Recently I received two days of training for the Scaled Agile Framework, to pass the exam, I've read most of the articles on the website, and have done these practices on Udemy, (Sorry, Course ID 5271208 is no longer available. Try to find any practices from internet and do them), which I surely recommend to anyone who wants to pass the exam.
Since the framework has so many concepts that may confuse many people, I'd like to share my notes here, at least this list helped me to be clearer :)
Agile Manifesto
4 values of Agile
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Working software over comprehensive documentation.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
Responding to change over following a project plan.
12 Principles of Agile
1, Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
2, Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
3, Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4, Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5, Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
6, The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
7, Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8, Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9, Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10, Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential.
11, The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
12, At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.10 SAFe Lean-Agile principles
1, Take an economic view
Deliver early and often.
Apply an economic framework.
2, Apply system thinking
Short board principle. Intentional design.
Develop of a value strem. Feature request, define, build, validate, release, new increment of value.
3, Assume variability, preserve options
Leave the design options open as long as possible, and at the same time produce more optimal technical and economic outcomes.
Delaying decisions to the last responsible moment.
4, Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
Plan, do, check, adjust learning cycle, get fast feedback.
At the same time, there is regular synchronization between the different learning cycles in order to adjust the direction.
5, Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
PI system demo to deliver objective metrics on progress, product, and process.
6, Make value flow without interruptions
Delivering a continuous flow of value to the customer in the shortest sustainable lead time.
7, Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning
8, Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
9, Decentralize decision-making, but when the situation is urgent and can bring big value, be centralize.
10, Organize around value
- Reducing handoffs and delays between functional areas, reducing time to market.
- Bringing together all the research, development, deployment, and service personnel needed to offer whole product solutions.
- Providing intense customer focus across all disciplines for each product and service type.
- Measuring success via meaningful, outcome-based key performance indicators.
- And perhaps most importantly, the Network can rapidly reorganize as necessary to support emerging opportunities and competitive threats.5 Lean Thinking principles
1, Precisely specify value by product
2, Identify the value stream for each product
Includes the activities from recognizing an opportunity through release and validation.
3, Make value flow without interruptions
4, Let the customer pull value from the producer
5, Pursue perfection4 Core SAFe values
- Alignment: includes “use common terminology” and “understand your customer”.
- Transparency, take the failure as a learning opportunity.
- Respect for people.
- Relentless improvement.
4 Types of Enabler Stories
- Exploration — often referred to as a ‘spike’. The agile team performs an investigation to better understand available options and what work would be required to deliver a story planned for a later iteration.
- Architecture — design a suitable architecture that describes the components in a system and how they relate to each other.
- Infrastructure — perform some work on the solution infrastructure.
- Compliance — complete an action required for compliance purposes, such as providing the documentation required by a regulatory authority.
4 Types of team topologies
Team topologies provide insights on organizing people around four fundamental ‘team topologies’:
- Stream-aligned.
- Complicated subsystem.
- Platform.
- Enabling teams.
3 Key Components of a Feature
- Phrase — a brief description of the feature.
- Benefits hypothesis — a statement, which can be validated, about the benefits of the feature.
- Acceptance criteria — added until the members of the agile teams, who will deliver this feature, have sufficient understanding of the requirement to be able to release the feature. Acceptance criteria also include any applicable non-functional requirements.
PI
PI planning activities
- During the draft plan review: ART PI risks are one element that teams present, these risks include technical challenges, dependencies on external teams or systems, resource constraints, or any potential obstacles during the PI.
- During team breakout session: Stories written and sequenced.
- Business Owners assign business value to PI Objectives.
- During the management review and problem-solving meeting: planning adjustments are agreed upon.
- PI confidence vote.
- The final plan review: BO has been asked to accept the plans, then it’s ready to be processed with the implementation of the PI.
3 Parts of INSPECT & ADAPT
- PI System Demo.
- Quantitative and qualitative measurement.
- Retrospective and problem-solving workshop.
4 Continuous Delivery pipeline
Purpose: to deliver new functionality more frequently than with traditional processes. This approach enables faster feedback loops, facilitates more rapid iteration and experimentation, and helps organizations to quickly respond to user needs and market demands.
Represents the workflow, activities, and automation needed to deliver new functionality more frequently.
4 components:
- Continuous Exploration: focus on creating alignment on what needs to be built. Focuses on enabling the organization to deliver value aligned with business needs.
- Continuous Integration: taking features and ART backlog and implementing them, focusing on getting fast feedback on small changes.
- Continuous deployment: from staging to production environment. Focuses on getting to production early for verification. Deploy, verify, monitor, and respond are all activities of this component.
- Release on demand: follow market timing as it’s optimal.
7 Core Competencies of SAFe
- Organizational Agility.
- Lean Portfolio Management.
- Enterprise Solution Delivery.
- Agile Product Delivery.
- Team and Technical Agility.
- Continuous Learning Culture.
- Lean-Agile Leadership.
Agile product delivery includes customer centricity and design thinking dimension.
Team and technical agility helps drive agile quality practices.
5 Basic agile quality practice
1, Shift learning left
2, Pairing and peer review
3, Collective ownership and T-shaped skills
4, Artifact standards and definition of done
5, Workflow automation5 Agile software development quality practices
1, Continuous integration
2, Test-first practices
3, Refactoring
4, Continuous delivery
5, Agile architecture8 Flow accelerators
1, Visualize and limit WIP, raise visibility of effects outside of ART control
2, Address bottlenecks
3, Minimize handoffs and dependencies
4, Get faster feedback
5, Work in smaller batches
6, Reduce queue length
7, Optimize time "in the zone"
8, Remediate legacy policies and practices
Measuring the flow:
- Flow Distribution is a measure of the proportion of work items by type in a system.
- Flow Velocity measures the number of completed work items over a time period.
- Flow Time is a measure of the time elapsed from start to completion for a given work item.
- Flow Load is a measure of the number of work items currently in progress (active or waiting).
- Flow Efficiency is the ratio of the total time spent in value-added work activities divided by the total flow time.
- Flow Predictability is a measure of how consistently teams, ARTs, and portfolios are able to meet their commitments.5 Portfolios
1, Portfolio canvas: takes strategic themes as input, SWOT, TOWS.
Brings structure to analyse and decision around epic.
2, Portfolio kanban: brings structure to analysis and decision making around Epics
3, Portfolio vision: takes strategic themes as input, a method for aligning to the product direction
4, Portfolio backlog: a Kanban system that is used to capture and manage the business and enabler epics.
5, Portfolio epic: An Epic is a significant solution development initiative.
Due to their considerable scope and impact, epics require the definition of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and approval by Lean Portfolio Management (LPM).CALMR approach to DevOp
Culture, Automation, Lean Flow, Measurement, and Recovery (CALMR).