SAFe in a decorated acronym that stands for Scaled Agile Framework. The decoration is the lower-case “e” at the end that transforms SAF into SAFe. The additional “e” making SAFe “safe” is an excellent marketing consideration. SAF + “e” is safe to do. SAFe adds a level of safety by lowering risk and some SPCs say the “e” stands for Enterprise, as achieving a Lean Enterprise is one of the key reasons for SAFe.
“Thriving in the digital age with Business Agility”
Agile frameworks are nothing new, and they have been in existence for decades. However, industry leaders believe that instructor-led agile training certificates help improve an organization’s overall environment.
It is seen that curriculums like Scaled Agile courses spark the collaborative mindset around agile methods. Such courses instill a collaborative approach among development teams and with the end goal being a certification; employees are often more interested in training.
To answer the question, yes SAFe certification can give a boost to your career as well as help you to learn and master the intricacies of scaling agile at the enterprise level.
With SAFe large enterprises are able to implement the agile methodology to their existing projects and allow large teams to work more effectively. Now, scaling agile practices to enterprise levels effectively requires a level of knowledge, skill, and experience in SAFe. As a matter of fact, SAFe is one of the few frameworks that are proven to combine lean and system thinking efficiently with Agile development practices.
Why is SAFe important for organizations?
Now that we understand what the acronym is, we need to know what SAFe brings to the organization. Most people think of SAFe as a way to scale Agile, usually Scrum. But it is much more than that. Some experts say that before SAFe, all Agile transformations resulted in hybrids. The reason is simple; Scrum, the form of Agile used in the vast majority of “Agile” transformations, was and is designed for small teams at small organizations working on small projects. Everything done to make Scrum fit the company was some non-Agile process. Did people in the Agile community work on developing “Agile” ways to fit Scrum, and to a lesser degree Kanban and other frameworks at organizations? The answer, of course, was yes, but most organizations were doing seat-of-the-pants modifications to systems to make them interconnect.
Unfortunately, many companies did not get excellent results from their homegrown Agile transformation efforts and ended up turning back to non-Agile methods. That was unfortunate because it tarnished Agile and it cost many companies a lot of money while delivering no gain. The primary cause that independent companies including Gartner and Forrester have identified as the reason for failure or not delivering good ROI, was that the companies utilized inexperienced resources to implement Agile. But an additional factor was that a cohesive structure was not readily available to help them make the transformation.
SAFe is clearly a way to scale Agile structures such as Scrum and Kanban, but it is much more than that. It is a set of supporting structures that make Agile methods work in the larger context of the enterprise. Because of the supporting structures, SAFe as a system is important to understand because it gives organizations the connecting pathways they need. This is a major reason incorporating SAFe should be high on the list of any organization that is planning to utilize Agile.
How does a SAFe certification help?
Corporations of all sizes benefit from SAFe methods to increase revenue on investment. Here are four reasons why you should seriously consider getting a SAFe certification:
1) Deal with Agile adoption challenges
It is fairly easy to adopt agile in small organizations with one or two teams. The problem arises when you try to replicate the same success at the enterprise level. It is because agile practices and processes being used in small teams are not best suited to scale at the enterprise level. Leading SAFe training equips you with the required skills and tools to scale agile across the enterprise to improve time-to-market, increase employee engagement, and improve quality.
The skills you learn with SAFe training courses enable you to align multiple development teams, achieve IT collaboration working with different departments, and still deliver value to customers and be in line with organizational goals and vision.
2) Fewer delays, obstacles, and failures in SAFe implementation
In large organizations, there are multiple teams and business departments that already use agile internally. But when you bring them together then failures and obstacles start to arise that if not controlled early on easily get out of hand. SAFe training skills you enough so that you can implement a uniform agile approach throughout the enterprise.
Clashing or out-of-line agile practices will no longer be a problem for your teams as you will be able to guide them to adopt a consistent approach that will enhance product quality and architecture. Certifications like Leading SAFe allows the entire organization to use Agile Release Train to plan, execute, and deliver value bringing multiple teams together effectively.
3) Understand the new roles in an agile environment
Scaling agile at the enterprise level will require you to create new roles and change the existing ones. If you do not understand what new roles are to be created or which one needs to be changed and how to change them, challenges will arise.
To avoid these challenges and avoid fear across the entire organization regarding the potential of existing roles, SAFe courses provide you with knowledge of management skills that will help existing and new team members to adopt the new agile mindset and practices. The managers, executives, and product owners can only understand by training their roles and changes to be made across teams at the program and portfolio level.
4) Consistency at all levels
Without proper training, implementing agile across your enterprise can be challenging as maintaining consistency across different departments become difficult. SAFe certification is all about learning the skills to establish and maintain consistent strategy across the enterprise.
Upon training completion, you will have the knowledge to understand what processes and principles need to be used to align multiple departments along with the same strategy.
SAFe training equips you with the skill to clearly communicate your strategy at the program and portfolio levels. SAFe is the framework that allows you to implement Lean consistently across the organization.
These are the reasons why SAFe certification is worth your time and money. You learn to understand key roles and responsibilities, processes, and metrics that allow you to align multiple agile development teams together to improve your business outcomes. The agile way is actually to fail fast and learn from it (for example, the ARTs might not have been structured properly. SAFe will shine a light on that through inspect and adapt so the company can make the needed corrections and improve their outcomes).
Leading SAFe® training with Valiantys
SAFe® is the world’s leading framework for scaling Agile across the enterprise. Used by hundreds of the world’s largest organizations, SAFe® sustains and drives faster time-to-market, dramatic increases in productivity and quality, and improvement in employee engagement.
During this two-day course, you will gain the knowledge necessary to lead a Lean-Agile enterprise by leveraging the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®), and its underlying principles derived from Lean, systems thinking, Agile development, product development flow, and DevOps.
Attending the class prepares individuals to take the exam and become a certified SAFe® Agilist (SA)
Book a spot on one of our SAFe courses now
