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Ammar is a SAFe release train engineer and Agile program manager at Vodafone Group, where he leads a multidisciplinary agile release train team of 43 engineers, designers, and product managers. He holds 10 current project management certifications—including Advanced Scrum Master, Scrum Product Owner, and SAFe Agilist—and has an MBA from ESLSCA Business School Paris.
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This article is part two of Toptal’s Agile scaling series, designed to guide project managers in their team expansion efforts. Read the first installment, “5 Agile Scaling Frameworks Compared: Which One Should You Use?” for an in-depth overview of the most popular options. In the final article in this series, “SAFe Case Studies: Transformation Notes From the Field,” Toptal experts and SAFe inventor Dean Leffingwell discuss scaled transitions.
As products grow and become more complex, so do the teams that produce them. When it’s time to scale, many companies transition from Scrum to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), a system that’s implemented at the enterprise level and allows businesses to manage multiple, complex products that require teams of teams to develop.
A Scrum master moving into a SAFe framework will step into an environment that is at once familiar and new. The artifacts, roles, and ceremonies are based on Scrum. But operating at a higher scale comes with some additional responsibilities, especially for Scrum masters who opt to move into the role of a release train engineer (RTE), a common trajectory. The RTE acts as the Scrum master of the entire release train. Instead of leading a Scrum team of nine to 11 people, RTEs become servant-leaders to teams of teams that straddle multiple departments, and they organize events of greater size and scope.
SAFe allows a company to apply Agile approaches, values, and principles across multiple teams. The resulting “team of teams” is known as the agile release train (ART). Individual teams continue to employ a Scrum master to do business as usual, while the Scrum master-like role on an ART is done by an RTE. The RTE applies the general mechanisms and governance of Scrum but at an organizational, rather than team, level. Other traditional team-level Scrum roles and artifacts change accordingly, too. For example, the ART “product owner” becomes a product manager; a “product backlog” becomes the program backlog; a “sprint backlog” is an iteration backlog; and the “product increment” is now the program increment (PI).
There are four configurations of SAFe—Essential, Large Solution, Portfolio, and Full—and the one you use depends on how extensively your company adopts the framework. The configurations allow implementation at multiple levels, ranging from several teams working together to full portfolio integration and enterprisewide business agility. But at every level, the goal remains to scale Agile and Scrum practices, not replace them.
Scrum masters working in a SAFe framework at the team level will find that their jobs are not significantly different. They will remain a servant-leader for an Agile team, responsible for coaching and education, removing impediments, and fostering an environment where team members feel safe to perform their best and continuously improve.
However, there will be some new responsibilities. A SAFe Scrum master supports the RTE in the PI planning event and in program execution, and represents their team in ART sync meetings. When there are impediments that are beyond the team’s capability to remove, the Scrum master escalates them to the RTE.
A Scrum master who decides to become an RTE will find that their role comes with decidedly more considerations. The ART may include teams that are new to you or new to Agile, like business analysis, hardware, or compliance. And because the higher configurations of SAFe include program or portfolio operations, management will be directly and regularly involved in ways they would not be in Scrum, making sure everything is aligned with enterprise- and/or portfolio-level goals.
The RTE is responsible for removing impediments that are beyond a single team’s capacity. They communicate with stakeholders and drive continuous improvement at the ART level. The RTE coaches not only teams but also the leaders of those teams, helping all levels of the ART move toward self-organization and self-management.
Just as a Scrum master facilitates team-level events, an RTE facilitates ART-level events—the PI planning, the ART sync, the system demo, and the inspect and adapt. As an RTE, you’ll be engaging with a wider variety of stakeholders than you were as a Scrum master and handling multiple teams with competing interests. There are more—and more varied—attendees at every event, and you need to align priorities and get buy-in for initiatives well in advance.
The PI planning event is an essential ceremony for SAFe, a gigantic two-day session to align the goals of all teams within the ART for the next eight to 12 weeks by creating the PI plan. It’s like a sprint planning event, but it spans multiple sprints across multiple teams.
Inputs
Outputs
The ART sync event is a weekly meeting where the RTE can gain insights into the teams’ progress and identify program risks and roadblocks. While by no means the only occasion for an RTE to evaluate impediments and determine whether they require escalation, it’s an important event that provides a regular venue for these matters to be raised.
Inputs
Outputs
The system demo is intended to showcase the full scope of work created during a preceding iteration. At this event, the product manager and their team show business owners and other stakeholders the ART’s integrated progress in its current form.
Input
Outputs
The inspect and adapt is a mega-retrospective session that takes place at the end of a PI. The session is divided into three parts:
Inputs
Output
The table below compares the SAFe events with their Scrum equivalents, and describes the frequency and execution of ceremonies at the enterprise level:
SAFe Event | Scrum Equivalent | Frequency | Description | Attendees |
---|---|---|---|---|
PI Planning | Sprint Planning | Every eight to 12 weeks | - This event aims to identify potential risks that the teams might face. - This event ensures alignment and garners commitment from attendees. | - Business owners - Product manager - Product owners - Entire agile release train - Scrum masters - RTE |
ART Sync | Daily Stand-up | Weekly or as needed | - This event aims to garner insights into the teams’ progress, as well as program risks and impediments. - Attendees hold discussions and highlight opportunities. | - Product manager - Product owners - Scrum masters - RTE |
System Demo | Sprint Review | At the end of every iteration | - This event is conducted to demonstrate to stakeholders what progress was made in the PI. | - Product manager - Product owners - Business owners - Scrum masters - RTE |
Inspect and Adapt | Sprint Retrospective | At the end of each PI | - This meeting is held at the end of each PI, allowing the team to evaluate the current status of the PI. - Attendees reflect on progress and identify improvements to backlog items with a structured problem-solving approach. | - All PI planning event participants |
The transition from Scrum to SAFe can be an intimidating one. Operating at a higher scale will always present new challenges and new ways of thinking about even the most familiar practices. If you choose to become an RTE, you’ll find that the job depends most on the skills you already have. An RTE is a change agent and a servant-leader, just like a Scrum master, and the job gives you the chance to perform this role at an enterprise level, elevating your skills alongside your products.
Read the next installment of Toptal’s Agile scaling series, “SAFe Case Studies: Transformation Notes From the Field.”
The Scrum master’s role in SAFe is similar to their role in Scrum. They act as servant-leader and change agent for a team of developers. The release train engineer, the scaled equivalent of the role, acts as Scrum master for the agile release train, a team of teams across multiple departments.
The release train engineer is responsible for facilitating the four SAFe ceremonies: PI planning, ART sync, system demo, and inspect and adapt.
There are four configurations of SAFe, depending on how extensively you want to adopt the framework. These configurations are Essential, Large Solution, Portfolio, and Full.
Cairo, Cairo Governorate, Egypt
November 2, 2021
Ammar is a SAFe release train engineer and Agile program manager at Vodafone Group, where he leads a multidisciplinary agile release train team of 43 engineers, designers, and product managers. He holds 10 current project management certifications—including Advanced Scrum Master, Scrum Product Owner, and SAFe Agilist—and has an MBA from ESLSCA Business School Paris.
PREVIOUSLY AT
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