What is SAFe? A framework for scaling business agility

• Team and technical agility: High-performing, cross-functional teams that share a common goal of creating high-quality, well-designed solutions are vital for SAFe success.
• Agile product delivery: SAFe organizations must adopt a customer-centric approach to delivering valuable products and services to end users. Here, design thinking and a commitment to continuous delivery and release on demand are essential.
• Enterprise solution delivery: In evolving large enterprise solutions, SAFe organizations apply Lean agile practices and treat solutions as “living systems” that are continually developed over time. Doing so requires sophisticated coordination of ARTs and value streams.
• Lean portfolio management: By applying Lean and systems thinking, SAFe organizations ensure their entire portfolio is aligned and funded to deliver strategic value. This requires strong coordination of decentralized activities as well as governance around spending, compliance, and metrics.
• Organizational agility: SAFe organizations’ team members apply Lean principles to business operations as well, as a means for continually improving how they go about development valued solutions from their customers.
• Continuous learning culture: SAFe organizations continually encourage team members to increase their knowledge and competence with a goal of establishing an innovation-minded organization driven toward relentless improvement.
• Lean-agile leadership: SAFe organization leadership leads by example and create an environment prepared for continual transformation.  

SAFe vs. Scrum

SAFe and Scrum are both agile methodologies to solution development. Whereas Scrum is a framework for individual teams, SAFe is aimed at scaling agile principles across large organizations. In fact, SAFe incorporates much of Scrum into its framework, just at scale.

For example, whereas Scrum emphasizes daily standup meetings and incremental development sprints, SAFe goes a step further by also implementing program increments, which Scaled Agile, the SAFe framework’s provider, defines as “a timebox during which an agile release train (ART) delivers incremental value in the form of working, tested software and systems.” Further, Scrum’s primary roles of product owner, Scrum master, and development team member are expanded under SAFe to include roles such as release train engineer and solution train engineer, among others.

Overall, while Scrum is best suited for individual teams or a small number of related teams, SAFe is designed for large enterprises, spanning multiple teams and projects, while providing a broader scope for driving agile at scale.

SAFe vs. DAD vs. LeSS

While SAFe focuses on alignment, teamwork, and provisioning across a large number of agile teams, there are other popular frameworks for scaling agile at larger organizations, including Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD). It is important to understand each of these frameworks so that your organization can select the best option for your projects.

SAFe: Practitioners created the Scaled Agile Framework by investing in three main bodies of knowledge: agile software system development, systems thinking, and Lean product development. It has been a well-recognized approach to scaling agile practices.

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD): DAD is focused on the end-to-end lifecycle of products, from inception to delivery. It is driven by seven principles: delight customers, be awesome, pragmatism, context counts, choice is good, optimize flow, and enterprise awareness.