We are delighted to announce that our CEO, Nick, has recently become a Scaled Agile (SAFe®) Program Consultant!
Nick has spent a week in Sweden in order to become a Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) Program Consultant. The 4 day course taught Nick all about the Scaled Agile Framework®, introduced him to such terminology as the “Agile Release Train” and “Architectural Runway” and enabled Nick to:
- Lead your enterprise agile transformation for you
- Implement the Scaled Agile Framework®® (SAFe®) in your organisation from board to team level
- Train your managers and executives in Leading SAFe® and act as a SAFe® Agilist (SA) certifying agent for your staff
- Train your teams in SAFe® ScrumXP for Teams and act as a SAFe® Practioner (SP) certifying agent for your staff
For more information on SAFe® training, coaching and consultancy, get in touch via our contact page.
The Journey to SAFe Program Consultant
Becoming a SAFe Program Consultant was a deliberate investment in our ability to serve clients working at scale. By 2015, we were seeing increasing demand from organisations with multiple development teams who needed more than team-level Scrum coaching. They needed a framework for coordinating across teams while maintaining the agility they had built at the team level.
Nick's four-day SPC course in Sweden was intensive, covering everything from Lean-Agile leadership and team-level practices to programme execution and portfolio management. The course introduced key SAFe concepts including the Agile Release Train — a long-lived team of agile teams that plans, commits, and delivers together — and the Architectural Runway, which ensures technical foundations are in place to support upcoming business features without creating bottlenecks.
What an SPC Can Deliver
As a certified SAFe Program Consultant, Nick is qualified to lead enterprise agile transformations using the Scaled Agile Framework, train teams, Scrum Masters, and Product Owners in SAFe practices, facilitate PI Planning events and Inspect & Adapt workshops, coach leadership teams on Lean-Agile principles, and certify practitioners within the framework.
This capability has been central to several of our most impactful client engagements, including launching Agile Release Trains in financial services and coordinating multi-team delivery programmes in the public sector. For an introduction to the framework, read our guide on the basics of SAFe.
When to Consider SAFe
SAFe is not the right choice for every organisation. It works best when you have multiple teams that need to coordinate their work, when there are significant cross-team dependencies that cannot be eliminated through restructuring, and when the organisation needs a structured approach to aligning strategy with execution at scale. Our post on whether SAFe is right for you can help you evaluate your options.
If you are unsure whether SAFe is the right fit, we are happy to discuss your situation and recommend the most appropriate approach — which might be SAFe, or might be something simpler. Explore our agile services or book a free consultation to get started.
