The actionable increments mentioned to the left enable not just more efficient and better PI planning, they set the stage for significantly better implementations of the plan. This includes improving management’s involvement in both he plan and the assisting in the implementation of the plan.

Several ways to learn

The Amplio Learning Center offers many different ways to improve SAFe, on your budget and timeframe.

All of the actionable increments to the left will be covered in the Amplio Living Ecosystem Initiative (free) in the next couple of months. 

They are also available in any of they ACE Learning Journeys on demand. And will eventually be on the Amplio Community of Practice (free) as well.

You can also learn better product management and value creation structures in the ACE Learning Journeys as well as learning how to coach and be a trainer. For only $49 / month you also get license-free use of the materials used.

1. Why SAFe usually starts out great only to stagnate later.

SAFe starts out well for three reasons:

1. Management usually allows the teams to figure out how much they can do (this avoids overloading the teams)
2. The planning tends to create a focus on building what’s important which aligns people
3. The entire value stream is involved

But after a couple of PIs management tends to want more. This overloads people and creates an unsafe environment which has people cooperate less.

Avoiding this requires the next five actionable increments.

2. Creating a Focus on Finishing

Large-scale structures often generate too many starting points and not enough finishing flow.

This AI helps value flow coaches accelerate completion, reduce work-in-progress, and improve predictability within their existing framework.

It also provides insights for teams to manage their work in process.

3. Improve the way people doing the work are organized

The way teams are typically organized in organizations arge enough to be using SAFe is typically far from ideal. Agile release trains are often organized as a few teams building the application and then everyone else supporting them. Reorganizing teams and responsibilities to minimize handoffs doesn’t usually happen because the theories of flow are not widely understood. This actionable increment shows how to reorganize people’s responsibilities based on who needs them the most and what will remove delays and handoffs – speeding up value delivery.

4. Provide direction to shared services and ops.

Shared services and ops often get conflicting requests about what to work on first. Although we know what is supposed to happen, other pressures often prefail. This actionable increment provides the management of shared services ops a few simple value creation structures that can increase their effectiveness. It also discusses how to talk to product managers when conflicting requests are being made. 

5. Using Quickest Valuable Releases (QVRs)

QVRs clarify intention, value, and sequencing while facilitating alignment.

Value flow coaches can use QVRs inside SAFe PIs, Scrum Sprints, or any cadence to improve alignment and reduce rework—without altering the framework itself.

6. How to Talk to Management

Many frameworks don’t teach leaders how to communicate about capacity, constraints, systemic delays, or value flow.

This AI provides the language and structure needed to engage management constructively within any existing governance model.

7. Advanced Value-Creation Structures

Why Agile Release Trains are a good start in SAFe, additional value creation structures can improve alignment while decreasing delays in the workflow.

8. PI Planning with QVRs (for SAFe contexts)

This AI enhances PI Planning outcomes by integrating QVRs to sharpen objectives, clarify value, and improve prioritization.
It fits directly into PI Planning without requiring any change to SAFe.

Here’s an example path for improving SAFe.

A Note From Al Shalloway about SAFe

SAFe© is a popular framework for large organizations. Unfortunately, many companies adopting it have challenges due to its design. Many of those who start out successfully end up having their progress stagnate after a few program increments (typically 13 weeks long).

While SAFe mentions some principles of flow, it doesn’t incorporate them sufficiently into its. Other key practices such as QVRs, Jobs to be Done, doing a diagnosis, improving value creation structures, and more are missing.

As a former SPCT, gold partner, and contributor to SAFe, our CEO Al Shalloway led several successful SAFe adoptions. However, he never did SAFe by the book. Ironically, while many complain about SAFe being too large and complicated, we’ve found that when you add the concepts mentioned above it gets simpler.

Although I had great success using SAFe in large organizations, I never used it as it was defined. Here’s an interesting case study:

The untold story of how I was successful with SAFe.

I relinquished my certification over the continued efforts of SAI to demand trainers do SAFe by the book. He’s rarely seen that work over a prolonged period.

The bottom line is those who have started with SAFe have learned a lot. And I would not consider it a lost investment by any means. But it’s time to go beyond SAFe and do better.