The fundamentals of SAFe – Glossary
The Agile Release Train (ART) is a cross-functional team made of several multi-profile Agile teams.
Communities of Practice (CoPs)
Communities of Practices (CoPs) are organized groups of people with a common interest in a specific technical or business field. These different groups collaborate on a regular basis to share information, to strengthen their skills and intensively work to increase their general knowledge of their field of expertise.
Portfolio Backlog
The Portfolio Backlog is SAFe highest level of backlog. This means that it encompasses a list of epics.
Program Increment (PI) Planning
The Program Increment (PI) Planning is a regular planning event, organized face-to-face, which sets the working rhythm of the Agile Release Train (ART) and also provides all the ART teams with a common mission and vision.
Solution Train
The Solution Train is an organizational concept used to set up more complex solutions, requiring not only the coordination of several Agile Release Trains (ART), but also Suppliers contributions. The purpose is to align the ART group with a shared business and technological mission thanks to the solution vision, the Backlog vision as well as the Roadmap vision; and all this, according to the Program Increment (PI).
Value Streams
Value Streams are a long-lived series of steps used to develop a solution and create a continuous flow of value to be delivered to Customers. SAFe Value Streams are used not only to set and achieve business objectives for the portfolio, but also to organise Agile Release Trains (ART) in order to deliver value faster.
Architectural Runway
The Architectural Runway includes the existing code, components and technical infrastructures needed to implement new features, avoiding excessive redesign or deadlines extensions.
Compliance
Compliance represents both a strategy and a set of activities and artifacts that allow teams to implement Lean-Agile development methods in order to develop the highest possible quality systems, while ensuring to meet legal, technical or any other industry standards.
Portfolio Kanban
The Portfolio Kanban is a method to visualize, manage and analyze the prioritization as well as the flow of portfolio epics, from its conception through implementation and completion.
Solution Backlog
The Solution Backlog represents the holding area for the upcoming Capabilities and Enablers, which are likely to extend across several ART. Moreover, it is used to advance the Solution and build its Architectural Runway.
Stories
Stories are short descriptions of desired features, generally written in the user’s language. Agile Teams implement small, vertical slices of system functionalities, which are then sized to make it possible their completion in a single Iteration.
Built-In Quality
Built-In-Quality practices ensure that each Solution element meets specific and appropriate quality standards throughout the development process, at each and every increment.
Continuous Delivery Pipeline
The Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP, or simply Pipeline) represents the workflow, the automatization and the activities needed to deliver value continuously to end users.
Program Backlog
The Program Backlog is the holding area for upcoming Features, whose aim is both meeting user requirements and delivering business benefits for a single Agile Release Train (ART). Moreover, it also encompasses the Enabler Features necessary to build the Architectural Runway.
Solution Context
The Solution Context identifies the critical aspects of the operational environment for a Solution. It actually provides an essential understanding of a Solution requirements, use, setup, exploitation and support. The Solution Context has a significant impact on the opportunities and the constraints to create a Release on demand.
Roadmap
The Roadmap is a schedule of events and Milestones, planning all the deliverables of a product/solution. It gathers all the commitments for the Program Increment (PI) and provides an overall view of the planned deliverables and milestones for a few upcoming PI.
Different roles in SAFe
Scaled Agile: how to implement transformation
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