SAFe-Agilist SAFe 6 Agilist - Leading SAFe (SA) (6.0) Question and Answers

This is how SAFe describes Customer Centricity. Customer Centricity is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. Customer Centricity means putting the customer at the center of everything the enterprise does, and understanding their needs, desires, and problems deeply. Customer Centricity also means adopting a mindset that focuses on observing and learning from customer behaviors that produce the best innovations, rather than relying on assumptions or opinions. Customer Centricity helps enterprises deliver solutions that delight their customers and achieve market differentiation. References: Customer Centricity

The reason why business owners assign business value to team PI objectives is to empower teams to make decisions around work. Business value is a relative measure of the importance of a work item or an outcome to the business. Team PI objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals that reflect the value that each team intends to deliver in a PI. Business owners assign business value points to each team PI objective based on their alignment with the program vision and objectives. This helps teams prioritize their work, balance their capacity, negotiate dependencies, and make trade-offs based on value delivery. References: PI Planning, Business Owners

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Apply SAFe Principles, this principle is the first Lean-Agile Principle and it describes how to make decisions based on economics1. One of the practices essential to achieving optimum economic outcomes is to deliver early and often, which means moving new system features through the development value stream as quickly as possible1. This practice has a direct economic benefit, as it enables faster feedback, higher value, and lower risk1. You can read more about this principle and practice in this article, under the section “Deliver early and often”.

The workbook clearly outlines:

"Business Owners assign business value (BV) scores to PI Objectives from 1 (low) to 10 (high) after negotiation. These scores help teams understand what is most important to the business."

Source: SAFe Workbook, PI Planning Simulation Section

Restoring the speed and innovation of the entrepreneurial network while leveraging the stability of the hierarchical system is a benefit of adopting a dual operating system. A dual operating system is a way of organizing an enterprise that combines two complementary structures: a traditional hierarchy that provides stability, alignment, and efficiency; and a network of empowered teams that provides speed, agility, and creativity. A dual operating system helps enterprises achieve organizational agility, which is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. References: Organizational Agility, Dual Operating System

The next step for an epic with a completed Lean business case in the analyzing step of the Portfolio Kanban is to move it to the ready state if it receives a ‘go’ decision from Lean Portfolio Management. The analyzing step is where the epic hypothesis statement and the Lean business case are developed and validated. The Lean business case provides the economic justification, assumptions, risks, and potential benefits of the epic. The Lean Portfolio Management is the authority that reviews and approves the Lean business case and decides whether to fund and implement the epic or not. If the epic receives a ‘go’ decision, it moves to the ready state, where it waits for implementation capacity. If the epic receives a ‘no go’ decision, it is either deferred or cancelled. References: Portfolio Kanban, Lean Portfolio Management

The SAFe Workbook states:

“Centralize decisions that are infrequent, long-lasting, and have significant economies of scale.”

This includes strategic decisions like compensation strategy or technology platform choices.

Under the “Team and Technical Agility” competency, the workbook details:

“Built-in Quality ensures that every element and increment of the solution reflects quality standards throughout development.”

This competency supports Agile practices such as pairing, automation, and Definition of Done to embed quality at every level.

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Pages 3-13 to 3-15

The Lean Budget Guardrails defined in SAFe include "Guiding investments by horizon" as one of the main components. This ensures strategic alignment and responsible use of funds.

“Fund Value Streams; Lean budgets and Guardrails… Value Stream budgets adjusted dynamically…”

Uncommitted objectives are counted when calculating load. Load is a measure of how much work a team can realistically accomplish in a PI. Load is calculated by adding up the story points of all the committed and uncommitted objectives of a team. Committed objectives are SMART goals that reflect the value that each team intends to deliver in a PI with high confidence. Uncommitted objectives are stretch goals that reflect additional value that each team may be able to deliver in a PI if they have extra capacity or time. Uncommitted objectives are not included in the commitment or the business value scoring, but they are included in the load to account for their potential impact on team capacity. References: PI Planning, Team PI Objectives

The SAFe Implementation Roadmap provides an ordered sequence of transformation activities. After training leaders, the next step is:

“Identify Value Streams and ARTs – this step is essential to organizing around value, ensuring future trains are aligned with value delivery.”

SAFe’s core mission is to support enterprises in achieving Business Agility.

“Business Agility is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age… requires the entire organization to deliver innovative business solutions faster than the competition.”

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Page 1-21

Strategic Themes are highlighted in the workbook as:

“Differentiating business objectives that… Connect the portfolio to the Enterprise strategy.”

They provide context for budgeting and vision alignment across the organization.

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Page 5-13

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Lean Thinking, a value stream is triggered by a demand for some value, such as a new feature, a change request, or a defect fix1. A feature is a service that fulfills a stakeholder need2. Therefore, a feature request is a valid trigger for a value stream.

A spike request is a type of exploration enabler that addresses technical uncertainty or risk3. A user story request is a type of backlog item that represents an end user goal or function4. These are not triggers for a value stream, but rather work items that flow through a value stream.

The workbook lists multiple benefits of SAFe and Agile adoption including:

“Faster time-to-market” and “Ability to respond to changing priorities” are consistently shown as primary motivators in SAFe case studies and business agility metrics.

Trust is developed by:

“Delivering value consistently and predictably… Predictability builds confidence between teams and stakeholders.”

This is reinforced during PI Planning and Iteration Reviews.

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of PI Planning, the confidence vote is a process where:

Each team conducts a vote using their fingers (fist of five) or a digital tool for remote events

The teams vote on the confidence level for the objectives as a set, and if confidence is high enough, the aggregate set of objectives becomes the committed ART plan

The Release Train Engineer summarizes the team objectives into the ART PI objectives in a format suitable for management communication

https://scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/

ROAM is an acronym for Resolved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated. ROAM is a technique for categorizing and managing PI risks during the final plan review in the PI planning event. PI risks are potential events or conditions that may have a negative impact on the PI objectives or outcomes. ROAM helps teams address their PI risks by assigning them to one of four states: Resolved (the risk has been eliminated or is no longer relevant); Owned (the risk has been assigned to a person or a team who is responsible for managing it); Accepted (the risk has been acknowledged and its impact has been factored into the plan); Mitigated (the risk has been reduced or its likelihood has been lowered). References: PI Planning, Final Plan Review

Lean thinking is the type of thinking that allows the customer to pull value from the producer. Lean thinking is a philosophy and a set of principles and practices that aim to eliminate waste and optimize value delivery. Pull is a concept that means that nothing is built or delivered until there is a demand for it from the customer or the next process. Pull helps reduce overproduction, inventory, and waiting, and ensures that only valuable work is done. References: Thriving in the Digital Age, SAFe Principle #1

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

In SAFe’s Continuous Delivery Pipeline, the practice of separating deployment from release allows organizations to:

Deploy code to production-like environments frequently

Test features safely in production without exposing them to end users

Use techniques like feature toggles, dark launches, canary releases

Release to customers when business conditions are right

This means the main benefit is that it enables testing in a production environment, even before the actual release.

(Source: Scaled Agile Framework – Release on Demand)

The four SAFe Core Values listed in the workbook are:

Alignment

Transparency

Respect for People

Relentless Improvement

“Transparency: Create a trust-based environment, communicate directly, turn mistakes into learning moments.”

“Relentless Improvement: Build a problem-solving culture, reflect and adapt frequently.”

The SAFe House of Lean is based on:

“Goal: Value in the shortest sustainable lead time, with the best quality and people morale.”

This guides decisions and continuous improvement.

In the workbook’s PI Planning agenda:

"After the draft plan review, the RTE facilitates a management review and problem-solving meeting with Business Owners, Product Management, and other stakeholders. Here, capacity and load adjustments, scope changes, and planning adjustments are agreed upon."

Source: Workbook, PI Planning Module, Page 4-70

SAFe emphasizes:

“Separate deploy to production from release… This enables testing in production before exposing new functionality and makes the timing of the release a business decision.”

This approach supports business agility by decoupling technical readiness from market timing.

Source: Workbook, Continuous Deployment, Page 4-86

The workbook details:

“At the end of PI Planning, teams vote on confidence using the Fist of Five method. A score of 3 or above signals commitment.”

The workbook defines the Enabling team as:

“Organized to assist other teams with specialized capabilities and help them become proficient in new technologies.”

This definition is found under SAFe’s use of “Team Topologies.”

Source: Workbook, Page 3-21