Scale smarter with Tempo for SAFe

The framework of choice for over 20,000 organizations, ranging from FedEx to CVS Health, the scaled agile framework (SAFe®) is perhaps the leading methodology for getting agile to succeed for enterprise companies.

However, making sense of SAFe and then actually implementing its principles is no simple task. It involves getting hundreds of different stakeholders and dozens of teams aligned across departments. 

The most common solution to this challenge is to look to technology to enable the collaboration and visibility required for successful implementation of SAFe. 

However, there is a problem: Most enterprise software solutions are too rigid, take too long to implement, and it can be a nightmare getting organization-wide adoption from teams not used to the tools.

According to PMI, 11.4% of all resources are wasted due to inferior project management processes. Their research found that organizations who fail to properly integrate project management into their strategies will see their outright project failure rate increase by a factor of 2/3.

So how do we solve this? This blog is going to try to do exactly that. First by explaining exactly what SAFe is and how it can help businesses, but also how Tempo’s suite of modular, flexible, and Jira native tools can help.

However, if you want to cut straight to the point and see directly how we can help your organization, scroll to the bottom and see our explainer on how each of our modular tools supports companies working with SAFe.

Understanding SAFe

We’ll keep this quick as many are already well past the step of understanding and trying to get into the implementation of SAFe, but it never hurts to quickly cover the fundamentals again.

Put simply, the scaled agile framework (SAFe) is a set of workflow patterns for implementing agile for enterprise-level organizations. It contains a series of principles to work towards upholding and guidance on roles, responsibilities, and methods of collaboration.

Just like agile methodology itself, SAFe is continuously improving and iterating since 2011 and is currently in version 6.0.0. 

Overall, it emphasizes decentralization of decision making, organizing around value, and ensuring your teams stay in communication both with each other and with the strategic overviews on their team and organization.

If you want a refresher on the SAFe principles, check out the full list here. It also comes with a handy graph breaking down the flow and purpose of agile release trains (ARTs), organizational-level agility, and the continuous delivery pipeline. 

However, SAFe requires technology to enable the level of synchronization, communication, and delivery that it demands. That’s why, when you are implementing SAFe for your teams, you need to have the right software in place. 

Solutions that don’t force your teams to change their ways of working, can scale to meet your organizational needs, and aren't a monolithic set of tools that blow the entire budget on things you don’t need.

The right tools for the job

Tempo’s modular suite of solutions are built to help organizations implementing SAFe overcome the common challenges and pitfalls of enterprise-scale agile.

It isn’t a simple task to get your high-level strategic themes visible to all relevant stakeholders or to ensure that you are always keeping the right people working on the right projects. SAFe means a lot of spinning plates that can be a serious organizational headache to keep in the air.

That’s where Tempo’s suite of tools comes in, designed to support companies working with the SAFe principles in mind. This means they are:

• Modular so businesses can start with their greatest need or needs to build on success and improve as they go.
• Flexible so users can utilize the tools how they want to best serve the needed outcomes regardless of the chosen agile methodology.
• Jira native with embedded products that are simple to implement, easy to adopt, and cost effective.

But talk is simple, and product buyers and organizational leads need more than just promise that something works well with enterprise-level agile practices. Our tools are already doing it for organizations working with SAFe out there, so here is the breakdown of what they can do for you and your teams.

Tempo’s tools for SAFe success

Roadmunk

Roadmunk is a roadmapping tool that means you can say goodbye to clunky old presentations, allowing you to create boardroom-ready roadmaps in minutes. 

You can showcase your overarching strategic themes, set and sequence priorities to ensure all teams are synced up on the outcomes that matter most, and has customizable detail depth based on your feature or solution certainty

On top of it all, it can integrate with Jira, Azure Devops, and other cloud-based systems to avoid the timesink of manual data entry.

Structure

This is where the work happens. Structure is a project and program management solution for Jira that helps keep your ARTs on track by providing unlimited ways to track progress, manage issues, and report on work across your entire portfolio.

It allows teams to create custom issue hierarchies and spreadsheet-like overviews in minutes, accommodating diverse methodologies in work, and that means you can extend visibility from high-level programs to detailed tasks, fostering the visibility required for SAFe to succeed.

Planner

Centralize and fast-track the capacity planning process and capture actionable insights into your workforce operations and requirements with Planner. Ensure you have the right people with the right skills to deliver on your projects organization-wide.

Timesheets and Cost Tracker

With Timesheets, you can track all billable time for invoicing, measure and report on CAPEX and OPEX with precision, and build custom reports to support operational needs. 

Timesheets enables reporting progress at a granular sprint or project level, and monitoring time at the individual or team level. That mean you can make more informed decisions about your people, projects, and money.

With Cost Tracker, you can translate Timesheets data to get true project costs, monitoring financial health at every level of your organization.

Combined, this means you can allocate your limited resources to the work that will generate the highest returns with the knowledge that data is supporting your decisions.

Custom Charts

Finally, leverage Custom Charts to create and share SAFE-aligned reports on multiple teams, sprints, and projects across your instance, directly on Jira dashboards. You can use Custom Charts to plan, monitor, and reflect on work, both day-to-day and at the beginning/end of projects and sprints.

Create Custom Charts dashboards for reporting on sprint progress, retrospectives, programs, customer satisfaction, workloads, age of issues, cumulative spend, and more.

A safe choice for your agile journey

If you want to see Tempo’s tools in action to see why we are the choice for one in three workers at Fortune 500 organizations, book a demo with us to begin your agile evolution.

We’re supporting organizations across the planet with their SAFe implementation and we would like the chance to show you exactly how our tools can slot right into your workflows and which ones could be right for your teams.

Book now

SAFe and Scaled Agile Framework are registered trademarks of Scaled Agile, Inc.