What are the 3 common challenges when scaling agile and how to overcome?

Even though there are challenges in scaling Agile for enterprises, it comes with several advantages as well. We have listed some of them here.

In many enterprises, Agile takes root in software development teams, striving to deliver more value to the customer at a faster pace. While this is a great step to start with, meaningful organizational change comes from scaling agile: Enabling teams across the organization to use Agile frameworks and techniques to transform the way work gets done and improve the products and services delivered to end-users. 

Agile is the most widespread project management methodology and approach implemented by businesses around the world. The problem begins to arise when you try to scale agile on a much larger enterprise. Even though there are challenges in scaling Agile for enterprises, it comes with several advantages as well. We are gonna list some of them below: 

• Helps in boosting employee engagement 
• Enhanced visibility throughout the enterprise 
• Facilitate team planning
• Improves capacity management 
• Aligns processes with operations 

Still one of the biggest advantages of scaling Agile is that it links the strategic objectives to people who are responsible for acquiring those objectives. This promotes transparency, improves cross-team collaboration and coordination, provides a faster response time, and improves organizational agility. With a scalable approach, managers can easily manage the availability of resources and workload, the same as dedicated server hosting. This lets companies bring more value without trading off innovation and flexibility. Scaling Agile throughout the organization means bringing cross-functional teams together, making team planning much easier while offering visibility to everyone into deliverables. 

What does “scaling Agile” mean?

Scaling Agile is a process of translating already established methods, like Scrum and Kanban to a larger team. According to a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), traditional Agile teams work best when there is a team of five to eleven members. As companies are focusing more on the small group because of the success they bring, they often want to replicate that kind of success for larger teams, organizations, or departments. This is where scaling agile works. 

Scaling agile however is not as easy as implementing traditional Agile principles to a larger team. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University recognized eight attributes in total that should be considered while scaling Agile:

• The size of the team 
• Each use role 
• Product owner role
• Specialization of roles 
• Iteration length
• Release definition 
• Batch size
  

Top 3 Challenges of scaling Agile

Implementing change in a small team is comparatively easier, but reshaping how an organization works and thinks is the challenge. Even the most advanced Agile software development teams forward enterprises have to go through roadblocks when they choose to scale agile. Here are three of the biggest challenges of scaling Agile that you might face and how you can overcome them. 

• Cultural Shift

Agile is often seen as a culture or shared mindset, instead of a set of practices. When it comes to scaling agile, it has both advantages as well as disadvantages. The framework used to scale Agile is less significant than the shared mindset, which can be a bit difficult to create. 

According to Agile expert and author Steve Denning: “The elements of a culture fit together as a mutually reinforcing system and combine to prevent any attempt to change it. Single-fix changes at the team level may appear to make progress for a while, but eventually, the interlocking elements of the organizational culture take over and the change is inexorably drawn back into the existing organizational culture.”

If a company fails to change its culture, it has more chances of failing at the agile transformation. It usually circles how organizations think, function, and respond in various scenarios. Business owners need to understand as well embrace the lean-agile approach, which focuses primarily on delivering value, guaranteeing flow, and bringing in continuous advancements. This translates to the fact that they should be ready to fail quickly and learn from those mistakes. Additionally, agile leaders should get ready to face and challenge the status quo. To do that, they might even have to make changes in their management style. If their management style is a bit authoritative, they will have to work with a servant leadership approach. You will have to trust your team to accomplish the goals and encourage them instead of controlling their every tiny move. Read more- What are the 3 common challenges when scaling agile and how to overcome?

What are the three different levels of scaled agile framework (SAFe)?

The SAFe model consists of four configurations that consolidate the strategic pieces of an organization and adapt various levels of scale, namely Essential SAFe, Large Solution SAFe, Portfolio SAFe, and Full SAFe.

Put simply, your company is planning to transform into Agile. You plan to scale agile across the teams – or might have already done it. Everyone talks about the different levels and configuration options in the context of, for example, scaled agile such as SAFe. We understand if these terms are not easy to understand right now.

Now there are a lot of improvements that need to be made to effectively implement Agile in a corporate environment. That is when scaling Agile became very influential. In the year 2011,  Scaled Agile company introduced the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to the community. Since then it has been gaining the attention of development projects and the latest version 5.1, was released in February 2021. People are constantly looking for SAFe training courses across businesses to learn and enforce in their projects. With the help of this article, we intend to help you understand scaled agile framework levels and configurations easily.
Understanding SAFe

We will start by breaking down this framework in simpler terms. Then we will get deep into its layers and levels. The need to create larger and more complicated systems without compromising the quality and time made us look at SAFe training. So to understand and implement this framework in an organization, SAFe certification training becomes compulsory. 

SAFe is an industry-proven method that essentially comes with 3 levels of Scaled Agile Framework. Agile development at the team level is the best option for the people who are looking for a strategy to help them to deliver fully tested as well as good quality products to their customers effectively. SAFe, which is short for Scaled Agile Framework, is one of the methods that bring value for scaling agile to an enterprise-level as it grows in size. The lean-agile transformation requires a perspective as well as a more in-depth understanding, both of which are involved in the SAFe agile certification program. Scaling up of a team is the priority of this framework, which is very similar to that of other widespread frameworks including LeSS, Nexus, and DAD.

In this framework, the adoption of Lean-Agile occurs with the four layers are  TEAM, PROGRAM, VALUE STREAM, and PORTFOLIO. We are going to discuss all three SAFe levels and understand their importance and how this framework is useful in building both smaller and complex systems. Read more- What are the three different levels of scaled agile framework (SAFe)?