Find the Right SAFe Certification for you [ Based on Job Titles ]

Choosing the Right SAFe Certification

Project team members, future leaders, and potential workers must be ready, eager, and able to keep up with the ever-changing demands of companies to succeed in today's business world. Choosing the right SAFe certification based on your job role is very important to scale your professional career.

For many companies, this means adopting an agile approach — and a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) credential. Agile project management is an iterative development approach that emphasizes human communication and feedback, adaptability to change, and the production of useful outcomes.

What are the Four Agile values?

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

SAFe is a series of organizational and process patterns designed to help companies become scale agile-led businesses. The SAFe framework encourages large groups of agile teams to align, collaborate, and deliver.

For professionals working within these organizations and building careers in the agile business world, the SAFe credential validates your knowledge and understanding about how to support the successful transformation of organizations into lean-agile enterprises.

It’s a skill that will only continue to be relevant. According to a KPMG survey on agility, organizations continue to scale in an agile fashion. The accounting and consulting giant found that 70% of respondents from businesses around the world were focused on integrating business and IT agile transformations within the next 3 years with SAFe as the predominately used framework.

SAFe: Preferred Delivery Framework for Scaling Agile in Enterprise

SAFe has become one of the preferred development and delivery frameworks for scaling agile in enterprises. But with so many Agile certifications it’s challenging to select the one that promotes your career; benchmarking your agile skills and practices precisely.

Some senior professionals reject agile certification programs, claiming that most certification programs have lax vetting, preparation, and exam criteria. Some believe that qualification only demonstrates a person's book smarts and does not demonstrate their on-the-job skills.

These differing viewpoints often prompt the question, "Is SAFe Certification really worth it?"

Agile frameworks have been around for decades. However, industry leaders believe that instructor-led agile training certificates help improve an organization's overall environment.

Scaled Agile courses inspire the collaborative mindset around agile methods. They instill the team-think approach among development teams and with the end goal being a certification; employees are often more interested in training. And SAFe is one of the few frameworks that combine lean and system thinking efficiently with Agile development practices.

Agile Transformation

“Being, becoming, or modifying character or state to one of agility” is what agile transformation entails. Of course, this is not a simple task. It necessitates a shift in the mindset of the majority of employees in a company, which is a difficult task.

The advantages of agile are obvious, but the challenge is establishing or promoting agile "behaviour" and deciding when to implement frameworks and practises. It's possible that introducing them too fast could backfire and set you back.

What is Agile Lean Transformation?

Agile Lean transformation is transforming to agility while implementing and recognizing Lean practices and values. The idea of being “Lean”, originally used in the manufacturing sector, was later identified as applicable for software development activities. The goal of Lean? To maximize customer value while minimizing waste.

Lean has seven key principles that apply to software development:

Waste Elimination
Amplify Learning
Late Decision Making
Fast Delivery
Team Empowerment
Built-In Integrity
View Applications as a Whole

Agile values directly co-relate to developing quality software rapidly. In order to get the most benefits, the software needs to have value to the end user. And identifying and eliminating waste allows time to be spent on more value added activities.

The result is the ability to rapidly release working quality software that a customer is going to value. By using a Lean practice, you are achieving a goal of Agile hence, Agile Lean transformation is the coming together of lean and agile principles and values.

The SAFe Credentials

There are several SAFe certifications available to demonstrate your knowledge and experience. But how do you know which SAFe certification is right for you?

safe implementation roadmap — *Source: scaledagileframework.com*

Let’s break each of them down and get a better understanding of who they were each created for and what they entail.

SAFe Agilist (SA)

If you're new to SAFe, you'll want to start with this certification. The two-day course you must take to earn this certification covers all of the Scaled Agile Framework's values and practices. It clarifies what an agile enterprise is, what an agile transition entails, and how to implement a lean-agile mindset.

This certification will ensure the professional is prepared to establish a strategic plan that keeps you leading the competition, understand and execute agile quality management methods, optimize commodity and portfolio performance approaches and engage stakeholders and end-users in the process.