SAFe entities
Summarize
Summary of SAFe Entities in Strategic Portfolio Management
This document provides an overview of key SAFe entities essential for planning, tracking, and delivering software products within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Understanding these entities helps teams effectively manage workflows and enhance productivity in their Agile Release Trains (ARTs).
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Key Features
- Epic: The largest unit of work capturing business hypotheses, prioritized using the Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) score, and broken down into features for implementation.
- Feature: A smaller unit of work derived from an epic, suitable for completion within a program increment, which is further decomposed into user stories.
- Story: A concise, user-centric requirement defined to be completed within a single sprint, estimated in story points representing effort rather than time.
- Agile Release Train (ART): A group of teams collaborating towards a common solution.
- Program Increment (PI): A defined period (8-12 weeks) during which ARTs deliver incremental value, comprising multiple development sprints and an innovation sprint.
- SAFe Team: An autonomous, cross-functional team working collaboratively to achieve common goals, created by users with specific roles.
Key Outcomes
By utilizing these SAFe entities, teams can:
- Structure and prioritize work effectively to maximize business value.
- Ensure alignment among teams through the collaborative framework of ARTs.
- Deliver incremental improvements and adapt to changing requirements within defined timeframes.
- Enhance communication and efficiency by clearly defining roles and responsibilities within SAFe teams.
New and existing customers can create and manage these entities effectively, facilitating streamlined processes and successful project outcomes within the SAFe framework.
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.