SAFe entities
Summarize
Summary of SAFe Entities
This content discusses various SAFe entities essential for effectively planning, tracking, and delivering software products within the SAFe framework. Understanding these entities helps customers implement Agile methodologies more efficiently in their organizations.
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Key Features
- Epic: The largest unit of work in SAFe, capturing business hypotheses and prioritized using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) for optimal value delivery. Epics are broken down into features.
- Feature: A smaller, implementable unit that must be completed within a program increment. Features are prioritized in the ART backlog and further decomposed into user stories.
- Story: A concise statement of product requirements or business cases, designed to be completed in a single sprint. Effort is estimated in story points, reflecting the level of complexity.
- Agile Release Train (ART): A collection of teams working collaboratively towards a shared solution.
- Program Increment (PI): A set timeframe (typically 8-12 weeks) during which ART teams collaborate to achieve their goals, similar to Agile sprints.
- SAFe Team: An autonomous, cross-functional team created to achieve common objectives, with specific roles defined for team creation and member management.
Key Outcomes
Using SAFe entities allows customers to:
- Efficiently manage large projects by decomposing work into manageable units (epics, features, stories).
- Enhance collaboration across teams via the Agile Release Train model.
- Deliver incremental value through structured program increments and sprints.
- Create and manage SAFe teams effectively, ensuring the right skills are brought together for project success.
Learn about the various SAFe entities that are used to successfully plan, track, and deliver your software products.
- Epic
Epic in SAFe is the largest unit of work, which can be continuously worked through multiple program increments. Epic captures business hypotheses and is prioritized and assessed using the WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First is used to prioritize and sequence jobs to produce optimum business value) score.
An epic is further decomposed into features for implementation and delivery by SAFe ARTs.
- Feature
A SAFe feature is equivalent to an epic in Agile Development. It must be small enough for completion within a program increment cycle. It is prioritized and sequenced in an ART backlog based on its global ranking. A feature is further decomposed into user stories for implementation and delivery by SAFe teams.
- Story
A SAFe story is a brief statement encapsulating a product requirement or business case written in user-centric language. A story must be small enough for completion in one sprint. The estimated effort required to complete a story is measured in story points. More points are assigned to a story requiring more effort. Story points are arbitrary measurements of the effort (not necessarily the time) required to complete a story, based on the estimates from the SAFe team members.
- Agile Release Train
Agile Release Train (ART) comprises a set of teams working towards a single solution.
- Program Increment
A program increment is set period during which teams in an ART collaborate and produce to achieve agreed-upon goals. A program increment in SAFe is similar to a sprint in Agile Development, typically spanning 8–12 weeks. The most common form of program increment comprises four development sprints followed by one innovation and planning sprint.
- SAFe team
SAFe team is an autonomous, cross-functional team containing members possessing different skill-sets who work in collaboration to achieve a common goal.
A user with the safe_scrum_master or safe_art_user role can create a SAFe team. You can assign these teams to SAFe work items such as stories, epics, and features.
Once a SAFe team is created, you can add members to it.- New customers: System administrator can add members to the team.
- Existing customers: A user with the safe_scrum_master or safe_art_user role can
add members to your SAFe team.Note:
You can restrict this function just to the system administrator by creating the safe.disallow_scrum_add_group_member property and setting it to true.
For information on how to create a property, see Add a system property.
- Sprint
Program Increments in SAFe are further segmented into sprints for teams involved in it, and are measured in terms of weeks.