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Strategic themes are direct inputs to the portfolio canvas, as they may affect partners, key activities, customer segments, and revenue streams, and other portfolio business model elements. In turn, this influences the portfolio vision, which is the difference between the current state—and the more desirable—future state. They may impact solutions, partners, key activities, customer segments, and revenue streams, and other portfolio business model elements.
Develop a centralized data repository that enables users to access data for more informed decisions. Establish a data sharing and collaboration platform to support the use of data by the Santa Monica Community. Pursue a cloud first strategy for infrastructure to achieve, greater agility, lower cost, and higher resiliency.
What Is One Characteristic Of An Effective Agile Team?
The individual “separate” development value streams have nothing to guide themselves when their individual solution contexts are driving them to be “selfish”. If any of the first two questions are “yes” or any of the last two questions are “no”, there’s a good chance that strategic themes are a necessity (a “must”). A SAFe portfolio exists simply when a collection of development value streams (multiple ARTs and/or Solution Trains) has been rolled out. I’ve seen companies with great strategy and poor execution and also companies with poor strategy and great execution.
Strategic Themes are specific, itemized business objectives, new business differentiators that connect the portfolio vision to the evolving enterprise business strategy. They provide business context for decision-making within the portfolio, affecting investment in value streams and release trains, and serve as inputs to the Portfolio and Program Backlogs. Strategic themes have an influence on the vision and backlogs for development at every portfolio level. They help determine the attributes of Weighted Shortest Job First prioritization for items in the program and solution backlogs. Solution and program epics that flow from the portfolio, or arise locally, are also influenced by the current themes.
- They help determine the values of Weighted Shortest Job First that determine epic priorities.
- Strategic themes are direct inputs to the portfolio canvas, as they may affect partners, key activities, customer segments, and revenue streams, and other portfolio business model elements.
- Moreover, strategic themes provide vital conceptual alignment across the trains in a large solution, and across the teams on an Agile Release Train.
- Reduce complexity, confusion, and friction by aligning SAFe framework with non-agile business processes.
- The continuous use of data/information/knowledge/skills to support change/improvement/growth/innovation on individual and organization dimensions.
- The “funnel” column exists in the prototypical kanban systems at the Portfolio, Solution, and Program levels of SAFe.
A strategic theme is an area in which your organization must excel in order to achieve your vision. Developing strategic themes requires considerations of other strategic elements, such as the challenges, enablers, customer value proposition, and other components of the strategic assessment work. Strategic Themes are assets that reflect top-tier strategic planning activities at the company and/or organizational level.
What Is A Key Benefit Of Using Leading Indicators Safe?
Use IoT and mobile technologies to better coordinate and sequence emergency response service activities. Actions that will contribute to meeting our objectives to deliver the Outcomes. Uncommitted objectives are used to identify work that can be variable within the scope of a PI. Teams can apply uncommitted objectives whenever there is low confidence in meeting the objective. Customers – Customers provide fast feedback and have intimate knowledge of what is needed.
“Business Strategy” level may not be visible in the SAFe framework, but it’s implicitly there. That’s were various business owners and senior executives determine and drive the strategy for the whole organization. Fear not, we can help you adapt the new SAFe Portfolio layer and your current Business Strategy layer for optimal alignment, maximum impact, and minimum friction.
The continuous use of data/information/knowledge/skills to support change/improvement/growth/innovation on individual and organization dimensions. Transform paper-based processes into digital workflows and delivery to achieve nimble solutions, greater efficiencies, and increased productivity. Create a culture and mindset for data analysis/application to enable insight and knowledge in support of improved services. Provide an outstanding user experience while striving to increase the speed, quality, and efficacy of services.
Pairing creates and maintains quality as the code will contain the shared knowledge, perspectives, and best practices from each member. Strategic themes are a vital tool for communicating strategy to the entire portfolio, providing a simple, memorable messaging protocol that influences everyone involved in solution delivery. Migrate paper-based processes to digital ecosystem that is user-friendly, effective, and efficient.
The transformation of all manner of analog/bit assets and processes to digital/byte resources. Develop a catalog of data assets that allow staff to make better decisions and services. Create a robust platform to support private/public partnerships focused on technology and innovation. One of the key practices in realizing built-in quality is Test-Driven Development . This course teaches developers how to write behavior-focused unit tests and to develop incrementally using these tests. This is delivered through a combination of focused direct mentorship, group training, and coaching supported by numerous resources and materials. Strategic Themes are constructs that show up in the portfolio level of SAFe.
Digital By Default
Create an identity and data management platform that allows users to create one secure and private City profile. Leverage IoT and mobile technologies for transit planning, modeling, and mapping of pedestrian/vehicle behavior to improve transit options. The main traits everyone on the team should possess are a desire for collaboration and continuous improvement. An Agile team is all about communication , teamwork, problem-solving, technical development skills, and striving to improve the team’s velocity with each iteration. Quality assurance helps identify errors and flaws in the software code and design throughout the development process to prevent loss of time and money. It ensures that the end product is competitive, secure, and smoothly performs its expected functions. One serves as the driver writing the code while the other as the navigator providing real-time review and feedback.
Product owners can use them to divide, group, and prioritize top-level portfolio items in a manner that reflects the targets and strategic priorities of the company. This helps keep the development plans aligned with the strategic priorities.
Vision And Backlog For Large Solution, Program, And Team
When “Full SAFe” or “Portfolio SAFe” is being implemented, Strategic Themes are an integral part of Lean Portfolio Management. Instead, the organization needs fast feedback from early indicators, many of which are not financial metrics.
Costs vary greatly depending on size of organization, complexity of implementation, options you select, and number of people to be trained. The “funnel” column exists in the prototypical kanban systems at the Portfolio, Solution, and Program levels of SAFe. However, an organization is not precluded from “pulling” any portfolio construct into Essential SAFe or Large Solution SAFe when it makes sense to do so. Find out more about our APIs, Plugins, Mashups and custom extensions.
However, what companies need is not only great strategy and great execution. Strategic themes don’t need to restate the obvious, as most elements of a portfolio vision are understood. That is, Portfolio stakeholders know quite well what the portfolio is for, and … Adopt a “10%” strategy where ISD employees are given protected time for training and growth. Increase the flow, access, and use of knowledge across the organization and improve opportunities for learning and innovation.
Join our community of passionate users and even discuss directly with our developers. Turn words into action by taking an introductory course in the Scaled Agile Framework .
In this case, the success criteria could be a mix of new epics, investment, and activities on the mobile platform. A first learning Milestone might be to test the hypothesis of whether extending online capabilities to mobile platforms would appeal to that target audience. This could be measured with feedback from focus groups or analysis of mobile traffic data. From there a second step might be to increase the budget for the mobile teams. To start trending the data, an epic MVP could also be employed to capture the age of users across all purchasing points. They influence portfolio strategy and provide business context for portfolio decision-making.
Identifying desired business outcomes for strategic themes can establish a context for assessing progress toward the strategic intent. Success factors, such as Return on Investment and new markets penetrated, can take a long time to achieve. Strategic themes can be defined by a phrase or by using the Objectives and Key Results template. Strategic objectives are broad statements of direction that create a bridge from your vision to the annual plan or goals. We like to refer to strategic objectives as “mini vision statements” because they should support your overall vision of success but break it down into manageable and actionable focus areas. The four Core Values of alignment, built-in quality, transparency, and program execution represent the fundamental beliefs that are key to SAFe’s effectiveness. These guiding principles help dictate behavior and action for everyone who participates in a SAFe portfolio.