At the 2018 Global SAFe Summit held in Washington, D.C. in October, I had the privilege of co-teaching the public launch of SAFe for Government at the 2018 Global SAFe summit alongside Dr. Steve Mayner, my long-time mentor. This course has been in the works for some time and having supported the Alpha and Beta courses and the exam content review, it was exciting to be a part of the launch.
The new SAFe for Government course focuses on the U.S. Federal Government. Anyone who has spent time working with Federal agencies knows that they have unique concerns and issues when it comes to adopting agile. The course was designed to bring together many leading ideas and practices around agile contracting, compliance, and governance. This benefits learners by providing tailored information and a more relevant course for practicing agile within the constraints of the Federal Government. Key learning objectives from this course include:
Transition government programs from traditional software and systems development models to Lean-Agile and DevOps mindset, principles, and practices using SAFe
Adapt technology strategy, budgeting and forecasting, acquisition, compliance, and governance processes to flow-based practices using emerging government guidelines
Organize government programs into one or more Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and execute in Program Increments (PIs)
Explore Large Solution coordination in a government and multi-vendor environment
Identify and internalize the mindset and leader behaviors essential to successful Lean-Agile transformation
Follow success patterns for SAFe implementations adapted to the government context
Build a preliminary outline of next steps to begin and/or accelerate the SAFe implementation in your program or agency
I particularly enjoyed leading several of the newly designed exercises as they truly focus on applied learning and how the student would use the information back in their organization. Other nice changes that I enjoyed in teaching the new course are the existing new exercises and new sections on transformational leadership. The changes range from subtle shortening of the general SAFe framework material to a completely revamped PI planning simulation, and these changes reflect Scaled Agile's approach to continual improvement and driving to a better learning experience for course attendees.
Genesis Consulting is excited to be a part of launching this new SAFe offering and bringing this new class to our agile colleagues in the Federal Government.
- Beth Hatter
Director of Agile Training