[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Scaled Agile Framework , is a set of organization and workflow patterns intended to guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile practices. Along with large-scale Scrum(LeSS), Scale is one of a growing number of frameworks that seek to address the problems encountered when scaling beyond a single team. Scale is made freely available by Scaled Agile, Inc., which retains the copyrights and registered trademarks.

Scale promotes alignment, collaboration, and delivery across large numbers of agile teams. It was developed by and for practitioners, by leveraging three primary bodies of knowledge: agile software development, lean product development, and systems thinking.

The primary reference for the scaled agile framework was originally the development of a big picture view of how work flowed from product management (or other stakeholders), through governance, programs, and development teams, out to customers. With the collaboration of others in the agile community, this was progressively refined and the framework continues to be developed and shared publicly; with an academy and an accreditation scheme supporting those who seek to implement, support, or train others in the adoption of Scale .

While Scale has been recognized as the most common approach to scaling agile practices, (being used by up to 45% of large corporations) it also receives criticism for being too top-down and inflexible.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Challenges of Scaling Agile Principles and Practices

COPING WITH LONGER PLANNING HORIZONS
Development teams typically refine their backlog up to two to three iterations ahead, but in larger organizations the product marketing team needs to plan further ahead for their commitments to market and discussions with customers. They will often work with a very high level, 12 to 18-month road-map, then plan collaboratively with the teams for three months of work. The development teams will still get into detailed refinement 2-3 iterations ahead, only getting into detailed task plans for the next iteration.

KEEPING AGILE AT ABSTRACT LEVELS OF RESPONSIBILITY
While development teams have a number of frameworks that define how they should be agile, there is very little that describes this for management. Scale delivers many of the same principles, such as cross-functional teams, to the groups that handle the more abstract levels of responsibility and planning (product and portfolio). Scale has also been criticized for aggregating too many disparate practices.

DEALING WITH DELEGATED AUTHORITY
In Scrum, the product owner is expected to assume responsibility for the full product life-cycle, including the return on investment of development decisions, as well as performance in market. On large-scale developments, the organization needs a view across multiple team backlogs, such as provided by a product manager Although Scale assumes the product owner role sits with product management, it has nonetheless been criticized for separating product owners into the development organization.

SYNCHRONIZING DELIVERABLES
Agile frameworks are designed to enable the development team to be autonomous and free to design how they work. Scale acknowledges that, at the scale of many tens or hundreds of development teams, it becomes increasingly chaotic for teams to fully self-organize. It therefore puts some constraints on this, so that where teams are working on the same product, their deliverables can be better synchronized for releasing together, although this has been one area in which Scale has been criticized.

ALLOWING TIME FOR INNOVATION AND PLANNING
The Scale planning cycle recommends including an additional iteration after a release, so that teams can improve their practices and are ready for the next planning increment. Earlier editions of Scale also designed this to be a hardening iteration, that is to stabilize or harden the product before releasing it. This was predicated on the complications of working with large integration environments where dependencies meant that you could not test everything until the very end. Scale was criticized for this as it represented an anti-agile or waterfall element. This is not included in recent editions of Scale.[/vc_column_text][vc_text_separator title=”Implementation”][vc_column_text]CORE PRINCIPLES OF SCALE

According to its authors, Scale is based upon nine underlying concepts, which are derived from existing lean and agile principles, as well as observation:

1. Take an economic view;
2. Apply systems thinking;
3. Assume variability; preserve options;
4. Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles;
5. Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems;
6. Visualize and limit work-in-progress, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lenghts;
7. Apply cadence (timing), synchronize with cross-domain planning;
8. Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers;
9. Decentralize decision-making.

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]THE SCALE FRAMEWORK

In Scale version 4.5, there are four configurations: essential, portfolio, large solution and full:

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