After Agile methodology more or less conquered the world of projects in the last 20 years, it has given birth to several agile frameworks that are currently widely used and are continuously developing.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), developed by Dean Leffingwell, is a framework which focuses on the goals and values of the enterprise. It is specifically designed to assist large-scale enterprises achieve big meaningful changes by providing flexible and scalable solutions and is particularly useful when coordination of 5 or more development teams is required.

While work in both Scrum and Agile is planned at the beginning of each sprint, SAFe® has a unique event, called a Program Increment - a timebox of 8-12 weeks. During PI the Agile Release Train (ART) which is a long-lived team of Agile teams delivers incremental value in the form of working, tested software and systems.

ServiceNow offers two configurations of SAFe: Essential SAFe and Portfolio SAFe. Where Essential SAFe fits all kinds of projects from big to small, Portfolio SAFe is more suited for bigger projects, where you align your organizational goals and strategies with portfolios.

SAFe Advantages:

1. Transparency. Each member of the project has a clear understanding of the people involved, tasks to be completed and business value to be gained by the particular development. In SAFe even stakeholders take active participation in planning, prioritization and work acceptance.
2. Better collaboration and monitoring of activities across business units, departments, and teams.
3. Quick identification of gaps in planning or responsibilities
4. Clear defined roles and responsibilities

Useful tools in ServiceNow SAFe

• WSJF (Weighted shortest job first) - simple, color-coded scores used to prioritize work
• Interactive KANban board to track features and stories
• Big room planning to plan and track all activities in a program increment
• Unified backlog that has SAFe stories and features, incidents, problems, and other tasks all in one place.