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In today’s fast-paced business environment, organizations are increasingly turning to Agile methodologies to enhance their ability to adapt to change, improve collaboration, and deliver value quickly. However, scaling Agile across large organizations comes with its own set of challenges. This is where the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) comes in—offering a structured yet flexible approach to scale Agile practices across multiple teams and levels.

At the heart of SAFe are its core values, which serve as guiding principles for successful Agile transformations. These values promote a culture of alignment, collaboration, and continuous improvement, helping organizations deliver complex solutions faster while ensuring high quality and innovation.

In this blog, we’ll explore the core values of SAFe, explain what they mean, and why they are critical for organizations implementing SAFe to realize its full potential.

The Four Core Values of SAFe

SAFe identifies four key core values that are essential for organizations to embrace in order to achieve success in Agile at scale. These values are:

1. Alignment
2. Built-in Quality
3. Transparency
4. Program Execution

Let’s dive deeper into each one.

1. Alignment: Ensuring Everyone is Moving in the Same Direction

Alignment in SAFe means that all teams, departments, and individuals within an organization are working towards a common goal. In large organizations, misalignment can occur if different teams or groups are pursuing their own objectives without considering the bigger picture. This can lead to inefficiencies, duplicated efforts, or conflicting priorities.

To achieve alignment, SAFe emphasizes the importance of:

• Strategic Goals: Teams should align their work with broader business objectives, ensuring that every task, feature, or initiative contributes to the organization’s overall vision and strategy.
• Regular Planning: SAFe uses Program Increment (PI) Planning as a critical mechanism to align teams at the beginning of each iteration cycle (usually every 8-12 weeks). During PI Planning, cross-functional teams synchronize their work, discuss dependencies, and agree on priorities.
• Leadership Involvement: Leaders at all levels must help maintain alignment by communicating the strategic direction and ensuring that teams have the support they need to succeed.

The result of strong alignment is a unified workforce where everyone is clear on what needs to be done, how to do it, and why it matters.

2. Built-in Quality: Ensuring High Standards at Every Stage

In traditional development models, quality is often a separate phase that happens at the end of the project. However, in the SAFe framework, built-in quality is a core value that emphasizes the importance of maintaining high standards from the very beginning and throughout the entire development process.

Built-in quality means:

• Continuous Testing: Quality assurance isn’t an afterthought but an ongoing process. SAFe encourages practices like Test-Driven Development (TDD) and automated testing to ensure that features are tested as they’re being developed.
• Code Quality: Developers should aim to deliver clean, maintainable code. This includes practices such as pair programming, refactoring, and adhering to coding standards.
• Acceptance Criteria: Clear and well-defined acceptance criteria ensure that each user story or feature meets customer expectations from the outset.
• Zero Defects: Emphasizing a culture where quality is everyone's responsibility, from developers to testers to business stakeholders. The idea is to address issues early to avoid defects later in the process.

By embedding quality into the development cycle, organizations can reduce rework, improve customer satisfaction, and increase the overall efficiency of their Agile processes.

3. Transparency: Creating Open and Honest Communication

Transparency is fundamental to the SAFe framework, and it means creating a culture of openness and honesty in every part of the organization. In an environment where teams are collaborating across multiple levels, it is crucial that everyone has visibility into the status of projects, challenges, dependencies, and outcomes.

Key elements of transparency include:

• Open Communication: Teams should share progress, setbacks, and obstacles regularly. Daily standups, sprint reviews, and retrospective meetings are all tools that promote transparency in Agile.
• Visual Management: Tools like Kanban boards and burn-down charts help make work visible, allowing all team members and stakeholders to understand the current state of development.
• Clear Metrics: Transparent reporting and metrics ensure that all parties understand how the organization is progressing towards its goals. These include lead time, cycle time, velocity, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide insight into productivity and quality.
• Leadership Transparency: Leaders must also be transparent about the company’s vision, strategy, and financial performance. This transparency helps teams understand the bigger picture and how their work aligns with organizational priorities.

When transparency is embraced across all levels, it fosters trust, helps avoid misunderstandings, and encourages teams to take ownership of their work and outcomes.

4. Program Execution: Delivering Value Consistently

Ultimately, SAFe is about delivering value, and program execution is the core value that ensures work gets done and value is realized. While alignment, quality, and transparency are necessary to set up the right conditions, program execution is where the rubber meets the road.

To ensure successful program execution:

• Cross-functional Teams: SAFe emphasizes the importance of Agile Release Trains (ARTs), which are long-lived, cross-functional teams that collaborate to deliver incremental value within a Program Increment (PI). ARTs help streamline coordination and reduce silos.
• Iterative Delivery: Teams deliver features incrementally, allowing for continuous feedback and course correction throughout the program lifecycle. This iterative approach improves the ability to adapt to change.
• Focus on Results: Successful execution requires a relentless focus on delivering customer value and achieving business goals. Teams track progress, measure outcomes, and adapt their approaches to improve results over time.
• Cadence and Synchronization: A predictable delivery schedule (through fixed-length iterations and PIs) and synchronized planning and execution across teams allow for timely and coordinated releases.

Effective program execution ensures that Agile teams stay focused on delivering high-priority features, meeting deadlines, and consistently adding value to the business.

Why SAFe Core Values Matter

The core values of SAFe are not just abstract concepts—they are actionable principles that guide an organization toward a successful Agile transformation. Adopting these values helps large enterprises overcome the common challenges associated with scaling Agile, such as misalignment, inefficiency, and lack of visibility.

By committing to alignment, built-in quality, transparency, and program execution, organizations can:

• Improve collaboration across teams and departments.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement.
• Deliver high-quality products that meet customer needs.
• Enhance agility and adaptability in a dynamic business environment.

These core values create a solid foundation for SAFe to thrive, ensuring that Agile practices are applied consistently and effectively, no matter how large or complex the organization may be.

Conclusion

The core values of SAFe are critical to building a successful Agile environment at scale. These principles guide organizations through their transformation, ensuring that all teams are aligned, quality is built into every stage of development, transparency is maintained, and program execution remains focused on delivering value.

As your organization embarks on its SAFe journey, embracing these core values will not only help you navigate the complexities of scaling Agile but also foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement. Ultimately, SAFe's core values enable organizations to deliver better products faster, improving customer satisfaction and maintaining a competitive edge in today's fast-evolving marketplace.