Two decades after the agile manifesto, agile is here to stay. With the dispersal of teams, agile supports the increased business speed that is now vital for organizations to remain competitive. However, implementing agile isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. Even though agile adoption continues to rise, as many as half of agile adopters describe their agile usage as incomplete and inconsistent. Agile implementation requires organizations to rethink all of their processes, an enormous task, especially at the scale of enterprise.
Luckily, enterprise leaders don’t have to put together agile implementation plans from scratch. The Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe, offers a strategic framework to help larger organizations implement agile methodologies. Newly released this year, SAFe 6.0 emphasizes business agility and speed, helping organizations more easily adapt to changing conditions.
But the process of setting up SAFe can be complex. Because SAFe governs the fundamental processes by which teams at an organization collaborate and communicate, from software developers, to project managers, to C-suite leadership, SAFe implementation requires thoughtful training, support, deployment, and tool configuration. As a result, some organizations experience prolonged or incomplete rollouts, resulting in decreased return on investment.
One option to streamline the path to SAFe: use a preconfigured blueprint for SAFe implementation, such as Contegix’s SYNTHESIS. Each SYNTHESIS blueprint is a readymade scaffold of best practices for Atlassian tool strategy, configuration, and deployment. The suite of SYNTHESIS blueprints supports a range of business processes, from product management to software development.
One member of this range, the Value Development blueprint, is specifically designed to enable our team to stand up SAFe on Atlassian tools efficiently and comprehensively. By taking advantage of the SYNTHESIS Value Development blueprint, organizations can get the most out of SAFe, without the hassle of prolonged deployment.
Depending on an organization's goals and team structure, SAFe implementation will differ. Consider a global communications company and a software company: while both depend on software to deliver solutions to their customers, their internal structures and workflows likely look very different, requiring different configurations of SAFe.
In addition, the work management tools that are vital for SAFe implementation require their own customization to be most effective. In order to harness the full power of both SAFe and Atlassian tools, organizations must tailor the tools’ configuration to their needs, and select external plug-ins that provide important additional capabilities. With myriad workflow customization options and thousands of third-party Atlassian Marketplace apps, this process can drag on, straining resources.
A prepared configuration means that businesses don’t have to start from scratch. Founded on field experience in deploying both SAFe and Atlassian tools, SYNTHESIS blueprints include formulas and templates to eliminate silos, encourage collaboration, and accelerate agile adoption across the enterprise.
The Scaled Agile Blueprint extends the Contegix development blueprint and allows companies of all sizes and maturity levels to scale their agile processes. Contegix has versions of the blueprint that enable small to medium organizations to scale their agile practices, all the way up to large enterprise level organizations that require the power that Jira Align brings to the table.
With pre-configured workflows, issues, and plug-ins, the Value Development Blueprint provides organizations with a jumping-off point which helps to save teams time and effort during implementation.
Because every organization has unique goals and business needs, SYNTHESIS includes consultation services that help teams efficiently and effectively tailor SAFe methodologies and tool configurations.
The packaged Jira Align configuration contained in the SYNTHESIS Value Development blueprint includes recommendations for SAFe deployment best practices informed by years of consultation experience on Atlassian tools and SAFe frameworks. As part of the SYNTHESIS package, Contegix experts work with customers to understand business goals and modify initial blueprints to fit the organization.
For instance, Contegix experts can help customize workflow templates, tailoring SAFe-recommended layouts to emphasize the specific areas in which businesses seek to develop value. Alternatively, Contegix support can help organizations determine what optional SAFe processes, such as Kanban or OKRs, make sense to implement, and what are not best suited to drive value.
Change isn’t easy in any organization. Between tool configuration, onboarding, and support, implementing new work processes requires strategic planning. As the industry-leading scaled agile framework, SAFe offers a toolkit for switching to agile practices across the enterprise. Organizations that successfully implement SAFe will reap the cultural and business benefits, like efficient value delivery and streamlined collaboration, for years to come.
The SYNTHESIS Value Development blueprint is designed specifically to ease this transition, allowing teams to enjoy the advantages of scaled agile more quickly and with less disruption.
Reach out to Contegix today to assess your SAFe needs and determine if SYNTHESIS blueprints make sense for your organization.