Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a published method for running agile development across many teams at once, so that the teams in a large organization plan, build and release on a shared schedule. It is maintained and licensed by the company Scaled Agile.
How it works
SAFe builds on agile development, lean product development and systems thinking. Its core unit is the agile release train, a long-lived team of agile teams, typically 50 to 125 people. The train works in Planning Intervals (PIs), timeboxes of 8 to 12 weeks, and opens each one with PI Planning, a two-day event where every team commits to shared objectives. Above the train sit portfolio practices that connect strategy, funding and delivery.
SAFe comes in four configurations for different scales: Essential, Large Solution, Portfolio and Full SAFe. Older guides, TechTarget's among them, call the timebox a program increment. For research teams, the cadence sets the deadline: findings are most useful just before PI Planning, when the train decides what the next interval will deliver.
A worked example
Every 10 weeks, the 3 release trains in a logistics company's shipping platform hold PI Planning. The research team books 30 customer interviews in the 3 weeks before each event, 10 per train. In one interval, the findings move 2 features up the backlog and drop 1, a change the trains commit to on the second day of planning.
Related
Automate this in Pulse
Pulse can take a round of customer interviews from brief to first synthesis in the days before PI Planning, landing when a release train sets its objectives.