SAFe-Agilist SAFe 6 Agilist - Leading SAFe (SA) (6.0) Questions and Answers

The SAFe Workbook states:

“Centralize decisions that are infrequent, long-lasting, and have significant economies of scale.”

This includes strategic decisions like compensation strategy or technology platform choices.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The System Team is a specialized Agile team that:

Builds and maintains development environments

Provides infrastructure and tooling support

Supports continuous integration (CI), test automation, and system-level testing

Helps ARTs integrate and validate their work

This makes the System Team the correct answer.

(Source: Scaled Agile Framework – System Team)

The SAFe workbook defines "Leading by Example" as a foundational behavior of Lean-Agile leaders. They do this through:

Insatiable learning

Authenticity

Emotional competence

Courage

Growing others

Decentralized decision-making

The workbook explicitly states:

“Leaders model desired professional and ethical behaviors… and apply SAFe's Lean-Agile Mindset, values, principles, and practices.”

In the SAFe Workbook under Principle #1 ("Take an economic view"), it states:

“Deliver early and often. Deliver value incrementally… Accelerates feedback and learning, allows early and continuous delivery.”

This principle is illustrated using the difference between waterfall and Agile delivery models.

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Pages 2-26 to 2-28

The workbook clearly outlines:

"Business Owners assign business value (BV) scores to PI Objectives from 1 (low) to 10 (high) after negotiation. These scores help teams understand what is most important to the business."

Source: SAFe Workbook, PI Planning Simulation Section

ROAM is an acronym for Resolved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated. ROAM is a technique for categorizing and managing PI risks during the final plan review in the PI planning event. PI risks are potential events or conditions that may have a negative impact on the PI objectives or outcomes. ROAM helps teams address their PI risks by assigning them to one of four states: Resolved (the risk has been eliminated or is no longer relevant); Owned (the risk has been assigned to a person or a team who is responsible for managing it); Accepted (the risk has been acknowledged and its impact has been factored into the plan); Mitigated (the risk has been reduced or its likelihood has been lowered). References: PI Planning, Final Plan Review

Uncommitted objectives are counted when calculating load. Load is a measure of how much work a team can realistically accomplish in a PI. Load is calculated by adding up the story points of all the committed and uncommitted objectives of a team. Committed objectives are SMART goals that reflect the value that each team intends to deliver in a PI with high confidence. Uncommitted objectives are stretch goals that reflect additional value that each team may be able to deliver in a PI if they have extra capacity or time. Uncommitted objectives are not included in the commitment or the business value scoring, but they are included in the load to account for their potential impact on team capacity. References: PI Planning, Team PI Objectives

The SAFe Workbook emphasizes that:

“Large batch sizes increase variability… Small batches go through the system faster with lower variability.”

The workbook includes exercises demonstrating that smaller batch sizes reduce cycle time and increase predictability, while large batches slow flow and introduce delays.

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Pages 2-54 to 2-56

The business owner is the person who decides the team PI objective business value scoring after negotiation. The business owner is a key stakeholder who has the primary business and technical responsibility for governance, compliance, and return on investment (ROI) for a specific value stream. The business owner participates in the PI planning event and assigns business value points to each team PI objective based on their alignment with the program vision and objectives. The business owner also reviews and approves the final plan and value scores after the team and program risks are resolved. References: PI Planning, Business Owners

Reducing delays is the focus of Lean thinking. Lean thinking is a philosophy and a set of principles and practices that aim to eliminate waste and optimize value delivery. Waste is anything that does not directly contribute to customer value or that causes delays in delivering value. Delays are the primary cause of waste, as they increase inventory, risk, variability, overhead, and dissatisfaction. Reducing delays means minimizing the time between customer need and value delivery, which improves quality, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. References: Thriving in the Digital Age, SAFe Principle #2

SAFe describes Continuous Deployment as:

“An aspect of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline that enables faster delivery of new functionality to customers.”

By automating the pipeline and decoupling deployment from release, enterprises can release value more frequently and responsively.

Lean Portfolio Management, Agile Product Delivery, and Lean-Agile Leadership are SAFe core competencies. A SAFe core competency is a set of knowledge, skills, and behaviors that enable an organization to achieve business agility. Business agility is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative solutions. There are seven core competencies in SAFe: Team and Technical Agility, Agile Product Delivery, Enterprise Solution Delivery, Lean Portfolio Management, Organizational Agility, Continuous Learning Culture, and Lean-Agile Leadership. References: SAFe as an Operating System for Business Agility, Core Competencies of Business Agility

Planning adjustments are agreed upon during the management review and problem-solving meeting in the PI planning event. The management review and problem-solving meeting is a session that occurs at the end of day one of the PI planning event. In this session, the management team reviews the draft plans of all the teams in the ART, identifies any issues or risks that need to be resolved, and proposes any changes or adjustments that are necessary to achieve the program objectives. The management team then communicates their feedback and recommendations to the teams on day two of the PI planning event. References: PI Planning, Management Review and Problem-Solving

SAFe follows Kotter's 8-step change model. The workbook notes:

"Culture change comes last, not first. It is the outcome, not the precondition, of a successful transformation. Culture changes only after you have successfully demonstrated that the new way is superior to the old."

This confirms that culture change follows behavioral change.

Source: SAFe Workbook, Section on Leading Change

The SAFe Lean-Agile Principle that includes the critical part of “delaying decisions to the last responsible moment” is “Assume variability; preserve options”. This principle is based on the concept of set-based design, which is a way of managing uncertainty and complexity in product development. Set-based design means exploring multiple possible solutions in parallel, eliminating inferior options over time, and converging on the best solution as more information becomes available. Delaying decisions to the last responsible moment means keeping multiple options open until enough data and feedback are gathered to make an informed decision, which reduces risk and waste. References: SAFe Lean-Agile Principles, SAFe Principle #4

The Continuous Delivery Pipeline represents the workflow, activities, and automation needed to deliver new functionality more frequently. The Continuous Delivery Pipeline is a key enabler of Agile Product Delivery, which is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. The Continuous Delivery Pipeline consists of four elements: Continuous Exploration, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, and Release on Demand. These elements help teams continuously explore customer needs, develop high-quality solutions, deploy them to various environments, and release them to customers when and where they want. References: Agile Product Delivery, Continuous Delivery Pipeline

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of PI Planning, the confidence vote is a process where:

Each team conducts a vote using their fingers (fist of five) or a digital tool for remote events

The teams vote on the confidence level for the objectives as a set, and if confidence is high enough, the aggregate set of objectives becomes the committed ART plan

The Release Train Engineer summarizes the team objectives into the ART PI objectives in a format suitable for management communication

https://scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/

The primary goal of SAFe is to achieve business agility. Business agility is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative solutions. Business agility requires that everyone involved in delivering solutions—business and technology leaders, development, IT operations, legal, marketing, finance, support, compliance, security, and others—use Lean and Agile practices to continually deliver innovative, high-quality products and services faster than the competition. References: Thriving in the Digital Age, Business Agility

According to the SAFe Workbook:

“The Continuous Delivery Pipeline represents the workflows, activities, and automation needed to deliver new functionality more frequently… It enables continuous exploration, integration, deployment, and release on demand—fostering ongoing learning.”

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Pages 4-81 to 4-84

Restoring the speed and innovation of the entrepreneurial network while leveraging the stability of the hierarchical system is a benefit of adopting a dual operating system. A dual operating system is a way of organizing an enterprise that combines two complementary structures: a traditional hierarchy that provides stability, alignment, and efficiency; and a network of empowered teams that provides speed, agility, and creativity. A dual operating system helps enterprises achieve organizational agility, which is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. References: Organizational Agility, Dual Operating System

Trust is developed by:

“Delivering value consistently and predictably… Predictability builds confidence between teams and stakeholders.”

This is reinforced during PI Planning and Iteration Reviews.

Launching more ARTs and Value Streams is the implementation step that follows Coach ART Execution on the SAFe Implementation Roadmap. The SAFe Implementation Roadmap is a guide that helps enterprises implement SAFe in a structured and reliable way. The roadmap consists of 12 critical moves that span from reaching the tipping point to extending to the portfolio and beyond. Coach ART Execution is the seventh move, where the first ART is launched and coached by a SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) or other expert. Launch more ARTs and Value Streams is the eighth move, where the enterprise expands the implementation of SAFe to other value streams and ARTs, based on the learnings and successes of the first ART. References: SAFe Implementation Roadmap, Coach ART Execution, Launch more ARTs and Value Streams

According to SAFe Principle #8, "Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers," beyond purpose and mission, this principle emphasizes that:

“Management sets the mission with minimum constraints… Workers themselves are most qualified to make decisions about how to perform their work.”

This aligns with promoting autonomy, mastery, and purpose—autonomy being enabled by minimal constraints from management.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

In SAFe’s Continuous Delivery Pipeline, the practice of separating deployment from release allows organizations to:

Deploy code to production-like environments frequently

Test features safely in production without exposing them to end users

Use techniques like feature toggles, dark launches, canary releases

Release to customers when business conditions are right

This means the main benefit is that it enables testing in a production environment, even before the actual release.

(Source: Scaled Agile Framework – Release on Demand)

The workbook details that optimizing flow is heavily dependent on:

“Most problems with your process will surface as delays… Reducing delays is the fastest way to reduce time-to-market.”

Thus, identifying and eliminating delays is the critical activity when optimizing flow.

Source: Workbook, Page 2-11

The Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) plays a key role in enabling transformation and follows the SAFe Implementation Roadmap.

“LACE uses the SAFe Implementation Roadmap to guide the transformation… The roadmap outlines a step-by-step strategy from reaching the tipping point to sustaining and accelerating SAFe.”