example of benefit hypothesis

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• Benefit Hypothesis

A concept that suggests that people are more likely to accept a change if they can see the potential benefits it will bring. Product Glossary Benefit Hypothesis Also called: Benefit Theory, Positive Outcome Theory, Positive Consequence Theory, Positive Reinforcement Theory, Reward Theory, Reinforcement Theory, and Reinforcement Hypothesis See also: Forced Analogy , Hypothesis Statement , Objectives and Key Results , Powers of Ten , Problem Statement , Benefit Hypothesis Relevant metrics: Conversion Rate, Retention Rate, User Engagement, Cost per Acquisition, and Customer Lifetime Value In this article What is Benefit Hypothesis

Benefit Hypothesis is a concept used to describe the idea that a product should be designed to provide a benefit to the user.

It is based on the assumption that users will be more likely to use a product if it provides them with a benefit. The benefit can be tangible, such as a monetary reward, or intangible, such as increased convenience or improved user experience.

The benefit hypothesis is used to guide product design decisions, as it helps to ensure that the product is designed to provide a benefit to the user. It is also used to evaluate the success of a product, as it helps to determine whether the product is providing the desired benefit to the user.

Where did Benefit Hypothesis come from?

The term “Benefit Hypothesis” was first coined by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers in 1971. Trivers proposed that the evolution of altruism, or selfless behavior, could be explained by the idea that individuals could benefit from helping others. He argued that if an individual helps another, the other individual may be more likely to help them in the future, thus creating a mutually beneficial relationship. This idea has since been expanded upon and is now used to explain a variety of social behaviors, such as cooperation, reciprocity, and even the evolution of language.

Exploring the Benefit Hypothesis

The Benefit Hypothesis is a concept that suggests that social interaction can have a positive impact on individuals. This hypothesis is based on the idea that people are naturally social creatures and that social interaction can be beneficial to their mental and physical health. It is believed that social interaction can help to reduce stress, improve mood, and even increase life expectancy.

The Benefit Hypothesis has been studied extensively in the fields of psychology and sociology. Studies have shown that people who engage in regular social interaction are more likely to have better mental health, better physical health, and even longer life expectancies. This is because social interaction can provide a sense of belonging, support, and companionship, which can help to reduce stress and improve mood. Additionally, social interaction can provide a sense of purpose and meaning, which can help to increase life satisfaction.

The Benefit Hypothesis in Product Development

Identifying what customer needs and expectations are can often be a challenge, especially in a crowded and rapidly changing market. The Benefit Hypothesis is a valuable tool for product developers looking to create products that truly deliver value to their customers.

The Benefit Hypothesis is a hypothesis that states the benefits that a product provides to its customers is the primary reason for its success. In other words, the more benefits a product provides, the more successful it will be. This hypothesis is based on the idea that customers will choose products that offer the most value to them, and that this value is determined by the benefits they receive from using the product.

Applying Benefit Hypotheseses

Using the Benefit Hypothesis in product development is a straightforward process that involves four key steps:

• Identifying the target customer and their needs - This step involves understanding who the product is being developed for and what their needs and expectations are.
• Determining the potential benefits of the product - This step involves considering the potential benefits that the product could provide to its target customers, such as improved efficiency, convenience, or savings.
• Creating a hypothesis based on potential benefits - This step involves creating a hypothesis that states the benefits that the product will provide to its target customers and how these benefits will be delivered.
• Validating the hypothesis through testing and research - This step involves testing the hypothesis through user research, customer feedback, and other methods to ensure that the product truly delivers the benefits that were promised.

Benefits of using Benefit Hypotheses

• Allows for a more comprehensive understanding of how people make decisions . The Benefit Hypothesis provides a framework for understanding how people make decisions by considering both the costs and benefits of a given action. This helps to explain why people may choose to do something even if it is not in their best interest.
• Helps to identify potential areas of improvement . By understanding the costs and benefits of a given action, the Benefit Hypothesis can help to identify areas where improvements can be made. This can help to inform decision-making and ensure that the best possible outcome is achieved.
• Provides a more accurate picture of decision-making . By considering both the costs and benefits of a given action, the Benefit Hypothesis provides a more accurate picture of how people make decisions. This can help to ensure that decisions are made in a more informed and rational manner.

Challenges of applying Benefit Hypotheses

• Establishing a clear definition of the term . The Benefit Hypothesis is a complex concept that can be difficult to define in a concise and accurate manner. It is important to ensure that all stakeholders understand the concept and its implications.
• Determining the appropriate level of benefit . It can be difficult to determine the appropriate level of benefit that should be provided to stakeholders. This requires careful consideration of the potential costs and benefits associated with the implementation of the Benefit Hypothesis.

The Apple iPhone was developed based on the hypothesis that customers would value a device that combined the functions of a mobile phone, music player, and internet browser in one device. The iPhone was a huge success because it delivered on this promise, providing customers with a device that offered unprecedented convenience and functionality.

Starbucks has applied the Benefit Hypothesis to its business model by offering customers a wide variety of coffee and tea products at competitive prices. This has allowed them to build a loyal customer base and increase their market share. By offering customers a wide selection of products and services, Starbucks has been able to create a competitive advantage over other coffee and tea retailers.

• What is the purpose of the benefit hypothesis? Hint The purpose of the benefit hypothesis is to identify and analyze the potential benefits of a proposed policy or program.
• What are the potential benefits of applying the benefit hypothesis? Hint Potential benefits of applying the benefit hypothesis include improved decision-making, increased efficiency, and cost savings.
• What are the potential risks of applying the benefit hypothesis? Hint Potential risks of applying the benefit hypothesis include unintended consequences, inaccurate data, and inadequate evaluation.
• What are the potential implications of applying the benefit hypothesis? Hint Potential implications of applying the benefit hypothesis include changes in public opinion, changes in public policy, and changes in public behavior.
• How will the benefit hypothesis be evaluated? Hint The benefit hypothesis will be evaluated by assessing the potential benefits and risks associated with the proposed policy or program.
• What data or evidence is available to support the benefit hypothesis? Hint Data and evidence to support the benefit hypothesis can include economic analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and other forms of research.
• How will the benefit hypothesis be implemented? Hint The benefit hypothesis will be implemented by developing a plan to identify and analyze the potential benefits and risks associated with the proposed policy or program.
• What are the potential unintended consequences of applying the benefit hypothesis? Hint Potential unintended consequences of applying the benefit hypothesis include unintended economic, social, and environmental impacts.
• How will the benefit hypothesis be monitored and evaluated? Hint The benefit hypothesis will be monitored and evaluated by assessing the outcomes of the proposed policy or program.
• What are the potential longterm effects of applying the benefit hypothesis? Hint Potential long-term effects of applying the benefit hypothesis include changes in public opinion, changes in public policy, and changes in public behavior.

You might also be interested in reading up on:

• Forced Analogy
• Hypothesis Statement
• Objectives and Key Results
• Powers of Ten
• Problem Statement
• Influence : The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini (1984)
• Predictably Irrational : The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (2008)
• Nudge : Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler (2008)
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011)
• Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (2005)

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The ART of SAFe

Applying Lean and Agile techniques at scale to bring about effective, sustainable improvement in Culture, Execution and Business Results

Monday, January 8, 2018

Effective feature templates for safe, introduction, how much detail is needed, and by when.

• Prior to WSJF assessment
• Prior to PI Planning

Feature Canvas

New Product: “The current state of the [domain] has focussed primarily on [customer segments, pain points, etc]. What existing products/services fail to address is [this gap] Our product/service will address this gap by [vision/strategy] Our initial focus will be [this segment]”

Existing Product: “Our [service/product] is intended to achieve [these goals]. We have observed that the [product/service] isn’t meeting [these goals] which is causing [this adverse effect] to our business. How might we improve [service/product] so that our customers are more successful based on [these measurable criteria]?”

“We believe this [business outcome] will be achieved if [these users] successfully achieve [this user outcome] with [this feature]”.

Sample Completed Canvas

A glimpse at how you might visualise your next WSJF estimation workshop

Detail beyond the Canvas

• User Journeys:  Some framing UX exploration is often very useful in preparing a Feature, and makes a great support to teams during PI planning.  
• Architectural Impact Assessment: Some form of deliberate architectural consideration of the potential impact of the feature is critical in most complex environments.  It should rarely be more than a page – I find a common approach is one to two paragraphs of text accompanied by a high level sequence diagram identifying expected interactions between architectural layers.
• Change Management Impacts: How do we get from deployed software to realised value?  Who will need training?  Are Work Instructions required?  

Tuning your Template

Who completes the canvas/template, 28 comments:.

Awesome work Mark! We have created some for clients too that we can't share. :-(

Thanks for sharing Mark - these are really useful. I really like the hypothesis statements for features and think that this is a major enhancement in SAFE 4.5. I wrote a blog post about it here: http://runningmann.co.za/2017/09/25/the-power-of-feature-hypotheses/ that you might be interested in.

These are awesome Mark. Thanks for sharing

Thanks for sharing your experience on this area with the community Mark. Feature Templates are a very common requirement for Agile practitioners, maybe you can persuade the SAFe community to include an artefact like this in the framework.

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This is great! Do you have the template format available so we don't have to replicate?

great stuff, how would you differentiate this from SAFe Epics

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Nice blog Mark How can I get a downloadable version of this Canvas?

I think you can make video about it. If you want to promote your channel on youtube you can buy youtube subscribers for it

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Essential phases

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Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself. Bad design, on the other hand, screams out its inadequacies, making itself very noticeable. —Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a customer-centric development process that creates desirable products that are profitable and sustainable over their lifecycle.

It goes beyond the traditional focus on the features and functions of a proposed product. Instead, it emphasizes understanding the problem to be solved, the context in which the solution will be used, and the evolution of that solution.

Traditional waterfall approaches to product development are sequential: requirements are defined, and solutions are designed, built, and delivered to the market. The focus tends to be on the most apparent problems. Often, success is determined by implementing a solution that meets the requirements instead of the user’s needs. This results in products and services with unusable or ignored features that frustrate users and fail to meet the enterprise’s business goals .

Design thinking (Figure 1) represents a profoundly different approach to product and Solution development, in which divergent and convergent techniques are applied to understand a problem, design a solution, and deliver that solution to the market.

Design thinking also inspires new ways to measure the success of our efforts:

• Desirable – Do customers and end-users want the solution?
• Feasible – Can we deliver the right solution through a combination of build, buy, partner, or acquire activities?
• Viable – Is the way we build and offer the solution creating more value than cost? For example, in a for-profit enterprise, are we profitable?
• Sustainable – Are we proactively managing our solution to account for its expected product-market lifecycle?

Successive applications of design thinking advance the solution over its natural market lifecycle, as shown in Figure 2.

Understanding the Problem and Solution Space

In Figure 1, the core design thinking processes appear as a ‘double diamond.’ This represents the focus on thoroughly exploring the problem space before creating solutions. Each diamond focuses on divergent thinking (understanding and exploring options) followed by convergent thinking (evaluating options and making choices).

The activities associated with exploring the problem are elaborated as follows:

• Discover – The discover phase seeks to understand the problem by engaging in market and user research to identify unmet needs. This research creates fresh perspectives that drive innovation. Unlike research that confirms or refutes a hypothesis, the inquiries associated with the discovery phase occur without preconceived notions about how users should work. Instead, it focuses on how users work . An essential research technique is Gemba, also known as ‘going to the place where the work is done.’
• Define – The define phase focuses on the information gathered during the discover phase to generate insights into specific problems and unmet needs. These create opportunities for the business and new product development. Results of this phase typically include personas and empathy maps (described below) that focus the product team on the solutions the Customer would view as desirable. Epics and Features capture the perceived changes needed for existing products and solutions.

With a clear understanding of the target market and its problems, the focus can move toward designing a solution, the second diamond of design thinking. These are:

• Develop – The develop phase uses journey mapping, story mapping, and prototyping to design potential solutions to problems quickly and cost-effectively. Each of these techniques is discussed more thoroughly later in this article. The develop phase also embraces SAFe Principle #3 – Assume variability; preserve options. Design thinking techniques preserve options responsibly.
• Deliver – The deliver phase produces artifacts suitable for creating the solution and varies based on context. These artifacts often start as prototypes expressed as validated features in the ART Backlog for continuous delivery.

Using Personas to Focus Design

Creating solutions for a direct customer—bespoke solutions—offer designers the advantage of speaking directly and frequently with a few target users, permitting them to participate in the design, PI Planning , System Demos , and other SAFe events. In some organizations, Customers are considered part of the team, so creating a Persona to represent them isn’t typically needed but may be helpful when the organization is highly distributed.

In contrast, in an indirect customer market, which is common in B2C solutions, product teams need a way to maintain a connection with their target customers. So, they develop ‘personas,’ fictional consumers and users derived from user research. [2] They depict the people who might similarly use a product or solution, providing insights into how real users would engage with a solution. User personas also support market segmentation strategy by offering a concrete design tool to reinforce that products and solutions are created for people. Personas drive product development and several SAFe practices, as shown in Figure 3.

In addition to user personas, buyer personas extend design thinking to include the individuals and organizations that authorize purchasing decisions. They help ensure that the design encompasses the whole product purchase experience, including after-sales service, support, and operations.

Establishing Empathy to Foster Customer-Centric Design

Customer-centric enterprises use empathy throughout the design process. Empathetic design dismisses preconceived ideas and uses the Customer’s perspective to inform solution development.

Empathy maps [1] are a design thinking tool that promotes customer identification by helping teams develop a deep, shared understanding of others (Figure 4). They enable teams to imagine what a specific persona is thinking, feeling, hearing, and seeing as they use the product. The greater the degree of empathy a team has for its customers, the more likely it will be able to design desirable solutions.

Designing the User Experience through Journey Maps

A customer journey map illustrates the user experience in an Operational Value Stream that provides products and services. Figure 5 shows how these journey maps are powerful design thinking tools. They allow teams to identify ways the specific deliverables for one or more Development Value Streams can be improved to create a better end-to-end user experience.

Delivering Benefits Through Features

While a journey map captures the high-level experience of the Customer in the operational value stream, product features manage the specific deliverables that fulfill a stakeholder’s need. Features are commonly described through a features and benefits (FAB) matrix , using short phrases that provide context and a benefit hypothesis. Design thinking, however, promotes switching the order of the FAB to a benefit-feature matrix . In this case, the intended customer benefits are identified first, and then the teams determine what features might satisfy their needs. This approach helps Agile Teams explore better and faster ways to deliver the desired benefits (Figure 6).

Designing User Workflows or Journeys through Story Maps

Features that capture a workflow or user journey present a unique challenge to Agile teams. Because the backlog is a flat, one-dimensional list, it does not show the relationship between the user’s goals, workflow activities, and the stories in the backlog. Story mapping is a brainstorming technique that can enable teams to design a solution focused on the Customer. Not all features will require story mapping. However, they are particularly useful for developing new end-user functionality for a workflow or customer journey.

Why Story Maps?

Story maps help teams ideate, plan, and group activities in a workflow or user journey . They allow teams to address the most critical steps before improving existing steps or adding new functionality. Story maps are an important design thinking tool that enables Customer Centricity because they focus on delighting a user instead of merely implementing stories ordered by their value. Another benefit is avoiding releasing a feature (or solution) that is not usable because its functionality depends on stories that are lower in priority and further down the backlog.

Figure 7 illustrates how a feature with a workflow is captured in a story map [3], organizing the sequence of stories according to the activities (or steps) a user needs to accomplish their goal. The first set of stories is essential for the initial release, while the next set represents improvements for future releases.

How to Create a Story Map

The following steps describe the process of creating a story map (Figure 7) for a new potential Feature that requires a workflow.

• Frame the purpose : Identify the goal or customer problems the solution will solve and the intended users of the solution.
• Map the whole story : Define the starting conditions for the user to accomplish their goals. Focus on describing the whole story and user activities and tasks, creating the backbone of the story map.
• Brainstorm : Fill in the body of the story map by breaking down the larger user tasks into smaller subtasks and user interface details. Consider many possibilities without concern if the stories are in or out of scope. Affinity group the stories needed to complete the task under each activity.
• Identify the stories essential for the initial release : The team identifies which stories can be released (in the next iteration or two) that will achieve a meaningful user outcome.
• Identify stories considered as improvements in future releases : Stories that are not selected for the initial release will be added to the backlog as potential candidates for future releases.

Increasing Design Feedback Through Prototypes

A prototype is a basic functional model of a feature or product, usually built for demonstration purposes or as part of the development process. It helps the team clarify their understanding of the problem and reduces risk in designing and developing the solution before making further investments. Prototypes provide many benefits:

• Fast feedback. By definition, a prototype is cheaper and faster to produce than a complete solution. This enables faster feedback from users and customers, increased understanding of solution requirements, and greater confidence in the final designs.
• Risk reduction. Prototypes can reduce technical risk by enabling Agile teams to focus initial efforts on the aspects of the solution associated with the highest risk.
• Intellectual property/patent filing. Prototypes can be used to satisfy strategic requirements for managing intellectual property as early as possible in the development process.
• Models for requirements. Prototypes can provide more clarity in the requirements of the desired feature or solution than pages of documentation.

There are many kinds of prototypes, each optimized to provide different types of insights:

• Paper prototypes are typically hand-drawn sketches of the intended solution. They can be automated to illustrate workflows or validate user story maps.
• Mid-Fi prototypes are visually-complete representations of software-centric solutions but are not typically functionally integrated.
• Hi-Fi prototypes are visually-complete and interactive models which users and customers can directly explore.
• Hardware prototypes provide critical feedback on form factors, sizes, and operational requirements. For example, when exploring form factors to see how a new tablet might fit into existing backpacks, briefcases, and cars, one Silicon Valley company cut many plastic models from a single sheet of plastic. Later in this design process, this same team found they needed to redesign the power supply so that it would not unduly interfere with the WIFI signal.

Last updated: 13 February 2023

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Implementing SAFe: Requirements Model (v6)

Table of Contents

What is the SAFe Requirements Model?

The SAFe Requirements Model is a hierarchical structure that manages and organizes requirements in large-scale Agile projects.

The SAFe Requirements Model helps organizations align their business objectives with their development efforts, ensuring that teams deliver value incrementally while focusing on the overall strategy. The SAFe Requirements Model is organized into three levels:

• Epics are high-level initiatives representing significant organizational value and span multiple planning intervals.
• Features are mid-level requirements that provide more detailed descriptions of the functionality needed to achieve the goals set forth by the Epics.
• Stories are the smallest units of work, representing individual tasks to be completed by Agile teams, typically within a single iteration.

What are SAFe Epics?

Portfolio Epics are large-scale business initiatives that drive change and provide substantial business benefits.

The strategic investment themes drive all new development, and requirements epics are derived from these decisions.

Epics are large-scale development initiatives that realize the value of investment themes.

Epics in the SAFe Requirements Model are large-scale, cross-cutting initiatives that encapsulate significant development efforts and provide substantial value to the organization or end-users. They can be business epics, which focus on delivering customer or user value, or enabler epics, which address technical or architectural enhancements to support the development of business epics. Epics typically span multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Planning Intervals (PIs), requiring collaboration and coordination among various teams.

Epics are the highest-level requirements artifact used to coordinate development. In the requirements model, they sit between investment themes and features.

• Epics are usually driven (parented by) investment themes. However, some epics can be independent (they do not require a parent to exist).
• Epics are not implemented directly. Instead, they are broken down into Features and User Stories, which the teams use for actual coding and testing.
• Epics are not directly testable. They are tested through the acceptance tests associated with the features and stories that implement them.

What are the key elements of a SAFe Epic Statement?

An Epic Statement comprises a brief description, the customer or business benefit, and the success criteria.

When documenting epics in SAFe, the following key elements are included:

What are the differences between SAFe Business Epics and Enabler Epics?

Business Epics delivers direct business value, while Enabler Epics provides the technological or architectural advancements necessary to support business Epics.

In the SAFe Requirements Model, the difference between enabler epics and business epics lies in their focus and purpose:

• Business Epics: These are large-scale initiatives aimed at delivering customer or user value, addressing new features, products, or services that have a direct impact on the organization’s business outcomes. Business epics typically focus on solving customer problems, capturing market opportunities, or improving the user experience.
• Enabler Epics: These epics focus on technical, architectural, or process enhancements that support the development and delivery of business epics. Enabler epics may not provide direct customer value but are essential for improving the organization’s underlying infrastructure, technology, or capabilities, making it easier to deliver business value more efficiently and effectively.

Business Epics and Enabler Epics in SAFe serve different but equally important roles. Business Epics are initiatives that deliver direct customer or business value. They represent substantial investments and have a clear tie to business outcomes. On the other hand, Enabler Epics support the implementation of Business Epics. They represent the necessary technological or architectural advancements that facilitate the delivery of business value. While they may not directly impact the customer, they are vital in realizing Business Epics.

What is the SAFe Portfolio Backlog?

The Portfolio Backlog is a prioritized list of Portfolio Epics.

The Portfolio Backlog within SAFe serves as the repository for upcoming Portfolio Epics. It is a prioritized list of Epics, with those at the top representing the highest priority and most significant initiatives that need to be undertaken. This backlog helps to align the organization around the most important strategic initiatives, allowing for effective decision-making and allocation of resources across the portfolio.

The Portfolio Backlog provides a clear picture of the organization’s direction and value delivery at the Portfolio level, guiding the allocation of resources, funding, and coordination of efforts across multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Solution Trains to align with the overall strategy.

What are SAFe Product Features?

SAFe Product Features are serviceable system components that provide business value and address user needs.

Features are described as follows:

Features are services provided by the system that fulfill stakeholder needs.

Within the realm of SAFe, Product Features are distinct pieces of functionality that are of value to the user or the business. They are typically larger than individual User Stories and represent services the system provides that fulfill specific user needs. Features form a critical part of the Program Backlog.

In describing the features of a product or system, we take a more abstract and higher-level view of the system of interest. In so doing, we have the security of returning to a more traditional description of system behavior, the feature.

Features as ART-Level Artifacts

A “Feature” in the SAFe Requirements Model is a high-level, functional requirement that delivers value to the end-user or customer. Features are typically part of a larger product or system and are aligned with the goals of a specific Planning Interval (PI), which usually spans 8-12 weeks.

Features live above software requirements and bridge the gap from the problem domain (understanding the needs of the users and stakeholders in the target market) to the solution domain (specific requirements intended to address the user needs).

Features are usually expressed as bullet points or, at most, a couple of sentences. For instance, you might describe a few features of an online email service like this:

Enable “Stars” for marking important conversations or messages, acting as a visual reminder to follow up on a message or conversation later. Introduce “Labels” as a “folder-like” metaphor for organizing conversations.

Feature Statement and Template

In the SAFe Requirements Model, a feature is typically documented using the following:

What are the differences between SAFe Features and SAFe Capabilities?

SAFe Features are system functionality that provides value to users, while SAFe Capabilities are higher-level functionalities that provide value to customers and stakeholders.

SAFe distinguishes between Features and Capabilities based on their level of abstraction and scope. Features at the Program Level are functionality increments that address user needs and deliver value. They are smaller in scope and more detailed compared to Capabilities. On the other hand, Capabilities are placed at the Large Solution Level, representing higher-level functionalities that deliver value to customers and stakeholders. They are typically bigger, encompass broader functionality, and may require multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) to implement.

The main difference between capabilities and features in the SAFe Requirements Model lies in their scope and granularity:

• Capabilities : Capabilities are high-level functional requirements that describe essential building blocks of a solution in the Large Solution level of the SAFe Requirements Model. They span multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and represent the functionality needed to deliver value to end-users or customers. Capabilities provide a broader perspective on the solution and help coordinate efforts among multiple ARTs working together.
• Features : Features are smaller, more granular functional requirements at the Program level in the SAFe Requirements Model. They describe specific functionalities or enhancements that deliver value within a single Agile Release Train (ART). Features are derived from capabilities and are broken down into user stories, which Agile teams implement during iterations.

In summary, capabilities are high-level, cross-ART functional requirements for large-scale solutions. At the same time, features are more granular, ART-specific requirements that deliver value as part of a product or system.

How are SAFe Features tested?

SAFe Features are tested through iteration testing, integration testing, and system demos.

The SAFe approach to testing Features involves three specific practices, ensuring functionality and integration, and they are:

• Iteration Testing , where each feature is tested during the iteration it’s developed.
• Integration Testing is where Features are tested in conjunction with other system elements to ensure they work together properly.
• System Demos allow stakeholders to inspect the integrated system and provide feedback, enabling further refinement and validation of Features.

Story-level testing ensures that methods and classes are reliable (unit testing) and stories serve their intended purpose (functional testing). A feature may involve multiple teams and numerous stories. Therefore, testing feature functionality is as crucial as testing story implementation.

Moreover, many system-level “what if” considerations (think alternative use-case scenarios) must be tested to guarantee overall system reliability. Some of these can only be tested at the full system level. So indeed, features, like stories, require acceptance tests as well.

Every feature demands one or more acceptance tests, and a feature cannot be considered complete until it passes.

What are Nonfunctional Requirements?

Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs) are specifications about system qualities such as performance, reliability, and usability.

In SAFe, Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs) denote the ‘ilities’ – system attributes like scalability, reliability, usability, and security. Unlike functional requirements, which define what a system does, NFRs describe how it does it. These are critical factors that shape system behavior and often have system-wide implications. NFRs are a constant consideration throughout the development process, helping to ensure that the system meets the necessary standards and delivers a satisfying user experience.

Nonfunctional Requirements as Backlog Constraints

From a requirements modeling perspective, we could include the NFRs in the program backlog, but their behavior tends to differ. New features usually enter the backlog, get implemented and tested, and then are removed (though ongoing functional tests ensure the features continue to work well in the future). NFRs restrict new development, reducing the level of design freedom that teams might otherwise possess. Here’s an example:

For partner compatibility, implement SAML-based single sign-on (NFR) for all products in the suite.

In other cases, when new features are implemented, existing NFRs must be reconsidered, and previously sufficient system tests may need expansion. Here’s an example:

The new touch UI (new feature) must still adhere to our accessibility standards (NFR).

Thus, in the requirements model, we represented NFRs as backlog limitations.

We first observe that nonfunctional requirements may constrain some backlog items while others do not. We also notice that some nonfunctional requirements may not apply to any backlog items, meaning they stand alone and pertain to the entire system.

Regardless of how we view them, nonfunctional requirements must be documented and shared with the relevant teams. Some NFRs apply to the whole system, and others are specific to a team’s feature or component domain.

How are Nonfunctional Requirements tested?

Nonfunctional Requirements are tested through methods like performance testing, usability testing, and security testing.

The testing of Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs) in SAFe involves specialized techniques corresponding to each type of NFR. For instance, performance testing measures system responsiveness and stability under varying workloads. Usability testing assesses the system’s user-friendliness and intuitiveness. Security testing evaluates the system’s resistance to threats and attacks. By testing NFRs, teams ensure that the system delivers the right functionality and provides the right quality of service, thereby maximizing user satisfaction and trust.

Most nonfunctional (0…*) requirements necessitate one or more tests. Instead of labeling these tests as another form of acceptance tests and further overusing that term, we’ve called them system qualities tests. This name implies that these tests must be conducted periodically to verify that the system still exhibits the qualities expressed by the nonfunctional requirements.

What is the SAFe ART Backlog?

The SAFe Program Backlog is a prioritized list of features awaiting development within an Agile Release Train.

Within SAFe, the Program Backlog serves as a holding area for upcoming Features, which are system-level services that offer user benefits and are set to be developed by a specific Agile Release Train (ART). These Features are prioritized based on their value, risk, dependencies, and size. The backlog helps provide transparency and drives PI planning, guiding the ART toward achieving the desired outcomes.

Features are brought to life by stories. During release planning, features are broken down into stories, which the teams utilize to implement the feature’s functionality.

What are SAFe User Stories?

SAFe User Stories are short, simple descriptions of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the capability, usually a user or customer.

User Stories within SAFe are a tool for expressing requirements. They focus on the user’s perspective, facilitating a clear understanding of who the user is, what they need, and why they need it. User Stories promote collaboration and customer-centric development by emphasizing value delivery and verbal communication.

What is the definition of a SAFe User Story?

A SAFe User Story is a requirement expressed from the end-user perspective, detailing what the user wants to achieve and why.

In SAFe, a User Story is an informal, natural language description of one or more features of a software system. It is centered around the end-user and their needs, providing context for the development team. User stories are the agile alternative to traditional software requirements statements (or use cases in RUP and UML), serving as the backbone of agile development. Initially developed within the framework of XP, they are now a staple of agile development in general and are covered in most Scrum courses.

In the SAFe Requirements Model, user stories replace traditional software requirements, conveying customer needs from analysis to implementation.

A user story is defined as:

A user story is a concise statement of intent that outlines what the system needs to do for the user.

Typically, user stories follow a standard (user voice) format:

As a <role>, I can <activity> so that <business value>.

This format encompasses elements of the problem space (the delivered business value), the user’s role (or persona), and the solution space (the activity the user performs with the system). For example:

“As a Salesperson (<role>), I want to paginate my leads when I send mass e-mails (<what I do with the system>) so that I can quickly select a large number of leads (<business value I receive>).”

What are the 3-Cs of user stories?

The 3-Cs of user stories refer to Card, Conversation, and Confirmation.

In the realm of SAFe, these three Cs are fundamental to the creation and execution of User Stories. The “Card” typically represents the User Story, written in simple language. “Conversation” signifies the collaborative discussions that clarify the details of the User Story and refine its requirements. “Confirmation” establishes acceptance criteria to determine when the User Story is completed successfully. This trio of components ensures clarity and shared understanding in value delivery.

• “Card” refers to the two or three sentences that convey the story’s intent.
• “Conversation” involves elaborating on the card’s intent through discussions with the customer or product owner. In other words, the card also signifies a “commitment to a conversation” about the intent.
• “Confirmation” is the process by which the team, via the customer or customer proxy, determines that the code fulfills the story’s entire intent.

Note that stories in XP and Agile are often manually written on physical index cards. However, agile project management tools usually capture the “card” element as text and attachments in the enterprise context. Still, teams frequently use physical cards for planning, estimating, prioritizing, and visibility during daily stand-ups.

This straightforward alliteration and Agile’s passion for “all code is tested code” demonstrates how quality is achieved during code development rather than afterward.

The SAFe Requirements model represents the confirmation function as an acceptance test verifying that the story has been implemented correctly. We’ll refer to it as story acceptance tests to distinguish it from other acceptance tests and consider them an artifact separate from the (user) story.

The model is explicit in its insistence on the relationship between the story and the story acceptance test as follows:

• In the one-to-many (1..*) relationship, every story has one (or more) acceptance tests.
• It’s done when it passes. A story cannot be considered complete until it has passed the acceptance test(s).

Acceptance tests are functional tests that confirm the system implements the story as intended. Story acceptance tests are automated whenever possible to prevent the creation of many manual tests that would quickly hinder the team’s velocity.

What is the difference between SAFe Enabler Stories and SAFe User Stories?

SAFe Enabler Stories support the exploration, architecture, infrastructure, and compliance activities needed to build a system, unlike User Stories, which focus on end-user functionality.

The main difference between an enabler user story and a typical user story in the SAFe Requirements Model lies in their focus and purpose:

• Enabler Story: An enabler story represents work needed to support the development of a product or system but does not necessarily deliver customer value directly. Enabler user stories are used to address technical or architectural needs, reduce technical debt, or improve infrastructure. They are often larger and more complex than typical user stories, as they address non-functional requirements crucial for the product’s success.
• User Story: A typical user story represents a specific feature or functionality that delivers value to the customer or end-user. Typical user stories are more focused and granular than enabler user stories, describing specific actions or behaviors the user can perform with the product. They are usually smaller and more straightforward than enabler user stories, making them easier to estimate and prioritize.

Enabler Stories in SAFe facilitate the technical aspects of the system under development, such as architectural advancements or exploration activities. They differ from User Stories, which are primarily concerned with user-facing functionalities. Although Enabler Stories do not directly deliver user-valued functionality, they are vital for the evolution of the system and the delivery of future user value.

What are User Story sub-tasks?

User Story sub-tasks are smaller, manageable tasks derived from a User Story to facilitate its implementation.

Sub-tasks provide a way to break down a User Story into smaller, actionable pieces of work. These smaller tasks make the implementation more manageable and provide a clear path to completion. Sub-tasks can be assigned to different team members and tracked separately, providing a granular view of progress toward completing the User Story.

To ensure that teams fully comprehend the work required and can meet their commitments, many agile teams adopt a detailed approach to estimating and coordinating individual work activities necessary to complete a story. This is done through tasks, which we’ll represent as an additional model element:

Tasks implement stories. Tasks are the smallest units in the model and represent activities specific team members must perform to achieve the story. In our context:

A task is a small unit of work essential for completing a story.

Tasks have an owner (the person responsible for the task) and are estimated in hours (typically four to eight). The burndown (completion) of task hours indicates one form of iteration status. As suggested by the one-to-many relationship shown in the model, even a small story often requires more than one task, and it’s common to see a mini life cycle coded into a story’s tasks. Here’s an example:

• Task 1: Define acceptance test—Josh, Don, Ben
• Task 2: Code story—Josh
• Task 3: Code acceptance test—Ben
• Task 4: Get it to pass—Josh and Ben
• Task 5: Document in user help—Carly

In most cases, tasks are “children” of their associated story (deleting the story parent deletes the task). However, for flexibility, the model also supports stand-alone tasks and tasks that support other team objectives. This way, a team need not create a story to parent an item like “install more memory in the file server.”

What are User Story Acceptance tests?

User Story Acceptance tests are predefined criteria that a User Story must meet to be considered complete.

Acceptance tests for User Stories in SAFe provide clear, specific criteria determining when the story is done. These criteria are defined by the Product Owner in collaboration with the team and quality specialists and are based on the user’s expectations. They ensure the delivered functionality meets the desired value and quality, driving user satisfaction.

What are User Story Unit Tests?

User Story Unit Tests are low-level tests designed to verify the functionality of individual components of a User Story.

Unit tests in the context of User Stories involve testing individual components or units of the software to ensure they perform as expected. Developers typically create these tests during the implementation of the User Story. They form the first line of defense in catching and correcting defects, ensuring the integrity of the codebase, and promoting high-quality delivery.

Unit tests verify that the smallest module of an application (a class or method in object-oriented programming; a function or procedure in procedural programming) functions as intended. Developers create unit tests to check that the code executes the logic of the specific module. In test-driven development (TDD), the test is crafted before the code. Before a story is complete, the test must be written, passed, and incorporated into an automated testing framework.

Mature agile teams employ extensive practices for unit testing and automated functional (story acceptance) testing. Moreover, for those in the process of implementing tools for their agile project, adopting this meta-model can provide inherent traceability of story-to-test without burdening the team. Real Quality in Real Time

The fusion of crafting a streamlined story description, engaging in a conversation about the story, expanding the story into functional tests, augmenting the story’s acceptance with unit tests, and automating testing are how Scaled Agile teams achieve top-notch quality during each iteration. In this manner: Quality is built in, one story at a time. Ongoing quality assurance is accomplished through continuous and automated execution of the aggregated functional and unit tests.

How are Stories used in User Research or Data Science contexts?

Stories in User Research or Data Science represent hypotheses or questions about user behavior that need to be answered using data.

In User Research or Data Science, stories often take the form of hypotheses or research questions about user behavior. These stories guide the research process, providing clear objectives and helping to structure the analysis. By focusing on the user and their needs, these stories promote a user-centric approach to data analysis, helping to uncover meaningful, actionable insights.

Research (User Research, Data Science Research, etc.) has become integral to software development in today’s data-driven landscape. Like traditional software development, research activities also benefit from breaking work into smaller, manageable tasks. Although not officially part of the SAFe Requirements Model, we have devised a variation on the user story to address this unique aspect of data science projects. This document integrates with the team level in SAFe, ensuring that data science work aligns with Agile principles and practices.

What is a hypothesis test?

A hypothesis test is a statistical method used to make decisions or draw conclusions about population parameters based on sample data.

Within the statistical domain, hypothesis testing serves as a cornerstone methodology. It’s a process that allows analysts to test assumptions (hypotheses) about a population parameter. It involves formulating a null and alternative hypothesis, choosing a significance level, calculating the test statistic, and interpreting the results. This technique enables uncertainty-free decision-making, allowing organizations to draw data-driven conclusions and make informed decisions.

What is a hypothesis test in an Agile context?

A hypothesis test in an Agile context is a method used to validate assumptions about user behavior, system performance, or other product aspects based on collected data.

Hypothesis testing in Agile, particularly in fields like AI, research, data science, or user research, is a powerful tool for evidence-based decision-making. It involves creating a hypothesis about a particular user behavior, system characteristic, or other aspect of the product. This hypothesis is tested using real-world data collected from users, system logs, experiments, or other sources. The hypothesis test results confirm or reject the initial assumptions, providing insights into product development and improvement. It aligns with the Agile principle of learning through iteration, allowing teams to make data-informed decisions and continuously improve the product based on user feedback and empirical evidence.

What are Analytical Stories, and how are they used for data-driven insights?

Analytical Stories are questions or hypotheses guiding data analysis to obtain valuable business insights.

Analytical stories focus on data-driven insights, predictions, or recommendations that help solve business problems or enhance decision-making. They describe the desired outcome or question to be answered using data analysis, machine learning, or AI techniques. Analytical stories typically involve data exploration, feature engineering, model development, and validation. They include a clear objective, relevant data sources, and success criteria to measure the effectiveness of the analysis.

A typical Analytical Story includes the following seven elements:

What are Infrastructure Tasks?

Infrastructure Tasks are activities related to setting up or maintaining the technical environment that supports software development.

Infrastructure Tasks within SAFe encompass the essential activities that enable and support the development and delivery of software. These tasks range from setting up development environments and configuring servers to maintaining databases and managing network resources. While these tasks may not directly contribute to end-user features, they create a stable, efficient environment for delivering value. They are thus an integral part of the SAFe framework.

What is the Team Backlog?

Scaled Agile teams must maintain the utmost efficiency to ensure overall organizational effectiveness. To achieve this, we must adopt the simplest and leanest possible requirements model that caters to the needs of all stakeholders, especially team members. This model must be quintessentially agile, consistent with most agile training and common practice, and devoid of unnecessary administrative overhead, manual traceability, reporting, or detailed requirements.

Initially introduced by Scrum as a product backlog , the term “backlog” has evolved in our enterprise model to accommodate various levels of work. As a result, we use the term backlog in a more generalized sense. In the Big Picture, we refer to the backlog we’re discussing here as the Scaled Agile team’s local backlog.

This local backlog is the Scaled Agile team’s single, definitive source of work, containing all tasks (primarily user stories) that must be completed. Managed and maintained by the team, it serves as their repository for all identified work items, with its contents typically of little concern to others within the enterprise. The team has full autonomy over managing, tooling, and organizing their backlog to meet their iteration objectives.

The product owner, a Scaled Agile team member, is responsible for maintaining and prioritizing the backlog.

The Scaled Agile team’s backlog consists of all the team’s identified work items. In the meta-model, we generically refer to these work items as stories (or backlog items). For our purposes, we define a story as follows:

A story is a work item contained in the team’s backlog.

This simple definition encapsulates the agile approach’s focus on value delivery. The user story is a special kind that defines the system’s behavior and value for the user. We need to expand the model slightly to make the user story explicit.

With this minor addition, the backlog now consists of user stories and other work items. Other work items include refactors, defects, support and maintenance, tooling, and infrastructure work. These other work items help the team track all tasks needed to deliver value and enable better estimation of the time required to deliver user stories. We will discuss the rationale for specifically identifying these other work items later.

What is the SAFe Product Roadmap?

The SAFe Product Roadmap visually summarizes a product’s direction, highlighting upcoming features and milestones.

The Product Roadmap in SAFe outlines the anticipated journey of a product over time. It visually communicates the direction and progress of the product by displaying upcoming Features and Significant Milestones. This roadmap aids in setting expectations for stakeholders and helps align teams toward common objectives. It is a strategic tool that shows a high-level view of the product’s evolution while providing a common understanding of its future direction.

What is the composition and purpose of the Product Roadmap?

The Product Roadmap comprises planned features, milestones, and timelines to align stakeholders on a product’s future direction.

The Product Roadmap in SAFe combines planned Features, significant Milestones, and Timelines.

• Features derived from the Program Backlog represent the upcoming functionality increments.
• Milestones denote important events or achievements.
• Timelines provide a temporal context for the Features and Milestones.

The central purpose of the roadmap is to provide a shared understanding of the product’s future direction among all stakeholders. It aids expectation management, facilitates strategic decision-making, and promotes team alignment.

The Roadmap comprises a series of planned release dates, each with a theme and a prioritized set of features. Although it is mechanically simple to represent the Roadmap, determining its content is different.

The outcomes of release planning are utilized to update the (product or solution) Roadmap, which offers an understanding of how the enterprise aims to deliver increasing value over time.

How do you balance flexibility and expectation management with Product Roadmaps?

Balancing flexibility and expectation management with Product Roadmaps involves frequent revisiting, stakeholder communication, and applying a rolling wave planning approach.

Achieving the right balance between flexibility and expectation management when dealing with Product Roadmaps involves three specific activities, and they are:

• The roadmap is a living document that is revisited and updated frequently to adapt to changing circumstances.
• Regular communication with stakeholders to set and manage expectations effectively.
• Applying a rolling wave planning approach allows the teams to plan in detail for the near term while keeping a flexible outlook for the distant future. This method enables the roadmap to remain a useful strategic tool, providing direction without constraining agility.

In the SAFe Requirements Model, the Roadmap comprises a series of planned release dates, each with a theme, a set of objectives, and a prioritized feature set. The “next” release on the Roadmap is committed to the enterprise based on the work completed in the most recent release planning session. Releases beyond the next one are not committed, and their scope is somewhat vague.

Thus, the Roadmap embodies the enterprise’s current “plan of intent” for upcoming and future releases. However, it is subject to change—as development facts, business priorities, and customer needs change—therefore, release plans beyond the next release must not be used to establish external commitments.

What is the SAFe Product Vision?

SAFe Product Vision is a clear, inspiring goal representing the future state of a product.

In the SAFe Requirements Model, the Product Vision is a high-level, strategic description of the desired end state for a product or solution. The Product Vision guides Agile teams, helping them make decisions, prioritize features, and align their work with the organization’s broader objectives. Fostering a shared understanding and commitment across teams and stakeholders is essential, ensuring consistent direction throughout the product development process.

What are the key elements of the SAFe Product Vision?

The key aspects of the SAFe Product Vision include target state, customers, needs, and differentiation.

The Product Vision addresses six specific questions, and they are:

• What is this program’s strategic intent?
• What problem will the application, product, or system resolve?
• What features and benefits will it offer?
• Who will it cater to?
• What performance, reliability, etc., will it deliver?
• What platforms, standards, applications, etc., will it support?

The Product Vision in SAFe defines the ‘target state’ – a snapshot of the product’s desired future. It identifies customers or the audience who will benefit from the product. It outlines ‘needs’ – the problems or challenges the product will address. Lastly, it spells out ‘differentiation’ – how the product stands out from its competitors. Together, these components shape a comprehensive and compelling vision that informs and motivates everyone involved in the product’s development.

How is the SAFe Product vision documented?

The SAFe Product vision is documented using a vision statement, vision board, datasheet, draft press release, or vision box.

Since the product and software requirements specification documents and the like are unlikely to exist, directly communicating the Vision for the Scaled Agile program must take a different form. Agile teams take a variety of approaches to communicating the Vision. These include the following: 

• Vision document 
• Vision Board
• Draft press release 
• Preliminary data sheet 
• Backlog and Vision briefing

Documenting the Product Vision in SAFe can be approached in several ways. One common method is a ‘vision statement’ – a concise, written articulation of the product’s future state. Alternatively, a ‘vision board’ is created using images and text to represent the product’s goals visually. Another approach is a ‘vision box,’ a mock-up of the product’s packaging containing key information about the product. These methods help communicate the vision clearly and compellingly, enabling all stakeholders to align their efforts toward achieving it.

Product Vision Statement and Template

The Product Vision document in SAFe typically includes the following elements:

How do you balance the Product Vision and Timelines in SAFe?

Balancing the Product Vision and Timelines in SAFe requires continuous alignment of stakeholders, prioritizing based on value, and maintaining a sustainable pace.

Achieving equilibrium between the Product Vision and Timelines in SAFe involves three strategies, and they are:

• Regular alignment of stakeholders ensures everyone understands the product’s direction and the timelines involved.
• Prioritizing Features based on their value and dependencies ensures the most impactful work is done first.
• Maintaining a sustainable pace of development prevents burnout and ensures the team consistently delivers value over time, thereby upholding the Product Vision while adhering to the set Timelines.

What is the Architectural Runway in SAFe?

Architectural Runway in SAFe is the technical foundation that supports upcoming feature delivery without substantial redesign.

In SAFe, the Architectural Runway refers to the pre-existing, evolving technical infrastructure that enables the smooth delivery of impending features, minimizing the need for extensive, time-consuming redesigns. It’s a critical part of Agile development, ensuring readiness for future iterations, and is maintained and extended by implementing Enabler Epics and stories.

What is the Purpose of Architectural Runway?

The purpose of Architectural Runway is to ensure readiness for the implementation of upcoming features with minimal redesign.

The architectural runway is defined as follows:

A system with architectural runway contains existing or planned infrastructure sufficient to allow the incorporation of current and anticipated requirements without excessive refactoring.

The primary role of the Architectural Runway in SAFe is to provide a robust, flexible technical framework that aids in the swift and efficient delivery of impending features. Organizations can avoid the delays and resources associated with substantial system redesigns by having a well-maintained Architectural Runway, thereby promoting a smooth, continuous flow of value to the end users.

What are the Architectural Requirements in SAFe?

Architectural Requirements in SAFe are the technical prerequisites necessary for feature implementation.

Architectural requirements in SAFe denote the technical conditions that must be met to facilitate the successful deployment of new features. They define the system’s architecture, design, and infrastructure guidelines. This information directs teams when constructing or modifying the system, ensuring alignment with the system’s overall design and the company’s strategic objectives.

Architectural Runway and the Enterprise Portfolio

Addressing crucial technology initiatives.

In the context of an enterprise’s portfolio of products and in the face of a series of shorter, incremental releases, architectural runway answers a crucial question:

What technology initiatives need to be underway now so that we can reliably deliver a new class of features in the next year or so?

Distinguishing from Side R&D Projects

Here, we’re not discussing side R&D projects that an enterprise may use to determine technology strategies, establish feasibility, etc. Those are localized efforts and are managed by teams or system architects. Instead, we’re discussing large-scale changes to the code base necessary to support features on the current roadmap and changes that could affect most, or even all, development teams.

Examples of Large-Scale Architectural Changes

Here are some examples:

• Implement a standard install, licensing, and user authentication model across each product in the suite.
• Convert the transaction server to a microservices-based architecture.
• Redesign the operating system to support symmetrical multiprocessing.

The Importance of Timely Implementation

These changes are not simple refactors. They will involve significant, structural changes that could affect millions of lines of code and require dozens (or even hundreds) of person-years. And, if the enterprise wants to accomplish it next year or even the year after, it must start now.

To start now, this work needs to be defined and communicated to the team like any other major initiative, even though the end-user value may be a year or so down the road.

Collaborative Maintenance of the Architectural Runway

The System Architect/Engineer continuously maintains and evolves the architectural runway in collaboration with Agile teams, allowing for faster delivery of value to customers and reducing technical debt. It is critical to enable the product’s scalability, performance, and maintainability throughout its lifecycle.

How are SAFe Architectural Epics Implemented?

SAFe Architectural Epics are implemented through prioritization, analysis, implementation, and acceptance steps within the Portfolio Kanban system.

Architectural Epics in SAFe are significant initiatives that guide the evolution of the system’s technical aspects. Their implementation follows a structured approach within the Portfolio Kanban system.

• The Architectural Epic and its benefits are documented.
• Architectural Epics are prioritization based on the cost of delay or WSJF.
• Detailed analysis, including Lightweight Business Case development, follows.
• The implementation stage begins upon approval, spanning multiple Planning Intervals (PIs) if needed.
• The acceptance step concludes the process, validating that Epic’s intended benefits have been realized.

Architectural epics will be implemented incrementally in the main code line, just like any other epic. By doing so, development teams commit to a “do no harm” refactoring approach. In other words, they implement these large-scale refactors in small increments. At each PSI, they commit to “do no harm” to the systems or its users. They roll out the architectural changes piecemeal and reveal the new capabilities to the users only when there’s sufficient infrastructure to do so. It isn’t easy. It is agile. And it does work.

How is the SAFe Architectural Runway sustained?

You sustain the SAFe Architectural Runway by continuously implementing Enabler Epics and Enabler Stories.

Sustaining the Architectural Runway in SAFe involves a continual focus on implementing Enabler Epics and Enabler Stories. These elements enhance and extend the existing technical infrastructure, ensuring it stays aligned with current and future business needs. Regularly addressing the technical debt and investing in the system’s modularity, scalability, and security are other crucial aspects of maintaining a healthy Architectural Runway. This proactive approach ensures the system remains flexible and capable of supporting the swift, efficient delivery of new features.

What are the risks of neglecting the Architectural Runway?

The continuous build-out and maintenance of new architectural runways are the responsibility of all mature agile teams. Failing to do so will result in one of two negative outcomes:

• Release dates will be missed because large-scale, just-in-time infrastructure refactoring adds unacceptable risk to scheduling.
• Failure to systematically extend the architecture means teams eventually run out of runway. New features cannot be added without significant refactoring. Velocity slows. The system eventually becomes so brittle and unstable that it has to be entirely rewritten.

How is the Architecture Maintained at the Portfolio, Program, and Team Levels?

This work must happen continuously at each Portfolio, Program, and Team level.

Portfolio Level

The Scaled Agile Portfolio-level architectural runway is achieved by defining, communicating, and implementing architecture epics that drive the company’s technology vision. Some will require significant levels of investment and consume substantial resources. In the short term, some may even reduce the velocity of current and new feature implementations. Because failing to implement them will eventually compromise the company’s position in the market, architectural epics must be visible, estimated, and planned just like any other epic.

Program Level

At the Program level, product managers, system teams, project teams, and architects translate the architectural epics into architectural features relevant to each release. They are prioritized, estimated, and resourced like any other feature. And, like features, each architectural initiative must also be conceptually complete at each release boundary to not compromise the new release.

At the Team level, refactors and design spikes are often necessary to extend the runway and are prioritized along with user stories. This way, architectural work is visible, accountable, and demonstrable at every iteration boundary. This is achieved by agreement and collaboration with system architects, product owners, and agile tech leads, who determine what spikes need to happen and when.

What are Investment Themes?

Investment themes are categories of investments aligned to SAFe’s business strategy.

In SAFe, Investment Themes are broad categories that reflect the business’s strategic objectives and are used to guide resource allocation. They serve as a way to group Portfolio Epics that align with a particular business goal or strategy. This helps the organization ensure its investments align with strategic priorities and facilitates the decision-making process for funding and resource allocation.

Themes have a longer lifespan than epics and may remain mostly unchanged for a year or more.

Investment themes (or product themes) embody the initiatives that guide an enterprise’s investment in systems, products, applications, and services. They represent crucial product or service value propositions that offer market differentiation and competitive advantage. Collecting strategic investment themes for an enterprise or a business unit within an enterprise establishes the relative investment objectives for that entity. Managers are empowered to develop the initiative in the most economically and business-sensible manner for the enterprise within the partition (budget allocation). However, they typically can only exceed the budget or borrow resources from other themes with the agreement of the relevant stakeholders. Through this process, the enterprise exercises its fiduciary responsibility by directing investment towards agreed-upon business priorities.

What is the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)?

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a set of organization and workflow patterns for implementing agile practices at an enterprise scale.

SAFe is a comprehensive guideline for large-scale, complex software systems. SAFe delivers Agile practices to individual teams and across teams of teams or Agile Release Trains (ARTs). By aligning the organization around value delivery and establishing a Lean-Agile mindset, SAFe aims to increase productivity, improve product quality, and foster faster time-to-market.

Why is Scaled Agile Requirements Management Important?

Scaled Agile Requirements Management facilitates alignment, visibility, and value delivery at scale in an Agile enterprise.

Requirements management in a SAFe context is central to aligning all Agile teams to deliver customer value. It ensures the requirements are visible, understandable, and actionable across all enterprise levels – from Portfolio to Program to Team. This alignment and transparency lead to improved productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction

What are the key benefits of implementing the SAFe Requirements Model?

Implementing the SAFe Requirements Model boosts an enterprise’s alignment, transparency, agility, and customer-value delivery.

Implementing the SAFe Requirements Model presents nine specific benefits for multi-team environments, and they are:

• Enhanced Alignment : The SAFe Requirements Model aligns teams, programs, and portfolios to strategic objectives, ensuring everyone is working towards the same goals.
• Improved Transparency : By making requirements traceable and visible at all levels, the model fosters transparency and improves decision-making.
• Increased Agility : The iterative nature of the SAFe Requirements Model allows organizations to adapt quickly to changes, making them more responsive to market shifts and customer needs.
• Customer-Centric Focus : The model’s emphasis on delivering customer value ensures products and services meet customer needs, improving customer satisfaction.
• Risk Reduction : Regular feedback and iterative development reduce the risk of major failures, as issues are be identified and addressed earlier in the process.
• Higher Quality Outputs : With continuous feedback and iterative refinement, the quality of the final product or service is likely to be higher.
• Efficient Resource Utilization : With clear, traceable, and actionable requirements, teams work more efficiently, reducing wasted time and resources.
• Improved Collaboration : The model fosters a culture of collaboration and shared understanding, promoting better communication within and across teams.
• Business Success : With a focus on delivering value to customers, the SAFe Requirements Model ultimately contributes to business success by creating products and services that customers want and need.

The SAFe Requirements Model ensures that requirements are clearly understood, traceable, and actionable across all organizational levels. It promotes alignment between business strategy and technology execution, boosting efficiency and effectiveness. Fostering iterative development and continuous feedback enhances the enterprise’s agility, enabling faster response to changing customer needs. It emphasizes delivering customer value, thus improving customer satisfaction and business success.

What is the connection between SAFe and the SAFe Requirements Model?

The SAFe Framework uses the SAFe Requirements Model to structure, manage, and track requirements at all levels.

In the context of SAFe, the Requirements Model serves as a tool for organizing and understanding the diverse requirements that emerge in an enterprise context. It aids in the translation of business goals into actionable development tasks, facilitating a smoother workflow from concept to cash. It’s built to accommodate Epics, Capabilities, Features, and Stories that represent different levels of granularity in the requirements.

What is the role of the SAFe Requirements Model in modern organizations?

The SAFe Requirements Model acts as a bridge between business strategy and technology execution in modern organizations.

The SAFe Requirements Model helps translate business strategy into technological execution. Structuring requirements at different levels – Epics, Capabilities, Features, and Stories – enables better communication, clearer understanding, and more efficient implementation of strategic initiatives across the organization.

What are the disadvantages of traditional requirement management?

Traditional requirements management methods often lead to delayed feedback, limited adaptability, and misalignment between business and technology teams.

Traditional methods are often linear and rigid, expecting requirements to be fully defined upfront and rarely adapting to changes. This approach results in delayed feedback loops and a lack of agility to respond to changing business needs. Moreover, these methods often struggle to align business strategy with technology execution, leading to miscommunication, misunderstandings, and solutions that don’t meet the intended business value.

How do SAFe and Traditional Requirements Models differ?

The SAFe Requirements Model is iterative, adaptable, and focuses on delivering customer value, contrasting with traditional models, which are linear, rigid, and often business-centric.

Unlike traditional linear and fixed models, the SAFe Requirements Model allows for iterative refinement and adaptation. It promotes continuous feedback and adjustments as a project progresses, ensuring the final product meets customer needs. Moreover, it focuses on delivering customer value rather than meeting rigid business requirements. This customer-centric approach, coupled with flexibility and adaptability, differentiates the SAFe Requirements Model from traditional ones.

How does the SAFe Requirements Model extend the Agile Requirements methods?

The SAFe Requirements Model expands traditional Agile methods to accommodate large-scale, complex enterprises.

Traditional Agile methods are excellent at the team level but struggle when scaling to larger organizations. The SAFe Requirements Model addresses this by introducing a hierarchical structure for requirements that aligns with the layered structure of large enterprises. It integrates Epics, Capabilities, Features, and Stories, ensuring that business objectives are effectively translated into actionable development tasks at all organizational levels.

What are the SAFe Core Competencies?

SAFe’s seven core competencies, including Agile Product Delivery, provide a holistic approach to delivering value in a Lean, Agile, and sustainable manner.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) defines seven core competencies, and they are:

• Lean-Agile Leadership:  Inspires adoption of Agile practices.
• Team and Technical Agility:  Enhances team capabilities and technical skills.
• Agile Product Delivery:  Delivers customer value through fast, integrated delivery cycles.
• Enterprise Solution Delivery:  Manages large-scale, complex solutions.
• Lean Portfolio Management:  Aligns strategy and execution.
• Organizational Agility:  Enables quick, decentralized decision-making.
• Continuous Learning Culture:  Encourages innovation and improvement.

What are the SAFe Principles?

The SAFe Principles are a set of ten fundamental principles derived from Lean and Agile methodologies that guide the implementation of SAFe.

SAFe principles are guidelines derived from Agile practices and methods, Lean product development, and systems thinking to facilitate large-scale, complex software development projects. The ten principles that make up the SAFe framework are as follows:

• Take an economic view:  This principle emphasizes the importance of making decisions within an economic context, considering trade-offs between risk, cost of delay, and various operational and development costs.
• Apply systems thinking:  This principle encourages organizations to understand the interconnected nature of systems and components and prioritize optimizing the system as a whole rather than individual parts.
• Assume variability; preserve options:  This principle highlights the importance of maintaining flexibility in design and requirements throughout the development cycle, allowing for adjustments based on empirical data to achieve optimal economic outcomes.
• Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles:  This principle advocates for incremental development in short iterations, which allows for rapid customer feedback and risk mitigation.
• Base milestones on an objective evaluation of working systems:  This principle emphasizes the need for objective, regular evaluation of the solution throughout the development lifecycle, ensuring that investments yield an adequate return.
• Make value flow without interruptions:  This principle focuses on making value delivery as smooth and uninterrupted as possible by understanding and managing the properties of a flow-based system.
• Apply cadence, and synchronize with cross-domain planning:  This principle states that applying a predictable rhythm to development and coordinating across various domains can help manage uncertainty in the development process.
• Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers:  This principle advises against individual incentive compensation, which can foster internal competition, and instead encourages an environment of autonomy, purpose, and mutual influence.
• Decentralize decision-making:  This principle emphasizes the benefits of decentralized decision-making for speeding up product development flow and enabling faster feedback. However, it also recognizes that some decisions require centralized, strategic decision-making.
• Organize around value:  This principle advocates that organizations structure themselves around delivering value quickly in response to customer needs rather than adhering to outdated functional hierarchies.

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The Running Mann

Humorous Anecdotes, Observations & Accounts of Marathon Running & Agile Adventures.

The Power of Feature Hypotheses

One of the improvements SAFe version 4.5 introduced was incorporating practices from “ The Lean Startup ” into the framework – specifically the use of benefit hypothesis statements into features and epics. This is a story of how well this worked for us.

We were worried about the standard of feature writing across our teams and also wanted to bring them up to speed with the SAFe 4.5 feature hypothesis thinking. Therefore, we organised a Friday afternoon “Lunch and Learn” session for interested team members.

The main objective was to go over a practical example from one of our feature teams and convert an existing feature into a ‘ valuable feature hypothesis statement ‘.

[If you are unfamiliar with the Lean Startup concept of hypotheses, please see supporting post:  Using Hypothesis Statements for Features in Software Development ]

Getting A Feature Benefit Hypothesis Statement

We started with the feature captured below that, no disrespect to team, was not very well written. The definition I like to use for a well written feature is that: ‘ someone outside the team can read it once and understand what needs to be done ’. At this stage I don’t even think that most of the team understood the feature.

Luckily we had the product owner (PO) in the room. We asked him a few probing questions that went something like this.

Team: Why are we doing this change? What is the benefit? PO: We need to update the audit report fields for our customers. Team: Why do they need the additional fields. PO: So that customers can check for errors before they submit them to us for processing. Team: Why do they check for errors? How does this work? PO: All customers have a QA person or someone similar checking these reports to prevent errors being processed. When errors get missed and processed, it wastes time and causes a lot of frustration. Team: So what exactly is the current problem? PO: Today, customer auditors can’t see all the relevant information on the audit reports for cross-checking and referencing so many errors are still processed. Team: What is the intended result of this change? PO: We’ll reduce the error rate by 95%. [And BAM! We get our hypothesis]

Interesting takeout: The PO did not come right out with the “95% error reduction” even though it was in his head from the start – it required a conversation to get his knowledge shared with the rest of the team. This is part of the magic of conversation within collocated teams – and the importance of having a PO who works with the team.

The benefit hypothesis makes the “why” clear to without having to write a long document. Everyone in the room quickly came to the same understanding as to what needed to be done and why. A well worded hypothesis statement helps remove ambiguities and focuses the team on what really needs to be done. [To understand why “why?” is important – see Simon Sinek’s TED Talk below.]

The other (perhaps even more) positive outcome is that it gives “purpose” to the teams’ work. I asked the group, “Would you rather (a) update some fields on an audit report or (b) reduce error rates by 95%?” – unsurprisingly there was unanimous agreement that (b) was the more exciting option.

“Reducing error rates by 95%” gives meaning to the team’s work. I am unlikely to go home and proudly tell my kids I updated some fields on an audit report. But telling them that I helped reduce foreign exchange error rates by 95% makes my job as a developer on a transactional banking system sound sexy and important!

Feature Acceptance Criteria & Slicing

We then moved onto the feature acceptance criteria (AC). The simple way I view feature AC is, “ How will we UAT the feature to know that it’s complete and fit for purpose? ” (as opposed to user story AC which are the actual unit test cases).

If you are not able to write clear AC you don’t know enough to proceed with the feature so this was a good test of the strength of our feature hypothesis. Once again it was an interesting and valuable discussion with participants throwing various questions at the PO. A summary is below:

Which countries are in scope?

The PO initially said “all countries”. Further conversation sliced it down to two countries (South Africa and Uganda) where there was definite current need – from there it made sense to split the feature into one for each country. South Africa had the most urgent need so we focused on that and the lower priority Uganda feature went onto the backlog (where it will remain until it becomes priority). The requirement that the initial feature for South Africa be scalable for other countries was included as a non-functional requirement.

Attempted slipping in of a production defect

The PO tried to slip a production defect into the AC (the format of the onscreen and printed reports are different). The team deftly managed to slice the defect off the feature (the defect fix is roughly the same size as the eventual feature). The valid defect was added to the team backlog (where the PO can prioritise it against other work to determine when it will get fixed).

Attempted scope creep

The PO also tried to slip a new requirement into the AC – the ability to be able to save audit reports as a .pdf file. Once again the team deftly convinced the PO that this was not part of the minimum viable product (MVP) by referring to the hypothesis statement (i.e. we don’t need to save to .pdf to test the hypothesis). The valid requirement was also added to the team backlog (and the PO gets to decide when it’s priority enough to be built).

Interesting takeout: In my opinion, the PO was doing his job perfectly – trying to get as much as possible into the feature to maximise the customer benefit. Because he’s part of the overall team having the conversation he gets to understand the trade-offs involved with different decisions. When posed with the question, “Do you want to have the feature done in 2 weeks if we just do MVP or do you want to wait for 2 months if we do ‘ all this other stuff ‘?” a good PO will always go for “ small and fast “.

By reducing the feature to a single (highest priority) country and omitting other requirements that (whilst important) had no impact on the hypothesis statement, the feature ended up being at least 10 times smaller than if we’d tried to include everything. Slicing the feature down to get the most value with the least amount of work drastically increases the speed with which it can be built and dramatically reduces risk.

The team left the room knowing exactly what needed to be done. More importantly everyone had agreed on what didn’t need to be done “right now” (i.e. in the next sprint) because they were not MVP (however these requirements have been added to the team backlog and can be done when the PO prioritises them). The PO was also part of all the decisions taken so he should get no nasty surprises when the feature is presented back as “done”.

Conclusion: Super-Quick Delivery

The best part of this story was that two weeks later when I asked the team “How’s the feature going?”, the reply was “It’s already done.”

The team was able to fully design, build and test a valuable feature in less than two weeks (fitting easily into a 2-week sprint). In the past a feature like this would usually take 12 months to deliver (see the supporting post “ 6 Reasons: From 12 Months to 2 Weeks for Feature Delivery “). By slicing the feature down to its true MVP and the team knowing exactly what was needed and why, the feature flew through the development value stream.

Of course, now the real test is to measure whether our hypothesis proves true and we successfully reduce the error rate by 95% – let’s hope so! We’ll know pretty soon…

The actual reduction in client error rates was 80%. As it stands this has been deemed sufficient. There are no plans to build additional features to further reduce the error rates (as there have been higher priority features to work on). Likewise, the production defect has not been fixed (and may never be) since it has never been a priority compared to other more beneficial work.

I delivered a presentation on “The Power of Feature Hypotheses” at Agile Africa 2018 using this and other examples. Here is the video link from the conference:  https://youtu.be/CUVX1AiqQak?list=PLp6xQ3fl72zIu8FJjDtBUFUS0w1FPQhPZ

I am also more than happy to submit a speaker proposal for your conference. Feel free to contact me via email: [email protected] or Twitter @runningmann100 /  @StuartDMann .

4 Replies to “The Power of Feature Hypotheses”

• Pingback: 6 Reasons: From 12 Months to 2 Weeks for Feature Delivery - The Running Mann
• Pingback: Using Hypothesis Statements for Features in Software Development - The Running Mann

Good account of what we discussed in the session and what was learnt. Going forward it will definitely provide a mechanism for us to access information on the sessions to further unpack.

• Pingback: How George Costanza, Frogger & a Craving For Sushi Help Explain Features & User Stories - The Running Mann

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