Adopting Lean-Agile ways of working helps your teams deliver value at the speed of change. It embeds new mindsets, principles and practices to create more creative, longer-lasting and stable teams. It empowers people to respond, adapt, learn and continuously improve the value they deliver to customers. It creates an environment for success.

Helping enterprises change the way they work requires a proven Lean-Agile framework and the commitment of leadership to apply, support and sustain it at scale.

We use the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) to help enterprises work better. It’s the world’s most widely-used framework, rigorous yet adaptable, and it’s 100% based on Lean principles. SAFe® is a framework, not ‘Agile by numbers’ and, as such, it allows itself to be ‘right-sized’ to your organisation.

SAFE® is an extensive knowledge base of proven principles, values, desired mindsets, competencies and practices. It brings together all the new ways of working – Lean, Agile, Design Thinking and DevOps – and scales beyond IT to encompass the whole enterprise. The newest version of SAFe® 6.0 was launched in March 2023 with a focus on accelerating the flow of value to customers.

SAFe® has the most comprehensive set of training courses of any framework and these form the foundations for implementation. Over 660,000 people worldwide have been trained. We’re proud – as a Scaled Agile Gold Partner – to have trained more in New Zealand than any other provider.

TAKE ME TO COURSES

As the nation’s leading SAFe® practice, we have implemented SAFe® in dozens of organisations. Our experience tells us what works at New Zealand scale. The foundation Configuration of SAFe® 6.0 is called Essential SAFe®. Every organisation must start at that level and, for the vast majority of New Zealand organisations, there is no need to go further. (Don’t be put off by the complex-looking FULL SAFe® Configuration picture which, unfortunately, seems to be most people’s first acquaintance with SAFe®).

Emma Frances Logan, Unsplash

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We’ve identified four clear factors that will help you take your teams on a successful SAFe® journey. Each asks questions of the enterprise:

A purpose for change
What are you trying to achieve, how are people aligned to this, how will this impact your business? In short… what’s the big picture and the story you tell?

A central role for leadership
What is the role of leadership in the change? What behaviours are expected of leaders ‘to do by example’? How will they ensure that others maintain commitment to – and deliver – change?

Developing the ability to work in complex, adaptive systems
How can individuals and teams work confidently, collaboratively and effectively in the new customer-centric environments created by Lean-Agile transformation?

Sustaining transformation – paying attention to the individual
How do you align the intrinsic motivations of people to the purpose of change, get them onboard, turn capability into competency and give them the skills to adapt to a new and complex world? (Frameworks tend to ignore the individual!).