How Does Jira Align Currently Support SAFe 5.0 and What Would We as a Community Want Added?

[Peter Jessen]

Hi Everyone,

@Claire De Cortasked an excellent question regarding the launch of Safe 5.0 and what is the Jira Align roadmap to reflect the changes? 

I thought I'd share my perspective of what Jira Align already includes that supports SAFe 5.0, as well as some things I'd love to see added to Jira Align, and then ask all of you what you'd love to see added to Jira Align to support SAFe 5.0.

Let's start with the basics, the bread and butter as it were (and yes, I copied and edited this first bit from my answer to Claire's question).

Most of what is included/added in SAFe 5 is currently supported in Jira Align.

Currently (version 10.61) Jira Align supports the following SAFe 5 constructs:

• Essential SAFe:
  • Fully supports the teams (Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban) and programs, their related backlogs, PI Planning, PI/team Objectives, and all other SAFe 4.6 constructs that continue in SAFe 5.0.
    
    • Jira Align already supports non-development teams. Your organization can create teams that only live in Jira Align and not in Jira.
      • For example - a marketing team might need to work in Jira Align, but not in Jira.
  • Continuous Delivery Pipeline - Supported via existing functionality, to the extent expected. Doesn't include config management and other functionality you wouldn't expect in it.
  • Built-In quality is first-and-foremost a mindset.
    • Jira Align supports the mindset shift through providing complete transparency between teams and programs (if a company enables full transparency in Jira Align).
      • This mindset shift is a critical aspect of creating a Culture of Share Responsibility. Full transparency obviously supports creating this culture.
    • Jira Align also provides a powerful defect triage area that supports root-cause analysis and other advanced functionality for metrics that accelerate learning from defects. Sadly, most organizations I've worked with don't use this area of Jira Align because they are not sufficiently mature in built-in quality behaviors.
  • Customer Centricity and Design Thinking
    • The SAFE Customer Centricity and Design Thinking articles provide rich context for this newly enhanced focus on the customer. What Most users of Jira ALign don't know, is that Jira Align has robust and evolving built-in support for both of these areas.
      • The most obvious support in Jira Align includes:
        • Personas
        • Story Maps
        • Feature Maps
        • Experience Maps
      • Other less obvious areas that support this new dimension include:
        • Brainstorming
        • Innovation Tournaments
        • Ideation
        • Product Room
• Large Solution SAFe:
  • Supports all aspects of the SAFe 5 Big Picture, although I'd love to see a separate Solution Train Board of the level of the current Program Board.
• Portfolio SAFe:
  • Jira Align, as AgileCraft, evolved from the top down, so no other platform I know supports the portfolio level with the robustness of Jira Align.
• Full SAFe:
  • Includes all of the above levels, so is by default, supported out of the box.

I'll add more to this discussion, as I have time, so please watch this if you are interested in the updates.

In the meantime, what SAFe 5.0 features are you wanting to see in Jira Align? If they are already in there (and I'm aware of them) I'll point you int he right direction.

Regards,
Peter

[Dennis Reda]

What about the naming of things? 

https://www.scaledagileframework.com/safe-requirements-model/

Does Jira Align allow for the creation of "Solution Epic" and "Program Epic" for example? 

How about "Capabilities" as an object type?