The Role of SAFe Core Values in Driving Business Agility

What drives the success of Agile organizations and ensures consistent quality delivery? One answer could be SAFe core values. These form the foundation for cohesive collaboration, efficient workflows, and outcomes that align with business goals.

If you are curious about the role and significance of SAFe core values, you have come to the right place. 

In this blog post, we will explore what SAFe core values truly mean; the common challenges organizations face when adopting these values, their solutions, and more. 

So, let’s get started

What Is SAFe?

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) is a structured approach developed by Scaled Agile, Inc.  to help large organizations adopt, implement, and scale Agile methodologies efficiently. This system is useful for aligning multiple teams and extending Agile best practices across the enterprise.

The Problem with Traditional Agile

Traditional Agile methods work well for smaller teams but face challenges when applied to large enterprises. Agile principles underline collaboration and flexibility, but scaling these practices across multiple cross-functional teams with varying objectives introduces complexities. 

These include fragmented communication, delayed program execution, and inconsistent delivery of high-quality products. The dreadful results are inefficient processes and missed business objectives.

SAFe addresses these gaps by providing a clear framework for scaling Agile across your organization. You get easier team alignment, yes. More importantly, you can build a culture of collaboration more effectively, which supports continuous improvement. 

But before we get into those benefits, let’s answer this question:

What Are SAFe Core Values?

The four core values of SAFe – alignment, transparency, respect for people, and relentless improvement (© Scaled Agile, Inc.) – represent the foundational beliefs that are key to SAFe’s effectiveness. In this section, we will explore each value in detail.

1. Alignment 

Alignment is critical in SAFe because it keeps your teams, stakeholders, and business units focused on common goals. It bridges the gap between high-level business strategy and day-to-day execution by clarifying objectives at every level (portfolio, program, and team).

2. Built-In Quality

Built-in quality ensures that quality is integrated into every stage of the software development lifecycle to prevent defects and maintain high standards. As a result, your team can minimize rework and reduce delays. The goal is to have faster deliveries by eliminating time-consuming fixes downstream. 

To achieve built-in quality, your team must integrate monitoring and optimization practices into their workflows. For example, tracking DORA, SPACE, and flow metrics is a solid way to identify inefficiencies, enhance employee well-being, and optimize processes.

3. Transparency

Transparency is vital for building trust and improving collaboration. It’s what makes strategic decisions across teams possible. When teams and leaders clearly see progress, challenges, and outcomes, they can align their efforts more effectively with organizational objectives.

Axify supports transparency by offering real-time visibility into team progress through three distinct views of its dashboards:

• Team level 
• Group of teams 
• Organizational level 

These views allow stakeholders to monitor individual team performance, assess cross-team alignment, and track how collective efforts contribute to strategic goals.

4. Program Execution

Program execution is not just finishing work. It implies that your teams and organization can genuinely ensure continuous value delivery by translating strategic objectives into actionable deliverables. Picking the right tools is crucial to ensure that kind of efficient execution. 

Axify makes program execution easier through two major features: 

• Software delivery forecasting tool: We use an intelligent algorithm to analyze historical project data and predict delivery dates precisely. This feature offers real-time visual projections and workload forecasting. This allows your teams to adjust deadlines, allocate resources effectively, and confidently plan deployments. 

• Value Stream Mapping (VSM): VSM improves program execution because you have a comprehensive visualization of the entire development process. This visibility helps you address inefficiencies quickly and focus on activities that generate value. Furthermore, it leverages industry benchmarks to suggest improvements.

Why Are SAFe Core Values Important?

SAFe core values are important for a lot of reasons, including: 

• Enhanced collaboration between teams 
• Improved team morale 
• Faster delivery without compromises on quality 
• Reduced miscommunication and misaligned objectives 
• Proactive issue resolution

Axify’s tools align with these principles to help your teams achieve the desirable outcomes. The Team Well-Being Tracker, for instance, supports alignment by monitoring factors like psychological safety, motivation, and inclusion.

In addition, the process optimization metrics you see in Axify help you spot workflow inefficiencies. Getting rid of them is essential to scale delivery speed and process quality.

How to Support the Agile Release Train

Supporting an Agile Release Train (ART) goes beyond simply implementing Agile practices. It requires a comprehensive strategy that integrates:

• Governance: Provides the structure and decision-making framework to align business objectives with Agile execution. 
• Portfolio management: Ensures that resources, initiatives, and value streams are prioritized and optimized to keep ART efforts focused and strategically aligned.
• Performance tracking: Provides real-time visibility into how well the ART is functioning so that teams can make data-driven decisions.

Challenges to Implement SAFe Core Values

Implementing SAFe core values comes with challenges. However, the good news is that it is easy to address them proactively. Let’s have a look: 

1. Leadership Buy-In

Without top-level commitment, teams don’t have the alignment and resources to execute Agile practices. Leaders ought to have clear visibility into SAFe’s impact to support the transformation fully. 

To address this challenge, Axify offers real-time metrics through which leaders can have a birds-eye view of every critical parameter, including: 

2. Knowledge Gaps

Knowledge gaps among teams and stakeholders can significantly slow down SAFe adoption. Proper training and onboarding are essential to bridge these gaps and ensure all team members understand the framework’s principles and practices. 

Some practical approaches to tackle this challenge include: 

• Enroll team members in SAFe certification courses like SAFe Agilist, SAFe Scrum Master, or SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager to build foundational knowledge.
• Tailor training sessions to specific roles. Each team member should understand their responsibilities within the SAFe framework.
• Conduct workshops that simulate SAFe processes, such as PI (Program Increment) planning, to give teams hands-on experience.

3. Habit Changes

Transitioning from traditional workflows to an Agile development mindset is a significant challenge during SAFe adoption. Teams accustomed to established routines may resist the changes or struggle to adapt to new practices. 

To overcome this problem, you must: 

• Introduce the practice of SAFe gradually so your teams can adapt without feeling overwhelmed.
• Address morale, motivation, and psychological safety using tools like Axify’s Team Well-Being Tracker to create a trust-based environment where teams feel confident embracing new workflows.
• Measure productivity because it provides your teams with tangible evidence of progress, builds confidence in the new workflows, and reinforces the importance of SAFe implementation.

SAFe Core Values Example

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is a solid example of how Axify helps teams in a SAFe context.

1. Alignment and Transparency

Axify’s model gave BDC a uniform view of their metrics. They got data standardization but remained flexible for each team’s unique processes. This ensured alignment – BDC kept teams focused on shared goals – and transparency by providing all stakeholders with consistent, real-time visibility into workflows.

2. Built-In Quality 

Continuous inspection, regular monitoring of DORA metrics, and leveraging Value Stream Mapping contributed to embedding quality into every stage of the development process. With this proactive approach, BDC teams ensured sustained progress and performance with reduced errors and delays. 

3. Program Execution

BDC tracked all the essential engineering metrics using Axify. That’s how they effectively identified bottlenecks in their delivery process. This capability allowed them to make informed decisions, streamline workflows, and achieve faster, more reliable releases. For example, they streamlined pre-development activities and QA processes. They also implemented WIP limits and smaller features and user stories.

Results

With all these SAFe principles, two of the bank’s software development teams achieved a 24% increase in team capacity, recurring annual productivity gains of $700,000, and 10x ROI.

Furthermore, Axify also helped BDC reduce pre-development time by up to 74%, cut quality control duration by up to 81%, and save up to 13% of time invested in fixing bugs. Most notably, BDC doubled its delivery speed.

SAFe Core Values Competencies

SAFe core competencies define the critical skills and capabilities that your organization must develop to achieve business agility. 

We’ll review them below.

Let’s explore them in detail: 

1. Lean-Agile Leadership

Lean-Agile leadership involves cultivating a mindset rooted in Lean thinking and Agile principles. As we said above, leaders in your organization are responsible for shaping a culture that aligns teams with strategic goals. This involves providing clear direction while empowering them to make informed decisions.

Leaders support change by modeling behaviors that encourage continuous improvement. They prioritize systems thinking, which helps understand how value flows through the organization. This competency also focuses on the need for decentralized decision-making so your teams can act quickly and deliver value without delays.

2. Team and Technical Agility

Team and technical agility is how Agile teams deliver high-quality products because you’re ensuring they’re cross-functional and skilled in technical practices such as:

• Test-driven development
• Continuous integration
• Automated testing

Agility at the team level supports iterative development cycles, which have a top benefit: they ensure regular feedback and, thus, alignment with customer needs. You also need a strong foundation in technology, combined with a culture of collaboration, to maintain built-in quality standards and reduce the risk of defects and delays.

3. DevOps and Release on Demand

DevOps eliminates silos between your teams, so it creates streamlined workflows that enhance overall productivity. This approach also ensures software is built, tested, and deployed efficiently, with minimal manual intervention. As you can see, this is great for cycle time reduction from concept to delivery.

Release on demand complements DevOps by focusing on delivering features or products precisely when the market or customer is ready. The point is to establish a seamless pipeline that balances speed with high-quality business outcomes.

4. Business Solutions and Lean Systems Engineering

The business solutions and lean systems engineering competency focuses on designing and delivering complex projects. These projects should meet both business objectives and customer needs. By applying Lean principles to traditional systems engineering practices, you can ensure efficiency, scalability, and strategic alignment. 

This SAFe competency is critical if your organization aims to manage complexity while delivering high-quality products that provide tangible value.

5. Lean Portfolio Management

Lean portfolio management provides a structured approach to aligning strategy with execution. It’s basically about bridging the gap between organizational goals and practical implementation. One result is you can allocate resources effectively. After all, you want to ensure your investments are directed toward initiatives supporting key business objectives. 

The core components of this competency include: 

• Continuous exploration: Teams proactively assess emerging opportunities and potential risks to stay ahead of market demands and challenges. 
• Informed, data-driven decision-making: Decisions are based on reliable data and insights, which reduce guesswork and align initiatives with strategic goals.
• Enhanced transparency: Stakeholders gain clear visibility into priorities and progress, promoting trust across all organizational levels.

6. Continuous Learning Culture

A continuous learning culture emphasizes the importance of ongoing skill development and innovation. It encourages teams and leaders to seek feedback, experiment with new ideas, and refine practices based on insights. This organizational culture views failure as a learning opportunity, not a setback.

Moreover, investing in learning opportunities, such as workshops, training sessions, and knowledge-sharing events, is the key to keeping your teams adaptable and well-prepared for future challenges.

In the long run, this is the kind of mindset you need to strengthen employee engagement and drive relentless improvement across your organization.

Implement SAFe Core Values with Axify

SAFe core values of alignment, built-in quality, transparency, and program execution form the foundation of the SAFe framework. They drive business agility and enable high-performing teams to deliver quality products efficiently. 

Looking for the best way to incorporate these values into your business? 

Axify can help with its tools like Team Well-Being Tracker, DORA metrics dashboard, Value Stream Mapping, Daily Digest Tool, and our other features. These will give you the insights you need to implement SAFe values successfully. And they’ll help you drive continuous improvement.

Ready to transform your Agile practices and achieve sustainable success? Book a demo with Axify today!