Upon starting my role as Director of Agile Coaches at Lirio, I learned that many of the development teams were using parts of Essential SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), as the leaders of those teams had done so at their previous company. I tasked myself with understanding what this framework had to offer.
Versions are important; version 4.5 was the latest available when I started. Since then, version 5 was published. (The authors have the updated version of this book available on Amazon as well.) Some things stayed, a few things got refined. There were some elements of this book where I skipped sections so that I could read the summary on scaledagileframework.com.
Granted, SAFe doesn’t exist for free; they earn a living by offering trainings and certifications. However, they do offer a remarkable amount of their wisdom to the public via the aforementioned website, which serves as a place to explore (for those considering adopting a flavor of SAFe) and refer back to (for those that need a reference every now and then).
This book serves nearly the same purpose as the website: a navigable path and reference for what SAFe is all about, how to implement it, the levels of SAFe, etc.
Between this text and the SAFe website, I’ve learned more about the formal framework of achieving Agile at scale (e.g., team of teams, and teams of “team of teams”). Many aspects I find useful, whereas others I find to be too process-over-people. I imagine SAFe serves the same purpose as ISO and CMMI for some companies: a known quantity that can certify facilitators and organizers in known framework.
Whether you adopt SAFe or not, I suggest becoming familiar with it so that your Agile toolkit can expand.
My detailed write-up (45 pages) can be found here.