SAFe: The fundamentals of Scaled Agile Framework

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is built upon ten guiding principles that encourage lean-agile thinking across the entire organization. These principles are designed not only to shift the mindset of leadership but to empower everyone—from executives to team members of the enterprises—by fostering lean-agile decision-making. 

Each principle plays a crucial role in transforming traditional waterfall thinking into more dynamic, efficient mindsets.

Principle 1: Take an economic view

Everything in SAFe Agile must make economical sense. This principle is inspired by the works of Donald Reinertsen on product development flow and emphasizes the need for every individual in the decision-making chain to understand the economic consequences of delays and choices. It’s not just about delivering early or frequently—SAFe encourages organizations to sequence work in a way that delivers the most value while balancing cost and time.

This means prioritizing jobs for maximum economic benefit, weighing trade-offs in decision-making, and ensuring that the organization operates within lean budgets. By incorporating these economic principles, companies can make decisions that optimize the entire value stream and minimize costly delays.

Principle 2: Apply systems thinking

There are 3 areas that SAFe practitioners apply systems thinking to: the solution, the enterprise building it, and the value streams.

1. Solutions: These can be products, services, or systems you are building. If you are developing large solutions with interconnected components, each team member must understand how their part fits into the bigger picture.
2. Enterprise: People, processes, and management structures must be aligned to optimize the way work is performed. The best practice here is breaking down silos, encouraging cross-functional teams, and creating new working agreements with suppliers and clients.
3. Value Streams: Understanding how value flows from concept to cash is essential to maximizing efficiency. Leaders must focus on optimizing the value stream to ensure a steady, value-driven flow across functional and organizational boundaries.

By adopting this holistic perspective, organizations can ensure that each part of the system supports the others, creating a cohesive, value-driven enterprise.

Principle 3: Assume variability, preserve options

The principle of assuming variability addresses the inherent uncertainty in system and software design. By keeping multiple design options open for as long as possible—also known as set-based design—teams can make more informed decisions as the project progresses. This approach reduces the risk of failure by enabling teams to gather empirical data and eliminate less effective choices over time.

Learning milestones are built into this principle to guide decision-making. The more a team learns, the more design options they can discard, ultimately converging on the best solution. This structured approach to handling variability helps teams navigate uncertainty and achieve better outcomes for the customer.

Principle 4: Build incrementally with fast integrated learning cycles

This principle underscores the significance of delivering value incrementally through rapid, integrated learning cycles. Rather than developing solutions in isolation and testing at the end, SAFe encourages regular integration points where all components are tested within the broader system. This method helps teams detect issues early and make necessary adjustments along the way.

By using Walter A. Shewhart’s plan-do-check-adjust (PDCA) cycle, teams continuously refine their work through rapid feedback loops. This not only reduces risk but also accelerates learning, enabling teams to build solutions that are both functional and feasible.

Principle 5: Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems

An actual working system is always better for demonstration than even the most detailed documents or superficial evaluation of success. When teams use a working system as a model, they can make better decisions and plan their milestones accordingly. Milestone examples include design, development, and testing. Stakeholders are required to regularly input new insights to ensure strong potential for ROI.

Principle 6: Visualize and limit Work in Process (WIP), reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths

Limiting work in process is a great way for stakeholders to see how work is done.

The three elements of this principes: Visualize and limit Work in Process (WIP), reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths are methods for maximizing throughput and accelerating value delivery—or, in other words, implementing “flow.”.

In SAFe, this means limiting the overlapping work (by using Kanban boards), the complexity of each work (by separating tasks into small batches), and the total amount of work processed at a given time (by increasing the processing rate).

Principle 7: Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning

In SAFe, it is necessary to apply cadence through sprints and iterations. When cadences are created for all matters, it becomes easier to minimize complexity, manage uncertainty, develop muscle memory, enforce quality, and encourage collaboration. 

By synchronizing activities across multiple domains, SAFe ensures that teams are working in lockstep, like cogs in a machine. Cross-domain planning enables different teams to coordinate their efforts, ensuring that they are aligned with the organization’s broader goals and adapting to new information as it becomes available.

Principle 8: Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers

This principle is inspired by thought leaders such as Peter Drucker and Daniel Pink, who emphasized the importance of autonomy, mastery, and purpose in motivating knowledge workers. SAFe encourages leaders to adopt a servant-leadership style, where they focus on empowering teams rather than controlling them.

When organizations tap into the intrinsic motivation of their employees, they can ignite creativity, encourage innovation, and boost overall performance. Leaders should act as coaches and mentors, guiding teams toward continuous improvement while granting them the autonomy to make decisions that propel progress.

Principle 9: Decentralize decision making

In large organizations, centralized decision-making often results in delays and inefficiencies. Decentralizing decision-making enables teams to act more autonomously, reducing bottlenecks and speeding up the workflow. Leaders should reserve their decision-making authority for strategic issues and empower teams to make informed choices on day-to-day matters.

This approach not only accelerates the delivery of value but also fosters a culture of accountability and ownership, where teams are motivated to take responsibility for their work and make decisions that align with organizational goals.

Principle 10: Organize around value

With the organizational patterns offered by SAFe, enterprises can proactively produce viable deliverables and adapt to changing customer demands. Organizing around value allows you to add structure to the Agile environment and enhance value delivery.