The shortcut to getting SAFe working for you: Why doing is the best way of learning
Through a SAFe simulation game, you can remain one step ahead
Many of the organizations committed to digital transformation are utilizing SAFe – a Scaled Agile Framework – as their chosen approach to delivering value when scaling. SAFe contains several elements that can bring genuine value to an organization but, unfortunately, many programs fail before they have the chance to deliver on their initial promise.
With numerous long-term transformation projects experiencing periods of ups and downs that disrupt the expected journey, what is the secret to ensuring transformation delivers on its goals? Recently, we interviewed Gwendolyne Brink, Senior Consultant at Quint Group, about why so many agile transformation initiatives fail and how the Fly4You business simulation can help improve the success rate.
- What are some of the benefits of simulating the SAFe journey in advance?
Although it may not be possible to foresee every step of the transformation process, the Fly4You simulation helps teams to gain insights into potential hurdles ahead of time. By bringing these teams together to explore how to align their transformation program with new agile ways of working, it helps ensure management, your team, and yourself are well prepared.
It’s important to gain insight in advance into any pitfalls that may arise so you can recognize them before your organization actually starts on its scaling journey. With a SAFe simulation game like Fly4You, you can gain this insight and remain one step ahead during the entire SAFe implementation.
- How does Fly4You demonstrate the kinds of management behaviors that are helpful and those that aren’t?
Many simulations reveal that a different management style is needed for the SAFe approach. For example, a focus on business priorities often leads to an emphasis on the ‘WHAT’, rather than the ‘HOW’. Before a project is started, everyone tends to fall into this trap because practice shows that during periods of high pressure, people often rely on old patterns. In Fly4You, you learn to recognize these signals!
- How does the simulation empower teams and individuals to make decisions?
When no one makes a decision and everyone looks at each other instead, actions fail and attention is diverted from what needs to be done to who is in charge. Making decisions and weighing up the consequences is what using SAFe should be about – the specific individuals making those decisions are not important.
Fly4You teaches how this decision-making process can be better organized and what solution cascade can be used to achieve it. Waiting too long for a decision slows things down and ramps up the pressure on your teams. Again, it is about recognizing the telltale signs that something isn’t working. Acknowledging this is part of the learning process!
- How can Fly4You help organizations identify the bottlenecks within their scaling approach?
One of the common bottlenecks that organizations face concerns large projects that are not broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces. The game identifies these monolithic projects where prioritization is difficult. It enables teams to experience this challenge – where everyone wants to do everything at once – and helps pre-empt (and prevent) a traffic jam.
Another bottleneck is that development teams are too interconnected. This makes it difficult for those teams to work independently to create software and value for the customer. A lack of autonomy means teams are always having to ask other stakeholders for approval before making a change.
Within Fly4You, teams are given a clear vision of how to service customers. You carry out planning events in miniature to understand exactly how a project will work. It helps organizations to break down resistance and adapt to new ways of working. Each individual has a different role in the simulation to see what is necessary and what isn’t so everything is geared towards creating value.
When an organization grows larger, the question arises of how to manage the fragmentation of activities and services alongside the creation of new value streams. The Fly4You game provides guidance for this. There will always be bottlenecks, but the aim is to minimize them.
Conclusion: Why doing is the best way of learning
In Fly4You, you will experience crucial tips and tricks to avoid failure in your own scaling projects.
The best ways of dealing with delays, changing customer demands, feedback, and other day-to-day challenges (while still delivering results rapidly and without errors) are all touched upon.
Altogether, the game focuses on several aspects of the SAFe framework, such as:
- How to involve the entire business in your transformation programs
- How to transfer strategy into a shared and realistic plan for execution
- How to manage multiple development teams during the execution phase
Come and experience how the Fly4You simulation can help your organization gain more value from your scaling (SAFe®) programs.