This has been a very exciting half-year within Pega, and with our best practices we have contributed to several successful client outcomes. Clients often have their own delivery frameworks and by combining them with Pega Best practices, I have experienced how we can gain clients’ trust and keep giving them those successful outcomes. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is one such delivery framework and is used by many clients. SAFe doesn’t only work in combination with our best practices but can also play an essential part in accelerating quality and achieving client success.
SAFe has a foundation in Lean, Agile and DevOps, and many large enterprises have implemented SAFe to ensure their business agility. I am and have been an advocate for SAFe for many years and have experienced the value that it brings to complex organizations undergoing large digital transformations. The concepts of value streams and agile release trains in SAFe enable people to plan multiple products with dependencies, and all at the same cadence. This helps deliver value-added end results and is one of the key benefits that I’ve experienced with SAFe.
During my time at Pega as a Project Delivery Lead, leading implementations of Pega technologies for various clients within the EMEA region, I experienced considerable benefits and achieved value by applying Pega Best practices in organizations that have already implemented a Scaled Agile Framework. At first, it might seem unnecessary to additionally apply our best practices to such an extensive agile framework as SAFe, but Pega Best practices add considerable extra value that ensures quality and speed-to-delivery in achieving business value.
I experienced considerable benefits and achieved value by applying Pega Best practices in organizations that have already implemented a Scaled Agile Framework.
Solving business problems
Pega Best practices are focused on delivering minimum lovable products (MLPs). Sometimes Pega MLPs are incorrectly compared to MVPs (minimum viable product) in SAFe. But there is a major difference: an MVP in SAFe is an early and minimal version of a new solution that is sufficient simply to prove or disprove a hypothesis for an Epic. MVPs are about proving and testing ideas, whereas MLPs deliver real business value with defined business outcomes and measurable metrics. In other words, there is a major difference between validating a concept and delivering real business value to end users. The focus of MLPs on quick delivery of business value and metrics enables end users to work with the application sooner and give the feedback that is essential in ensuring that the business goals for an app are being met.
Designing great experiences
Both Pega Best practices and the Scaled Agile Framework refer to design-thinking principles and lean UX to ensure a good user experience. When designing for great experiences, Pega Best practices also takes Pega Platform™ as a starting point, with all its possibilities for designing modular, reusable components. These are essential differences compared to SAFe, which do not take defined UX design patterns and modularity into consideration. Furthermore, the focus on reusability in Pega Platform is not only an enabler for consistent user experience but also for accelerating the time to delivery. With Pega’s Constellation design system, the level of reusability can be taken even further. The Constellation design system has built-in design components, templates, and patterns, as well as automatic updates, that follow Pega’s latest design best practices and enables users to focus on solving larger usability and business problems.
Effective collaboration
Both SAFe and Pega Express best practices emphasize the importance of effective collaboration using both Scrum and Agile methodologies. SAFe includes the concept of Agile Release Trains (ARTs) to collaboratively plan, manage and deliver products with dependencies that jointly create business value. I’ve personally seen how ARTs can be one of the key benefits of SAFe, and how powerful it is to have a methodology for planning dependencies with quarterly planning increment sessions (PI planning). As a participant in various PI planning sessions for clients around the EMEA region, both onsite as well as virtual, it’s been truly eye-opening to see joint planning and risk identification with the involvement of both business representatives as well as team members in PI planning sessions.
Pega Best practices recommend the establishment of a governing body – a Center of Excellence (COE) – to ensure governance and efficient collaboration on architecture reuse, policies and standards, the proper setting up of environments, and deployment procedures. COEs works across business and IT units to provide leadership, support, and governance for all initiatives using Pega Platform. After working with several clients whose COEs have had different levels of maturity, my experience is that there are two essential factors in gaining the maximum benefit of a COE:
Firstly, the COE needs to have a mandate and the authority to steer design choices that enable reusability. For organizations with several development teams, our experience is that the authority and mandate of the COE is fundamental to achieving reusability and the possibility to deliver at speed.
Secondly, the COE should have the right competence and roles for its responsibilities. If the COE does not have adequate competence, authority, and a mandate to steer the design choices of the development teams, there is a high risk of extensive delays in app delivery.
A mature COE should also encourage innovation and support with road map management to ensure the recommended scope and size of MLPs, to enable a continuous, cadenced delivery of MLPs that delivers business value and captures user experience.
The Power of Pega
To take advantage of the power and capabilities of Pega it is important to have the right level and mix of competence in both the development teams and the Center of Excellence. Pega offers enablement paths with recommended online training for various roles and levels of seniority, which you can find in Pega Academy. Enablement is a continuous journey that never ends, and this idea aligns with one of the seven competences of SAFe: Continuous Learning Culture.
The benefits of properly enabling users with Pega software can be summarized as follows:
- Having a balance of experienced, senior resources with less experienced resources is a success factor. An experienced resource needs to have the bandwidth to both coach their less senior peers and to continue to produce content.
- To efficiently align and support their teams, all development resources need to be trained on Pega software and understand its possibilities. This includes Scrum masters, product managers and delivery leads.
- For efficient transformation programs and deliveries, stakeholders in steering groups and senior management positions must have a fundamental understanding of the possibilities of their Pega software. This is important to help them make and support tactical and strategic decisions to achieve the best possible business value.
- A strategy and plan for how to support and encourage everyone in an enterprise to up-skill and stay trained on their software is also important.
- Stay curious, explore, and experiment with new Pega technology enhancements!
- Balance risk management, apply best practices, and ensure that the entire development team is confident about the balance of known and unknown enhancements in their apps.
Summary
To get the full potential and best quality from their Pega-built applications, and to achieve business value and accelerate time to delivery, it is essential for organizations to apply Pega Best practices, even if they have already implemented a development framework, such as a Scaled Agile Framework.
Obviously, every organization and digital transformation has its own context. To achieve full business value in every Pega implementation, it is vital to proceed from the context by aligning with an experienced Pega leader who has the knowledge and experience of applying Pega Best practices. Having a Center of Excellence in place at the client organization, with an understanding of how Pega software works, also helps enable the necessary tactical and strategic decisions.
Besides applying Pega Best practices and having a fit-for-purpose governing structure, development teams need to work together as one. For a development leader, this means understanding the motivation and driving forces of all participants. Just as it is painful to work with teams that have different driving forces, it is a powerful experience working work with teams that have overcome their difficulties to trust and understand one another.
Finally, just as Pega’s products and technology continue to evolve, so will our best practices. By staying curious, exploring, and learning, we prepare ourselves for future challenges.
Related Resources
Don't Forget
- JOIN THE CONVERSATION on Support Center
- FOLLOW @PegaDeveloper on Twitter