SAFe Practice Consultant
SAFe Practice Consultants (SPCs) are certified change agents who combine their technical knowledge of SAFe with an intrinsic motivation to improve the company’s software, systems, and Agile business processes.
SPCs play a critical role in successfully implementing SAFe. They come from numerous internal or external roles, including business and technology leaders, portfolio/program/project managers, process leads, architects, analysts, and consultants.
Details
Business Agility is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative, digitally-enabled business solutions. For traditional enterprises, recognizing the fact that success is now enabled by the ability to create these solutions is a bit of a ‘wake-up call’ or even an existential crisis. Even for companies that were born in the digital age, future success cannot be assured. SAFe Practice Consultants (SPCs) work within and across organizations to provide new methods and practices that connect the entire enterprise with the principles that enable Business Agility. This critical role answers a vital need to build the future of work.
To achieve meaningful and lasting change, author John P. Kotter notes that stakeholders need a “sufficiently powerful guiding coalition”. Such a coalition requires:
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Leaders who can set the vision, show the way, and remove impediments
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Practitioners, managers, and change agents who can implement specific process changes
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Sufficient organizational credibility to affect change
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The expertise needed to make fast, intelligent decisions
In enterprises utilizing SAFe, these coalitions require experienced and trained SPCs.
Responsibilities
As knowledgeable change agents, SPCs have a primary role in many of the 13 critical moves described in the SAFe Implementation Roadmap. They also must work beyond the roadmap as experts and coaches that help the organization achieve business agility. Doing so requires fulfilling a broad set of responsibilities.
Embodying a Lean-Agile Mindset
SPCs lead change conversations across multiple business departments and organizational hierarchies. To be credible and effective, they must speak with knowledge and competence. In addition, to inspire changes in the behaviors of others, SPCs first create change in themselves. Required mastery and knowledge includes:
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Exhibit the Lean-Agile Mindset – To help others achieve a Lean-Agile Mindset, each SPC must lead the way. This will be a continuous journey each SPC must choose to take. SAFe SPCs model the values and principles of Lean Thinking and the Agile Manifesto in their daily interactions.
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Demonstrate the SAFe Core Values – By exemplifying respect for people, alignment, transparency, and relentless improvement, SPCs demonstrate a common value system and inspire others to the same beliefs. SPCs feel a personal accountability to live the core values and lead by example.
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Utilize the SAFe Principles – SPCs have internalized the SAFe Principles and know how to use them to initiate and sustain conversations that inspire change. They sense the issues hindering agility and apply their understanding to clearly communicate the principles that inform transformed behavior and practices.