together in continuously delivering value as well as continuously improving the business solution.
• Agile Executive Team: the next three constructs really taking agile outside the development organization and that is where we will see a team of C suite executives working together and acting as a cross functional agile team on certain values and principles, a s well as, and the strategy of comp

• Agile Business Function: where any function of the organization can harness the benefits of the visibility and transparency brought in by the agility.
• Finally, a Combined Portfolio. So that is a portfolio where we will manage together the operational value stream and the development value stream. Because this combined information really powers our decision making.

Three elements appears key differentiator nowadays for enterprises. These are: Artificial Intelligence, Big Data & Cloud and SAFe 6.0 offers new guidance on this innovative technologies. Ai, for example, can be applied at all levels of SAFe to build intelligent customer solutions to help to improve customer insights and to automate value stream activities. Regarding Big Data that SAFe addresses, big data concerns at the portfolio level and requires investment, vision and governance. Lean Portfolio Management leaders, can use the lean budget to invest in Big Data and DataOps solutions to create Epics and the Portfolio Backlog to specify to prioritize technologies, infrastructure and data needs to support the organization. Regarding cloud there are many cloud strategies and models out there, and SAFe 6.0 guides us through three common patterns: Cloud for Infrastructure, Operations Cloud for DevOps and Cloud for Artificial Intelligence. Each one of them is a unique development value stream that combines cloud capabilities with SAFe to deliver transformational innovation to a set of customers.

Aligning strategic intent with execution is crucial for rapid experimentation and the learnings that consequently come I have a putting it in place isn't an easy business, but first need to understand the current state of the organization, what are the practices that have been used, and how mature those practices are. That is where measuring grow evolve from being cell specific self-assessment in SAFe 5.0 to being a broader measurement system with three different domains in SAFe 6.0. So, the certain domains that this measurement system is covering our outcomes.

• How well are we delivering upon the expectations of our shareholders and customers?
• Flow: How efficient are we in delivering that value?

• Competency: How well are we in applying those Lean and Agile behaviors that we know are crucial for achieving business agility.

Another big change is actually within the outcomes domain. We already had KPIs that are a very good current health check measure. However, now we're bringing in OKRs that help us to define that goal we're moving towards and track the progress towards it.

When it comes to the OKRs, they will be applied in three different dimensions in the framework:

1. Use them to align Strategy & the Execution

2. Support the Lean Business Cases (Epics)

3. To define the Transformation goals.