The U.S. and international federal, regional and local governments have a mandate from the public to spend money on software and systems in the most cost-efficient and productive manner. As a result, many have found their way to SAFe, and many are reporting gains in productivity and costs savings that far exceed even some of the extraordinary benefits from the commercial sector. In this talk, Richard Knaster, Author, SAFe Fellow and Principal Consultant will discuss strategies for adopting SAFe in government and will present successful case studies and the critical topics of acquiring solutions with Agile contracting, multivendor teams and programs, governance, audit, and earned value management.

New competitive threats often require organizations to build increasingly complex, interconnected and sophisticated software and systems, faster, better and cheaper. Most organizations are not equipped to meet this new challenge! Meanwhile small, nimble competitors, like Airbnb and Uber are taking a big bite on the profits of the giants. 

So what’s the answer? What have we learned in the past decade from our adventures in agile and our attempts at scaling? What does the future hold?

In this talk, Richard Knaster, Principal Consultant and SAFe Fellow, discusses a more scalable and modular lean-agile approach that enables even the largest enterprises to compete with smaller and nimbler competitors that are disrupting companies in all industries. Richard is a Principal Contributor to the Scaled Agile Framework and previously worked at IBM where his roles included Chief Agile Methodologist. World Wide Agile Practice Manager and various product management roles in the Rational Brand.

In this introductory talk, Richard Knaster (Principal Contributor to the Scaled Agile Framework) discusses how to “Be Agile”, “Scale Up”, “Stay Lean” and “Have more Fun” with the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).   SAFe is a publicly–accessible knowledge base of proven Lean and Agile practices for enterprise-class software development. Richard approaches the problem from the perspectives of Lean thinking and principles of product development flow, illustrating how these core principles help deliver business results at scale, while keeping the development system—and the enterprise—lean and able to responsive rapidly to changing market needs. In addition, enterprises applying the framework have been getting better results, and since winning is more fun, Richard will also describe some of the positive changes to corporate culture that occur when an enterprise is experiencing success with Scaled Lean- Agile methods.

Scrum, XP, Kanban and related methods have been proven to provide step changes in productivity and quality for software teams. However, these methods do not have the native constructs necessary to scale to the enterprise. What the Industry needs is a solution that moves from a set of simplistic, disparate, development-centric methods, to a scalable, unified approach that addresses the complex constructs and additional stakeholders in the organization—and enables realization of enterprise-class product or service initiatives via aligned and cooperative solution development.

Many Federal agencies are adopting, or want to adopt Agile practices to drive faster delivery, higher quality, and improved collaboration. Government agencies spend billions of dollars per year on IT investment and often projects run over budget, time and the scope does not deliver the required outcomes.

An Agile approach to software delivery allows for a more collaborative and constant evolution of requirements, informing team direction and driving refinements more frequently and earlier in the development process, ensuring relevant and timely delivery of critical software. Despite the benefits, agencies have adoption challenges that are unique to the government environment.  The Government needs a proven approach for adopting Agile that can operate in the most complex environments.