SAFe for Hardware Activity in Japan

My recent trip to Japan focused on supporting the launch of the Japanese version of the SAFe for Hardware course and delivering the first offering of this course in Japan with my teammate and SAFe Fellow, Hiroaki Nakaya-san. Our partner, TDC SOFT, organized and hosted both events. Hideki Kamijo-san, Corporate Officer and Fellow at TDC SOFT, is on the right in the picture below, standing next to our own Phil Knight. Kamijo-san recently released a Japanese translation of Mik Kersten’s book, Project to Product! Masatoshi Hiraoka-san, Corporate Executive at NTT DATA Intellilink, is next to me and our Japan Team, Tatsuro Koba-san and Nakaya-san, on the far left

My main observation on this visit is that Japanese enterprises, like many organizations across the globe that build high-assurance, cyber-physical systems, are navigating the challenge of integrating their existing hierarchical, risk-averse stage-gate models with SAFe’s principles of continuous value flow and incremental delivery. In Japan, this rigorous focus on quality and careful gating is deeply valued across the culture—both nationally and within organizations. After decades of emphasizing quality as a primary goal, there is a natural caution about changes that might seem to compromise it. However, the evidence from the DORA metrics is compelling, showing that speed (deployment frequency, cycle time) and superior quality (change failure rate, mean time to recovery) are synergistic and mutually reinforcing. This message, that quality and speed are not exclusive tradeoffs, resonates well. Given that organizations worldwide are seeking ways to optimize their value delivery, I see tremendous opportunity in Japan to partner with these organizations, honoring their commitment to quality while introducing Lean-Agile ways of working that can help them achieve both speed and scale.

Nakaya-san and I also delivered the first-ever SAFe for Hardware course in Japanese. We had individuals from several manufacturing companies, and a few from local consulting firms. The first exercise asks participants to place a dot on a board showing the years of Agile and SAFe experience. There is already Agile and SAFe activity in Japan. However, the class was evenly split between folks with many years of Agile and SAFe experience and those with none. No one was in the middle. Despite this gap, the course and its delivery were well received by all participants. And I enjoyed being back to teaching face-to-face in a real room and running hands-on activities again!

SAFe for Hardware Activity in China

I was in China for two weeks last November, one week in the Shanghai region and one week in Beijing. China has many manufacturing organizations using SAFe, and this trip was primarily focused on engaging enterprises on SAFe for hardware development. While that was the reason for my visit, there was also significant interest in AI at almost every customer engagement. More on that later.

I was fortunate to have several hosts guide me, and they are shown in the pictures below. Many of you remember Marsha Xue from her time here at Scaled Agile. She is now with Mettler Toledo and was my host for three days there. Li Jianhao (James), founder of our partner Beijing Linghe Maihua Consulting, Ltd, was my host in Beijing, and Jing Binliao (Eric), founder of our partner ScrumCN, was my host in Shanghai.

I was frankly shocked by how digitally native China already is today. I used a single app, Alipay, for everything. It was like having Uber, Amazon, Venmo, and a host of other apps all rolled into one. I have to tell this story. My laptop’s power supply stopped working on Sat night. And I had to present at the first-ever SAFe Summit China the next morning. I was able to order a replacement that arrived in less than an hour – on a Saturday night! I was shocked because, as an American, I am excited when Amazon can deliver next-day, not next hour. The person at the front desk who helped me order it just smiled and said, “China speed.” 

As I mentioned, James hosted the first-ever SAFe Summit in China. He also announced the first-ever China Agile Whitepaper, a collection of SAFe experiences across different organizations in China. One of the presenters was from Feishu, a ByteDance company, and he demonstrated SAFe support in their Agile planning product. It is a Jira-like Agile and SAFe tool used extensively across ByteDance companies and others in China. They are planning to release it in Japan and other parts of the world soon.

With the help of my hosts, I visited many manufacturing companies that are all using SAFe today:

• Mettler Toledo (precision instruments)
• Siemens Energy (MRI machines)
• Volkswagen
• INOVANCE (provides 40% of all manufacturing equipment in China)
• FAW (electric vehicle manufacturing)

While I came to China to support our manufacturing SAFe customers, each of them asked me to present and discuss what we are doing with AI. This was a great opportunity to explain our AI direction and promote our vision for AI-Empowered Agility.

Summary

My biggest takeaway is that SAFe is active and growing in Japan and China. There is a large opportunity for knowledgeable and experienced Lean-Agile coaches and partners who can accelerate the growth of SAFe in the same way they enabled SAFe growth in the US and Europe several years ago. And I am also excited that our existing customers are pulling more AI-Empowered Agility information from us. That helps validate the direction we are taking. The largest challenge I faced was the language barrier. It was invaluable to travel with our native-speaking SAFe partners, who helped bridge the language barrier.

Visit the SAFe for Hardware course page for more information about the course.

Stay SAFe,

Harry and the Framework Team

And yes, I made it to The Great Wall!

The post SAFe for Hardware Activity in Japan and China appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.

The Scaling Agile Requirements SAFe competency offers a strategic approach to aligning what we build with why we build it. It provides methods for ensuring that requirements evolve in tandem with system development as we learn.

What is the Scaling Agile Requirements Competency? This competency shifts the focus from writing perfect, static documents to fostering a dynamic, continuous, and collaborative process. It introduces a connected hierarchy of work that scales to connect high-level portfolio strategy to daily execution.

Instead of massive, unbreakable project plans, it teaches organizations how to structure work into digestible pieces. This ranges from large strategic initiatives to system functionalities, and finally down to units of testable work.

A key mindset shift in this competency is treating major requirements as hypotheses. Rather than assuming a big idea is perfect from day one, it encourages organizations to validate their assumptions using objective evidence, utilizing minimal viable products (MVPs) and rapid learning cycles to pivot or persevere based on real data.

Why should Agile Teams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs) care about how to scale requirements?

1. Empowered, Decentralized Decision-Making. This competency clarifies boundaries. It enables portfolio leaders to define the broad strategic direction (the “what” and the “why”) while empowering ARTs and individual Agile Teams to determine the “how.” When teams are enabled to deliver clear, value-focused increments rather than rigid technical specifications, they gain the autonomy to foster local innovation and take true technical ownership of their solutions.

2. Reduced Rework and Frustration. Misunderstood requirements are a primary cause of delays. By promoting collaborative refinement and continuous integration, this competency ensures a shared understanding. Ambiguity is caught early through frequent system demonstrations and clear acceptance criteria, so teams spend less time fixing disconnects and more time delivering value.

3. Balancing Innovation with Technical Health. A major pain point for teams is the pressure to ship new features at the expense of system architecture. This competency explicitly addresses this by elevating technical requirements (such as security, performance, and infrastructure) alongside business features. It ensures that the architectural runway is maintained and that non-functional constraints are respected, preventing the accumulation of crippling technical debt.

4. A Clear Line of Sight. For anyone working on an ART, it can sometimes feel like you are just a small cog in a massive machine. This approach establishes a clear traceability thread. Every piece of work a developer pulls can be traced back to a strategic business outcome. Teams know exactly how their daily work impacts the broader organizational goals.

Requirements are intended to help manage the flow of value across complex systems and large employee populations. Without a robust requirements model, scaling can mean building the wrong things faster. 

Use this SAFe competency, alongside others, to break free from traditional constraints and embrace a high-quality flow of value that truly responds to customer needs. We’re eager to see your results!

— Rebecca Davis and the SAFe Framework Team

The post Scaling Agile Requirements: Your Key to Achieving Flow appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.

We’re bringing that same high-energy spirit to an easy-to-reach location: the Beurs van Berlage, a stunning historic landmark in the heart of Amsterdam, just a short scenic walk from Central Station. No winding cliffside roads this time.

AI is the Engine. SAFe is the Steering.

We’ve moved beyond talking about agile practices in isolation. Right now, the real conversation is happening at the intersection of AI and enterprise agility—and what that means for how organizations operate, lead, and deliver value.

Let’s be honest: everyone’s experimenting with AI, but not everyone is getting results. Dropping AI into a messy system doesn’t clean it up—it just speeds up the dysfunction.

That’s where SAFe comes in. Think of it as the operating model that gives AI direction. It brings structure, governance, and clarity—so AI becomes more than a shiny tool. It becomes a scalable, secure, value-generating capability.

At this Summit, we’re diving into how organizations are making that shift: from scattered AI pilots to true AI-driven enterprises. We’ll share stories, lessons, and strategies from teams on the front lines—exploring what it means for leadership, competitiveness, and the future of work itself.

What’s on the menu? (Besides Stroopwafels)

As Program Chair, together with the track chairs and event team, I’m proud of this remarkable lineup. With 100+ powerful submissions, shaping the agenda was challenging — and choosing from so many great stories was truly hard. Thank you to everyone who shared their work.

One theme will stand out clearly: the power of partnerships. Success rarely happens in a vacuum, and we’re honored to welcome global premier partners—adesso, AgileTribe, Broadcom, Capgemini, Connected Movement, Devoteam, Gladwell Academy, inspearit, iqbusiness, KEGON, knowmad mood, MHP, PEDCO, and more—joining the stage with their customers to reveal the secret sauce behind their most successful achievements.

Discover how Pluxee is purposefully customizing SAFe across 29 countries, and how Roche Diagnostics is scaling agility in the highly regulated world of healthcare. Hear from industry leaders such as Christian Dior Couture on moving from vision to value, Renault Digital on shaping management hierarchy within a SAFe model, and Etihad Airways on the evolving landscape of people management. Learn how Amadeus is advancing large-scale technical excellence and flow.

Experience public sector innovation in action as the French Ministry of Interior shares its “Product Mode Framework,” and the Dutch Tax Office—right here on home turf—explores intent-driven leadership in government. And in the world of high-stakes engineering, Mercedes-Benz will reveal how to effectively govern value stream landscapes and hardware complexity at scale.

The main stage moment

We’re thrilled to announce that Volkswagen Group will be taking the main stage to share their journey of implementing a new product organization.

Joining them in the spotlight are thought leaders from Scaled Agile, who will dive into how to define the operating model for the AI-Native enterprise. And that’s just the beginning — we have a surprise keynote speaker waiting in the wings, plus several more surprises throughout the event that we’re keeping under wraps for now.

What else is on the menu?

The Summit also creates space for meaningful connection: the SPC VIP Lounge for networking and recharge, Product Labs to explore new SAFe innovations, direct expert access at the SPCT Coaching Station, and a Partner Marketplace offering practical support for your transformation journey.

The full experience: from Monday to Post-Summit

Beyond the two-day Summit, a full week of growth awaits: Partner & SPCT Day on March 23 for strategic alignment and leadership connection, followed by the AI-Native Foundations course for hands-on skills in AI-enabled transformation.

Don’t get left on the dock

Amsterdam 2026 defines the future of SAFe and AI-Native — great speakers, real customer stories, and a venue at the center of the action. Not to be missed.

Register Now for the SAFe & AI Summit Amsterdam 2026

— Michele Lanzinger (SAFe Summit Program Chair)

The post The SAFe & AI Summit Amsterdam 2026 appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.

We’re excited to share our latest blog post featuring a deep-dive discussion on Customizing SAFe!

This post brings together Andrew Sales, SAFe Chief Methodologist, and Peter Pedross, CEO of PEDCO, for an illuminating conversation about adapting, improving, removing, and extending elements of the SAFe Framework in highly regulated organizations.

We celebrate Peter Pedross’s extensive experience, particularly his work developing PEDCO’s Applied SAFe. Peter shares invaluable insights, including case studies from global organizations that have used Applied SAFe as an enterprise solution to create a Lean QMS, implement traceable changes, and apply role and workflow extensions in regulated industries. His applied knowledge is a testament to the practical possibilities of effective SAFe customization. Andrew and Peter showcase the new Customizing SAFe guidance, discussing four customizing SAFe guardrails and how to facilitate a customization workshop.

Why customizing SAFe^® isn’t a violation of the framework—it is a necessity for a compliant Lean QMS.

By Peter Pedross, CEO, creator of Applied SAFe

For Quality Managers and Process Engineers in regulated sectors like MedTech, Automotive, or Defense, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) often presents a dilemma. On one side, the framework offers a coherent system for business agility. On the other hand, the rigorous demands of standards like ISO 26262, ASPICE, or FDA regulations require specific, auditable processes that “out-of-the-box” SAFe does not explicitly define.

“An effective Framework provides a coherent system of elements that work together to achieve a specific set of outcomes. Implementing these elements in a particular context is the secret to unlocking value.”
— Andrew Sales, Chief Methodologist at Scaled Agile.

In high-assurance environments, that context is also compliance. To achieve agility without compromising quality, organizations must build a bridge between their theoretical framework and operational reality. Here is how to navigate the customization of SAFe^® to establish a robust Lean Quality Management System (QMS).

For more detailed information, we recommend viewing this 50-minute webinar by Andrew Sales and Peter Pedross, Founder of PEDCO and creator of Applied SAFe.

Introduction: The “One-Size-Fits-All” Myth

For professionals in regulated industries like automotive, defense, or finance, implementing the standard Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) can feel like forcing a square peg into a round hole. The friction is palpable—conflicting terminology clashes with established corporate language, valuable existing practices seem to have no place, and the critical need to prove compliance to auditors creates constant pressure. This pressure often leads organizations to mistakenly consider abandoning the framework, viewing it as the source of the friction.

However, the solution isn’t to discard a powerful tool but to embrace a disciplined approach to customization. The secret to unlocking the true value of SAFe, especially where quality and compliance are non-negotiable, lies in intelligently tailoring the framework to fit your organization’s unique context. This transforms the framework from a generic blueprint into a high-performance engine calibrated for your specific context.

1. The Real Secret: Customization Unlocks Value

It is essential to understand that SAFe is a framework, not a rigid, prescriptive process. Its purpose is to provide a coherent system of elements that guide an organization toward specific outcomes. The ultimate goal is always to achieve business outcomes, and this requires thoughtfully selecting and tailoring the Framework’s elements to a specific organizational context.

“An effective Framework provides a coherent system of elements that work together to achieve a specific set of outcomes. Implementing these elements in a particular context is the secret to unlocking value.”
– Andrew Sales, Chief Methodologist at Scaled Agile.

This represents a crucial mindset shift. It moves teams from “doing SAFe” to “using SAFe.” “Doing SAFe” often manifests as cargo-cult behavior—focusing on ceremonies, adhering dogmatically to every role and artifact, and measuring success by compliance to the framework itself. In contrast, “using SAFe” is outcome-driven. It means pragmatically applying the framework’s elements to solve specific business problems and measuring success by the tangible value delivered to the organization and its customers.
Configuration vs. Customization: Know the Difference

Before making changes, it is critical to distinguish between configuring and customizing.

• Configuration (Tailoring): This involves selecting options already built into the framework. Which roles do we need? Which ART topology fits our value stream? In Applied SAFe®, this is handled natively with over 520 built-in tailoring options, allowing you to switch elements on or off without breaking the system.
• Customization: This describes situations where new elements are added or default definitions are modified to fit a specific context. In regulated environments, customization is often unavoidable. You might need to adapt terminology for government work, extend the Framework to include hardware engineering lifecycles, or improve processes by integrating specific risk management practices.

2. Your QMS, Reimagined: SAFe as a Lean Quality Management System

For any organization operating under regulatory scrutiny, the primary concern is maintaining a robust Quality Management System (QMS). A traditional QMS often follows a rigid, waterfall model with quality and compliance checked at distinct, after-the-fact phase gates: Requirements complete, Design complete, Critical design complete. This turns quality assurance into a series of costly, late-stage inspections.
With the right approach, SAFe becomes the foundation of a modern, Lean QMS. This reimagined system focuses on building quality and compliance in incrementally, verifying and validating continuously, and ultimately releasing validated solutions on demand. The bridge to this reality is PEDCO’s Applied SAFe, a standard implementation of SAFe specifically designed to function as a customizable Lean Quality Management System. It provides the structure to operate with agility while meeting the stringent demands of regulated work.

3. More Than Just Tweaking: The Three Pillars of Meaningful Customization

Effective customization is a structured activity that goes far beyond simply changing terminology. It follows disciplined patterns that allow an organization to adapt the framework to its context, integrate new ideas, and apply its principles to new areas of the business. There are three primary methods for meaningful customization:

• Adapt: This involves tailoring SAFe to a specific context, an essential first step to overcome initial adoption barriers and make the framework intuitive within the corporate culture. A prime example is SAFe in Government, where terminology is adapted for the public sector. Concepts like “Mission Owners,” “Mission Innovation,” and “Mission Value” are introduced to align the framework with the unique vocabulary and goals of government agencies.
• Improve: This is the practice of integrating other proven, best-in-class practices from the wider industry, ensuring your SAFe implementation doesn’t become an echo chamber. The Sao Paulo Treasury provides a compelling case study. By incorporating quarterly Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) synchronized with their PI cadences, they created a powerful synergy between strategic goals and execution, leading to a remarkable 296% increase in the number of features delivered or in progress.
• Extend: This pillar is the path to true business agility: applying Lean-Agile principles to business operations, breaking down silos between technology and functions like finance, marketing, and HR. Oracle Applications Lab successfully extended SAFe to its core financial and accounting teams. This resulted in the elimination of 54% of manual accounting tasks and enabled them to close the books and report earnings in less than 10 days—21 days faster than the average Fortune 500 company.

Customizing Safely: The Guardrails

When you need to customize—for example, to add a specific “Safety Manager” role or a “Safety Assessment” milestone—it is vital to follow strict Guardrails to ensure you don’t break the agile flow. We recommend validating every change against four key tests:

• Does it enhance agility rather than compromise the essence of SAFe?
• Is it the right solution, or just the easiest fix?
• Does it amplify outcomes rather than maintain the status quo?
• Does it optimize systemically rather than solve a local problem?

4. Proof in Practice: How Skyguide Flies with a Customized SAFe

Their implementation approach treated Applied SAFe as a “toolbox.” They committed to using as much of the standard SAFe content as possible but strategically adapted and extended the framework where necessary to meet their unique operational needs. Their customizations included:

• Adapting standard SAFe processes to support the special needs of an Air Navigation Service Provider.
• Adding company-specific roles, practices, and work products. Crucially, these enhancements were made explicit; any company-specific content was clearly marked with the Skyguide logo, creating an unambiguous visual language for all users.
• Creating team-type-specific processes to effectively manage suppliers with different delivery models, accommodating both agile and traditional waterfall approaches within the same framework.

To see the power of customization in a highly regulated, safety-critical environment, look no further than Skyguide, the Swiss air navigation service provider. Tasked with establishing SAFe in a context where errors are not an option, they needed a way to blend agile principles with stringent compliance requirements.

By taking this tailored approach, Skyguide achieved a wealth of powerful outcomes. They implemented consistent, auditable, and compliant processes in just two months and passed the audit in a total time of 4 months. The new model allows departments to collaborate on a common set of deliverables regardless of their chosen lifecycle. Furthermore, the training overhead was remarkably low: just three days of training enabled the process engineering team, and only 1.5 hours of self-learning were sufficient for Agile Release Train members to become productive with their customized SAFe Implementation. -> Read the full report here.

5. The Auditor’s Friend: Design compliance in, do not replicate a standard

A common and dangerous pitfall in regulated environments is attempting to create a process model that is a direct, one-to-one replica of a reference standard like ISO 26262 or Automotive SPICE. This often results in “process theater”—a complex, bureaucratic system that no one actually follows, creating significant risk during an audit.

A far more effective and resilient strategy is to design a company-specific process model that reflects how your teams actually work—”The way we like it.” and how these elements of the QMS support a compliant way of working. This way, the standard requirements become your friend to improve your implementation of SAFe in your own context, and compliance becomes an integral part of your daily work.

This approach is the auditor’s friend because it produces a living, breathing process that people understand and use daily. When auditors arrive, they don’t just see a compliant document; they see a compliant culture and consistent execution, which is far more convincing and resilient to scrutiny. A platform like Applied SAFe is designed to support this exact approach, allowing a single internal process model to be mapped to multiple regulatory standards.

Conclusion: From Framework to Finishing Touch

Customizing SAFe is not about breaking the rules or dismantling the framework. It is about intelligently applying the framework’s principles and practices to achieve specific goals within a specific context. It is the crucial finishing touch that aligns a powerful blueprint with the real-world needs of your organization.
For enterprises in regulated fields, a disciplined and structured approach to customization is the key. Using tools like Applied SAFe, organizations can transform the framework from a generic guide into a powerful, fine-tuned engine for delivering exceptional value while upholding the highest standards of quality, safety, and compliance.

The post Guest Blog: Customizing SAFe to Establish a QMS appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.

For years, many organizations have wrestled with a conflict at the very heart of their operations: the struggle between the rigid, annual processes of traditional budgeting and the dynamic, iterative nature of Agile development. 

Every Agile Release Train (ART) knows the pain. Being asked to pivot based on a critical market signal, but your budget is locked into a project that was defined a year or more ago. You have the people, the skills, and the capacity to deliver new value, but the funding is tied to a scope that is no longer the highest priority.

This friction actively hinders business outcomes, slowing innovation and creating administrative overhead that does not clearly tie to improving product and customer experience.

That’s why we’re incredibly excited to announce the release of our Transitioning to Value Stream Funding Competency. This SAFe Competency, part of the LPM Discipline, is specifically designed to help organizations, from finance to product to delivery, resolve this core conflict. It provides tactical steps to build a financial system that supports Agility across a portfolio of value streams and in operational decisions.

Why is Traditional Budgeting a Barrier to Agility?

The problem lies in the fundamental assumptions of project-based funding.

1. It’s Slow and Rigid: Traditional budgeting is an annual, “start-stop” process. A project must be defined, estimated, and approved before any work begins, creating administrative friction and making it nearly impossible to respond dynamically to market changes.
2. It Creates False Certainty: Requiring detailed, upfront estimates for a project creates a misleading sense of certainty. We all know requirements change, but the project budget often remains a fixed, immovable anchor, leading to either scope-creep or unnecessary “use it or lose it” spending.
3. It Destabilizes Teams: Traditional models treat people as interchangeable resources, moving them from one temporary project to the next. This creates low morale, destroys the stable, long-lived teams that are the engine of continuous value flow, and increases the knowledge transfer costs that are often overlooked.

The new guidance on the Transitioning to Value Stream Funding Competency confronts these issues head-on. It provides a blueprint for shifting the conversation from funding a specific monetary amount (a project budget) to funding a fixed capacity (the people, tools, and infrastructure) of a long-lived Value Stream.

What You’ll Find in the New Competency

The new competency is essential reading for anyone involved in portfolio management, finance, or delivery. It provides the foundational concepts and practical steps needed to move away from project-based cost accounting.

Getting the Conversation Started

The core idea is Value Stream Funding, which allocates a predictable, fixed budget to your SAFe Portfolio’s value streams (including all the ARTs and Agile Teams) for a defined period. This simple but profound shift allows leaders to change the work that flows to the stable teams based on priority, rather than trying to move the people to the work.

We detail the concrete benefits you can expect to achieve:

• Reduced overhead by eliminating complex project cost accounting.
• Improved alignment between strategic objectives and financial investment.
• The ability for financial leaders to maintain compliance through Lean practices like Agile capitalization and effective Guardrails.

Three Practical Paths to Transition

Recognizing that no two organizations are the same, the guidance outlines three common and successful transition models. Instead of forcing a “big bang” change, these models provide incremental approaches for safely moving to Value Stream Funding:

1. Project-to-ART Convergence (Focusing on People): Best when you are launching new ARTs out of a project environment.
2. Solution-Centric Model (Focusing on Value): Ideal for organizations already organized around clear, continuous products.
3. Incremental Funding Model (Focusing on Categories of Work): A useful approach for running small pilots and changing financial tracking systems incrementally.

Regardless of your chosen path, the critical first step is thoroughly mapping the financial current state. The guidance provides a list of core data points to collect, and it encourages you to collaborate with the CFO and finance leaders to establish a shared baseline of your organization’s financial reality before making any changes.

The Power of Lean Portfolio Guardrails

Value stream funding empowers decentralized decision-making without a loss of control. The guidance includes details on how to get started implementing Lean Portfolio guardrails. These policies ensure your budget is spent in alignment with the portfolio strategy. We provide tactical examples to help you with:

• Guiding investments by strategic horizon 
• Applying capacity allocation 
• Approving significant initiatives
• Engaging Business Owners

We encourage all Lean Portfolio Leaders, SPCs/ASPCs, Finance, and Product Leaders to dive into this new competency today and begin the transition to financing with agility in your organization. 

Check it out!

— Rebecca Davis and the SAFe Framework Team

The post How to Transition from Project to Value Stream Funding appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.

This month, we are excited to share another valuable new book from our SAFe community: Engineering Agility – A Pragmatic Approach to Adapting Agile Practices for Hardware Product Development, authored by Ali Hajou and Marina Voropaeva. This book is a valuable addition to our community as it provides practical guidance on applying SAFe, Scrum, and other Agile methods in a hardware development context. In this blog post, the authors describe the book and summarize some of its key topics. Thank you, Ali and Marina, for your work.

It is the beginning of 2026; more than 25 years since the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was published. Ever since, interest in lightweight development processes among developers of all kinds has skyrocketed. However, most hardware development teams struggle with the pressure of rigid phase-gates and the unpredictability of physical manufacturing. They rely on a traditional approach that enforces long, submerged development cycles where engineers work in isolation for months before attempting a “big bang” integration. This frequently results in “integration hell,” where unforeseen interface conflicts and design misalignments emerge only when deadlines are looming.

In hardware and cyber-physical product development, agility must accommodate physical constraints, including long supplier lead times, costly physical changes, mass-production commitments, and “working solutions” that often involve simulations, prototypes, test results, or compliance evidence (rather than shippable product increments).

The book “Engineering Agility”, by Ali Hajou and Marina Voropaeva, addresses these challenges by contextualizing the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto for the physical world. Instead of treating Agile as a software-only methodology, it provides a pragmatic roadmap for engineers who cannot simply “pivot” in a week due to long lead times, physical dependencies, and mass production constraints. The trick is to contextualize (or “Engineer”) these (“Agile”) principles within the constraints of your own company.

A Predictable Tool for Selective Learning

The book serves as a practical toolkit rather than a theoretical lecture. Each of the 12 chapters is dedicated to one of the 12 Agile Principles, ensuring a consistent, predictable architecture. This structure enables SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs), Agile Coaches, and other stakeholders, including Project Managers, Department Managers, and others involved in developing a healthy, sustainable, and effective work environment, to search, read, and apply specific techniques selectively based on their immediate needs. The book refers to practices described in SAFe , Scrum , Rapid Learning Cycles , and others that have proven useful for engineering teams.

Every chapter follows the same  structure:

1. A little story — inspiration from real-world experience
   A short story from real engineering contexts to anchor the principle in reality and make it concrete.
2. Definitions and interpretations — what the principle really means here
   A clear translation of Agile vocabulary (e.g., “working solution”, “daily”, “increment”) into hardware and cyber-physical development—so readers understand what changes, and what doesn’t.
3. Why it matters to engineers — day-to-day impact
   Why you should care as an engineer: how the principle helps (or sometimes complicates) design, integration, verification, compliance, and collaboration—and what new behaviors it enables.
4. Difficulties in hardware — why it’s not copy-paste
   The typical friction points when applying the principle in physical product contexts (for example: lead times, costly change, supplier constraints, validation cadence, specialization/deci-allocation). This section makes explicit what must be adapted.
5. Examples of application — evidence, outcomes, and recognizable behaviors
   Concrete examples (products/companies/situations) with tangible outcomes. The examples aren’t always branded “Agile”, but they demonstrate the behaviors and engineering choices we’re aiming for when applying the principle.
6. Practical guidance — how to sculpt practices to fit constraints
   Step-by-step guidance and a set of practices we trust in the field: how to shape (“sculpt”) ways of working that respect your constraints while still increasing learning speed and integration reliability.
7. Nuances by product environment — low/high complexity and low/high volume
   Structured guidance (as a matrix) showing how the same principle should be applied differently depending on product type, risk profile, production model, and system complexity.

Practical Steps for Implementation

For anyone working in hardware and involved in optimizing work processes, here is a selection of actionable strategies found in the book:

1. “Slice the V-Model Horizontally”: Don’t just form teams; organize them around product functions so that each team owns both the design and the validation for their specific area. This ensures that each team has the responsibility to perform “the left and right side” of the V-model, meaning: you build it, you integrate it, you test and qualify it.
2. Redefine “Working Solutions”: In hardware, a “working solution” can be a high-fidelity simulation, a 3D-printed ergonomic mockup, or a “compliance report” that proves the design is on the right track before physical parts are even ordered. For each team and team scope, we will have to define a “verifiable” end product of an iteration, allowing for a cadence-based verification moment to enable continuous and early risk reduction.
3. Batch Alignment to Protect Focus Time: Tomorrow, analyze your team’s calendar. Are alignment meetings scattered, destroying “Flow Time”? Try batching synchronization into a single day to give engineers the “Focus Time” they need to actually build the product, rather than pulling engineers into various meetings to report status or analyze a defect.
4. Manage the “Domino Effect”: Use cadence-based reviews, like a System Demo or Iterative Capability Review, to surface design changes early with a wide audience of stakeholders who work on interfacing components, modules, or system functions. This prevents a design tweak in one module from becoming a multi-million-dollar rework downstream.
5. Focus on Knowledge Gaps: Shift your planning from “when will it be done?” to “what do we need to know?” Use short iterations to find answers to high-risk questions early (especially in feasibility stages), reducing the chance of a late-stage failure.

A Book to Construct Your Own Reflective Experiment

A common pitfall in hardware organizations is the search for a “one-size-fits-all” blueprint. There is a significant risk in assuming that a process that works elsewhere can be applied blindly to your environment. Instead of searching for a universal manual, we must focus on the underlying principles and then develop the specific practices and tools that fulfill them. This book is designed to help you do exactly that by providing a diverse library of techniques you can selectively search, read, and apply.

The goal is not to “do Agile.” The goal is to improve outcomes: reduce late surprises, de-risk integration earlier, and make product design and engineering more reliable—even under real hardware constraints. When learning happens earlier, leadership gets what it actually needs: fewer escalations, less last-minute acrobatics, and more predictable project progress.

It is time to stop following dogmatic instructions and start your own journey. It is time for you to Engineer your Agility.

The book is globally available on Amazon.

The post Announcing a new book on Agile hardware development: Engineering Agility appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.

This month, we are excited to share another valuable addition from our SAFe community. The brand new whitepaper: Leading Change Beyond Kotter in an Agile Transformation, authored by Julia Herborn, Stephan Kahl, Bernd Rumscheid, Odile Moreau, Caroline Schaefer, Yannick Penz, and Cansu Eldemgil.

This whitepaper is an important addition to the SAFe knowledge base, providing specific guidance on navigating organizational change to pursue Lean-Agile ways of working. In this blog post, Julia, Stephan, and Bernd summarize some of the critical topics covered.

Agile transformations often rigidly follow frameworks, but true transformation requires shifting mindsets, behaviors, and culture, as well as a solid framework. While Kotter’s principles remain foundational, leading change in an agile context requires an evolved approach that connects emotionally, builds trust, and empowers leadership at every level of the organization. Here’s how organizations can move beyond theory and make transformation a lived reality.

Urgency Must Be Felt Emotionally

Urgency cannot be a mere intellectual exercise; it must resonate emotionally. For transformation to succeed, external pressures must be translated into an internal perspective that feels relevant and actionable to employees. When agile transformations are perceived as standalone initiatives rather than integral parts of the business strategy, employees may deprioritize them in favor of more prominent organizational goals—delaying progress and undermining momentum.

Building a Guiding Coalition: The Key to Unified Transformation

As Dean Leffingwell emphasizes in SAFe® workshops and trainings, sponsoring a transformation is not enough—leaders must actively guide and champion the change. Building an effective Guiding Coalition starts with workshops that create a shared understanding of the “why” behind the transformation. These sessions should allow members to express their pain points, share their fears, and acknowledge their uncertainties in a safe environment. Most importantly, this group must define a shared vision that is worth striving for by all, and that can be consistently communicated to the organization by all members of the Guiding Coalition. This openness and alignment build trust and confidence, laying the foundation for unified leadership.

Forming a Strategic Vision: How to Lead with Clarity and Commitment

A vision only inspires when leaders connect emotionally to it. This means active listening, challenging assumptions, and ensuring the vision resonates both strategically and personally. Transformation dialogue sessions are powerful tools for this—employees openly share thoughts, explore what they need from one another, and build mutual understanding. Leaders must embrace feedback, including criticism, and create psychological safety for these conversations. Courage and authenticity are essential; leaders must act on beliefs larger than corporate incentives, breaking free from traditional structures to lead with conviction.

Enlisting a Volunteer Army: The Power of Empowered Leadership

“Good leaders create followers, but excellent leaders create other leaders.” True leadership lies in enabling others to lead. The initial volunteer army should consist of individuals who are innovative, respected, and open to change. Understanding what motivates them—career growth, impact, or ownership—is critical for authentic engagement. Leaders can build momentum by elevating these volunteers into visible roles, signaling that transformation is an opportunity for growth. This requires psychological safety, where individuals feel secure to take risks without fear of failure.

Enabling Action by Removing Barriers: The Key to Real Transformation

Collaboration between leaders and employees is vital. When leaders act as enablers and employees adopt a player mindset, transformation becomes reality. As Fred Kofman says, “Be a player, not a victim.” Employees must take responsibility, solve problems, and drive progress. Leaders, in turn, must shift from directing to enabling—asking, “What’s standing in the way?” and removing obstacles. Tools like impediment backlogs and anonymous feedback loops help identify barriers and adapt strategies. Addressing psychological resistance with empathy and constantly tackling concerns with actionable steps is essential for lasting change.

In addition, leaders must create incentives for contributions to the strategic vision to keep the transformation, driven by decentralized teams, aligned with a common vision.

Generating Short-Term Wins: Momentum for Lasting Change

Short-term wins reduce fear and hesitation, replacing uncertainty with optimism. For skeptics, these victories demonstrate tangible value—turning Agile from “religion” into “science/reality.” Leaders should ground wins in data, using KPIs and OKRs aligned with organizational priorities and employee pain points. Establishing a strong baseline early is critical to measure progress effectively. Beyond metrics, celebrating wins publicly fosters emotional connection, transforming change from a series of tasks into a shared journey of collaboration and purpose.

Sustaining Acceleration: Keeping Momentum for Long-Term Transformation

Change fatigue is a real risk in long transformations. After the initial push, employees may feel overwhelmed, which can threaten progress. Leaders must balance momentum with opportunities to pause and re-energize. Sustained acceleration means adapting the transformation as priorities shift—refreshing goals, removing outdated processes, and dismantling legacy systems that create inertia. Practices like retrospectives and feedback loops should become cultural norms, while ownership shifts from leaders to cross-functional teams to sustain engagement.

Institutionalize Change: Embedding Transformation into the Culture

Embedding change requires intentional design. Leaders must align incentives, behaviors, and environments so agile practices become habits. Approaches like Deloitte’s Behavior-First model help by making desired behaviors easy and automatic. Visible connections between actions and outcomes—such as faster delivery or improved customer experience—reinforce these habits. Celebrating “moments that matter,” like project successes or milestones, further embeds transformation into the culture and creates a cycle of sustained improvement.

 Best Regards and a Happy New Year!

— Julia Herborn, Stephan Kahl, Bernd Rumscheid, Odile Moreau, Caroline Schaefer, Yannick Penz and Cansu Eldemgil.

The post New Whitepaper: Leading Change Beyond Kotter in an Agile Transformation appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.

The workshop is structured in three parts: facilitating the assessments, analyzing the results, and identifying improvement opportunities. It begins by establishing the purpose and scope of the assessment to create clarity and alignment on what’s being measured and why, then guides participants through making sense of the results and translating insights into focused actions.

The workshop is also designed to be easy to use and adaptable to a variety of contexts. Multiple facilitation options are included to support different needs and levels of experience. For example, when running the workshop for the first time, the “Discuss then act” approach is recommended. In this format, participants discuss each assessment statement together before completing the assessment individually—building shared understanding while preserving individual perspectives.

This new release also includes full integration with SAFe CoPilot, available directly through the Comparative Agility platform. When you run the AI-Empowered assessments online, CoPilot delivers real-time, tailored recommendations based on your organization’s actual results—grounded in the most current SAFe guidance. CoPilot draws from exclusive SAFe content, including Framework articles, courses, e-learning materials, blogs, and videos, and utilizes visuals to clarify complex ideas and drive meaningful action.

Whether you’re assessing Business Agility or one of the SAFe Disciplines—Lean Portfolio Management, Product Development Flow, Team and Technical Agility, Large Solution Integration and Delivery, or Leadership and Culture—the AI-Empowered assessments help identify the highest-impact opportunities to advance your implementation and deliver better business results. 

From the moment SAFe Assessments were introduced, I’ve seen how transformative they can be. Watching leaders and contributors work through the questions together never fails to reveal new understanding and insight. The shared perspective that emerges becomes a springboard for action—one that propels an organization forward with greater alignment and purpose. The true value of assessment isn’t the score—it’s the clarity it creates and the momentum it enables.

Whether conducted live or asynchronously, these workshops offer more than just a snapshot. They promote a culture of reflection, collaboration, and continuous learning. With shared insight and AI-Empowered support, we’re not just measuring—we’re moving forward.

— Cheryl and the Framework Team

The post Updated AI-Empowered SAFe Assessment Workshop Now Live appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.

This month, we are excited to share another valuable addition from our SAFe community. The Release Train Engineer Handbook is a book that was not only created by 3 experts in SAFe who are sharing their valuable experiences insights. The authors also interviewed RTEs from across the globe, sharing their experiences too. Check out what Glenn, Tim, and Gez have to share below. Thank you to all those who participated in bringing this addition to the growing library of books on SAFe to life. – Rebecca Davis

The Release Train Engineer isn’t just someone who facilitates PI planning and ART events. We often say that the RTE is a systems thinker, an enterprise coach, a change leader – and perhaps most importantly, the glue that holds the ART together. Executed well, the RTE is a powerful force in any organisation.

That’s one of the reasons why we wanted to write The Release Train Engineer Handbook. The RTE Essentials content on SAFe Studio is fantastic; it gives an overview of the essentials that you need to get started. On the other end of the scale, the RTE course is an advanced course, and most helpful when you’ve got a few PIs under your belt.

We wanted to bridge these two points with the RTE handbook, whilst bringing some of the stories and experiences from the implementations we’ve been part of over the years. On top of that, we interviewed a variety of experienced RTEs to include their insights, including Sam Ervin, the RTE at Scaled Agile Inc. We’ve wanted to go beyond the foundations and give more insight into what helps you go from good to great. Therefore, the book is packed full of tips and advice.

Here are some of the things we’ve covered in the book.

The Journey to Becoming an RTE

One of the key questions we explored when writing The RTE Handbook was where RTEs come from. There isn’t a single career path – in fact, the variety is one of the strengths of the role. Many RTEs come from traditional programme or project management roles. Some were previously Scrum Masters. Others may have come up through technical leadership. Your background is a strength, and your journey is valid.

There are many paths people take to become an RTE.  However, in our research, we have seen that, regardless of their journey, great RTEs are curious and empathetic, encouraging readers to develop these qualities to enhance their impact.

From Essentials to Excellence

In the early stages, RTEs often focus on mastering the mechanics – running great PI Planning events, facilitating Coach Syncs, managing risks, and reporting on progress. These are the essentials, and they matter.

But if we stay there, we miss the bigger opportunity. In the book, we talk about how RTEs can shift their focus from process to flow – from simply getting the work done, to making the work work better.

When we interviewed Andrew Sales, he said, “RTEs are the connective tissue between strategy and execution.” That doesn’t come from running a smooth agenda. It comes from seeing the whole, and helping the organisation see it too. As RTEs, we can use Flow metrics, systems thinking, and servant-leadership as critical tools that can have a lasting impact on teams and culture.

Real Stories, Real Growth

From our RTE interviews, we shared many people’s experiences, from Isabella breaking out of a traditional command-and-control mindset to Annette, who outlined the importance of relationships over process.

Sam Ervin shared the analogy of the RTE as a gardener rather than a chess master—one in which you create the environment for teams and Scrum Masters to thrive, rather than trying to control everything.

And for us, the biggest lesson has always been this: you don’t have to know all the answers. The role isn’t about certainty; it’s about creating the conditions for others to do great work. That means listening more than you speak, asking better questions, and never losing sight of the fact that it’s the people who do the job.

So, What Now?

Andrew put it beautifully when he said, “If you’re a new RTE, find something small but meaningful to improve. Solve that problem. Then find the next one. That’s how you build momentum.”

Whether you’ve just stepped into the role or you’re 20 PIs deep, the work of being a Release Train Engineer is never done. And that’s the gift. There’s always more to learn, more to try, and more value to unlock. Embrace this journey as a continuous opportunity for growth and impact.

Listen to the whole conversation with Andrew Sales on YouTube:

The RTE Handbook: A Practical Guide to Leading Agile Release Trains
Forward by Andrew Sales, Scaled Agile’s Chief Methodologist

Also listed on Scaled Agile’s books page.

If you’re ready to grow into the next version of the RTE role – this one’s for you.

The post The Role of the RTE: From Facilitator to Flow Champion appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.

But traditional hardware product development is often a long, document-driven process. Months or years can pass before concepts are verified and validated by customers, often resulting in expensive rework and missed market opportunities.

That’s why we created our new executive guide, Modernizing Hardware Product Development with SAFe.

It is a strategic resource for engineering leaders who need to accelerate and de-risk their journey from a document-based to a model-based development paradigm. It details a proven approach that combines modern engineering practices with SAFe’s Lean-Agile methods to drive alignment and fast learning from strategy through execution.

This guide clarifies how SAFe acts as a catalyst for enterprise-wide innovation in hardware contexts. Key insights include:

• Integrating Modern Engineering Practices: We examine how SAFe leverages digital simulation, rapid prototyping, and digital manufacturing to facilitate a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) paradigm. This shifts the focus from documents to valid models as the authoritative source of truth.
• Accelerating Product Innovation: The guide demonstrates how to transition from linear project plans to continuous value delivery. By connecting hardware product strategy directly with engineering execution, organizations can shorten learning cycles and validate hypotheses faster.
• Strengthening the Supply Chain: In hardware product development, you are only as fast as your slowest supply chain link. The guide explains how to foster a resilient ecosystem by including suppliers in key planning and learning events, moving from transactional relationships to co-innovation.
• A Proven Path to Success: We outline a clear, 4-step implementation model—from organizing around value to amplifying results—that builds momentum and delivers continuous wins.

Download the executive guide and help your organization modernize its hardware product development ecosystem.  

Enjoy!

— Marc Rix and the Framework Team

The post New Executive Guide: Modernizing Hardware Product Development with SAFe appeared first on Scaled Agile Framework.