Over the last few years, I’ve worked extensively with a number of other professionals (including Drew Jemilo, Colin O’Neill, Alex Yakyma, Mauricio Zamora) in the implementation of a number of large enterprise lean|agile transformations. This collaboration has resulted in many back and forth discussions around implementation of the Scaled Agile Framework™. To date, this framework has been elaborated primarily in my books Agile Software Requirements, Scaling Software Agility, and blog).
Recently, we decided to formalize our collaboration with the intent of making the framework public-facing and more readily available to a larger audience, and we have also committed to developing certain extensions and enhancements to the framework that have presented themselves as the marketplace, agile enterprise maturity, and our thinking and experiences have evolved. To that end, we will offer the Scaled Agile Framework (SAF) as a “proven, publicly available, framework for applying Lean|Agile practices at enterprise scale, presented in a structured, interactive, web format.”
I am extremely happy to announce that this initiative has been formalized and we are now “in development!” Over the last 3 days, Drew, Colin, Mauricio, and Alex have been camped out with me here in Boulder, Colorado, USA for our first Release Planning session (see Alex’s fun post on the topic).
SAF Collaborators - (from left to right) Colin O’Neill, Alex Yakyma, Dean Leffingwell, Drew Jemilo, Mauricio Zamora, in front of the Flatirons, Boulder, Colorado, October 21, 2011.
One of our first orders of business was to establish our identity as a group (About Us), agree on a common purpose (Our Purpose), determine the position statement (Product Position Statement) for the framework, and define a Roadmap for the first few releases. We accomplished these objectives in our first face-to-face sprint; the results are highlighted below and more information can be found at scaledagileframework.com. For now, the website is just an “Anticipate” landing page with a few auxiliary pages. The roadmap posted there illustrates that the first planned public release will be December 21, 2011. (As agilists, we will, of course, make that date).
Feel free to subscribe on the Scaled Agile Framework site (or here) and watch the work in process unfold over the next few months.
And of course, comments are always welcome.
Regards,
— Dean
–Dean Leffingwell
Chief Methodologist, SAF Framework
— Mauricio, Drew, Colin, and Alex
Principal Contributors, SAF Framework
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Purpose
Through our collaboration, we hope the Scaled Agile Framework (SAF, pronounced “safe”) will:
- Enhance the competitiveness, productivity, and delivered quality of the software industry worldwide
- Help provide the business benefits of software agility to all software enterprises
- Increase motivation, empowerment, and humanity to software development practitioners everywhere
And we surely hope to build good business value along the way!
Scaled Agile Framework Position Statement
FOR software developers, practitioners, managers, executives, coaches, consultants, trainers, and agile working group team members
WHO are involved in planning and implementing Agile software development philosophies, principles, and practices at enterprise scale
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAF) is a proven, publicly available, framework for applying Lean|Agile practices at enterprise scale, presented in a structured and interactive web format.
UNLIKE proprietary methods promoted by product and consulting firms, or practices described in dozens of books
SAF is a synthesized, holistic, integrated, and summarized framework available to everyone in a readily accessible public-facing web site, including supporting resources.
Scaling Software Agility 