Business Process Architecture in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe Framework) and where is Six Sigma and Lean ?

I read one of the Guidance Articles on the Safe framework website yesterday that describes Seven Principals of Agile Architecture that have proven to be effective in re-legitimizing the role of architecture, and by implication the System and Enterprise Architect in Agile at scale: Principles of Agile Architecture

Following on from that, by chance I ended up having a coffee with a Six Sigma Expert from our BPI team and we talked around the subject.  Strangely we spent the first few minutes trying to find a common point of reference as whenever I mentioned Enterprise Architect he had visions of a Business Process Architect, and I meant and Enterprise Solution Architect.

Once we got over that hurdle we came to the conclusion that actually, the concepts of intentional architecture and emerging architecture in the business process space seem to be somewhat overlooked or underplayed in the SAFe framework (current version 2.5) and that ultimately the work of the business analysts in requirements capture and backlog creation seem somehow to be anticipated to fill this gap.  I am not convinced; and the more time I spend looking at Lean and Six Sigma I think there is a chapter yet to be written in the SAFe framework to cater for this.

I will try and get hold of Dean Leffingwell or his colleagues and see if there is some collaborative work that can be done in this space (unless of course its already in hand) as I think there is an opportunity here to really tie the Business Process Architecture to the Solution Architecture within the Framework.

Agile SAFe Framework - Agile Release Train Planning (ART) number 2. Largest in the UK (again)

Today was the end of the second Release Train Planning event to mark the start of the next 3 months worth of development within the Business.  This time we had two hundred and seventy people on the go, so seventy up on last time. still the biggest in the UK from all we are told.

This time round it was a bit slicker in the execution, with some truly excellent contributions at the start to give some context and to re-cap on the success and challenges of the last 3 months plus a bit of humour and a surprise or two along the way to keep spirits up.

I was again facilitating for the two days, this time working with one of the teams on a Supply Chain initiative.  The afternoon of Day 1 saw us reviewing a draft story set with our new product owner which sadly descended into a debate as to whether the story set was actually viable at all.  In the spirit of agile, we broke off and put the developers back into the "heartbeat" processes of the Safe ART and then four of us spent two hours with a whiteboard doing some rough and ready business analysis to get to the bottom of the actual requirement.

Day 2 had the four of us meeting up at 7.30am to write up a new set of stories from the work the afternoon before, and then we were able to re-engage the development team properly in the planning breakout session and get the whole thing planned out properly into the next six iterations (I know Dean Leffingwell suggests 4 iterations, but we're doing 6 per release train here).  Not the most perfect of ART planning days for us, but actually we got the right result and a good team confidence score in to the mix also, so all is well that ends well.

Now we just have to deliver what we committed to !

Agile SAFe Training - the Facilitation bit.

Well I have been a bit busy of late being further trained up in the Scaled Agile Framework and also helping facilitate at the first UK SAFe Release Train Planning.  This event was also the largest SAFe Release Train planning event to be held in the World as of March 2013 with about 200 participants, and we are doing it all again in June.

We are being helped along the journey by Rally Software who have flown in consultants and trainers to help us up the SAFe "mountain" and the uptake and commitment by the teams inside the company has been impressive.

One such bit of help that Rally gave last week was a two day course in facilitation.  Now I don't think I'm too bad at facilitating but equally I know there are better people than me at it so an opportunity to pick up some new tips and techniques was a bonus so I enrolled.

I have to say that having done the course I now realise there is a bit of an Art to good facilitation and I learned a lot about the way to structure a productive workshop, how to prep, how to open it and more importantly how to close it.  There were practical exercises across both days and we all took away new skills that we put into practice immediately in the workplace.

Laura Burke - one of the Rally trainers on the Course

Ironically I had facilitated a retrospective a week earlier and been given a "Thank You" card for a "Brilliant retrospective" - now with hindsight and what I learned on the course I realise I could have done better, but that's all part of life learning.

What was clear from the course was that the larger you scale any Agile framework in any company, the more "value" you need to get from your meetings and workshops. There isn't the time to get groups of people together to go over the same points yet reach no conclusion, and ultimately if you are leaving a meeting without a decent set of actionable items or decisions, why did you have the meeting in the first place?

More on the Scaled Agile Framework to follow.