Scaled Agile SAFe-Agilist SAFe 6 Agilist - Leading SAFe (SA) (6.0) Exam Practice Test

Deploy, verify, monitor, and respond are all activities of Continuous Deployment. Continuous Deployment is one of the elements of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline, which is a key enabler of Agile Product Delivery. Continuous Deployment means automatically releasing every update to a production environment or a staging environment that is identical to production. Continuous Deployment involves four activities: deploy (releasing the solution to the target environment); verify (ensuring that the solution meets the quality standards and acceptance criteria); monitor (collecting feedback and data on the solution performance and usage); and respond (taking actions to improve or fix the solution based on the feedback and data). References: Agile Product Delivery, Continuous Delivery Pipeline, Continuous Deployment

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Built-in Quality, this practice reduces bottlenecks and ensures consistency by:

Encouraging teams to share responsibility for the quality of their work products

Establishing common standards and guidelines for coding, testing, documentation, etc.

Enabling teams to collaborate and coordinate across domains and dependencies

Promoting a culture of continuous improvement and learning

https://scaledagileframework.com/built-In-quality/

SAFe Principle #10 emphasizes:

“Organize around value” and states that enterprises must continuously adjust their organizational structure to optimize for the flow of value when market demands change.

This means reorganizing the network around the new value flow is the recommended approach.

Transparency is one of the SAFe core values. SAFe core values are the fundamental beliefs that guide the behaviors and actions of SAFe enterprises. Transparency means that all the relevant information about the strategy, plans, progress, risks, and issues are openly shared and visible to everyone who needs it. Transparency helps build trust, alignment, collaboration, and learning among all the stakeholders in a SAFe enterprise. References: SAFe Core Values, Transparency

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

According to the SAFe Glossary and reiterated in the Workbook:

“The Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a servant leader and ART coach who facilitates ART events and processes and supports teams in delivering value.”

Source: SAFe Glossary & Workbook Page 3-19

Design thinking is a method that provides a continuous understanding of the target market. Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving that involves empathy, ideation, experimentation, and implementation. Design thinking helps teams discover the real needs and desires of their customers, generate innovative solutions that address those needs, validate their assumptions through fast feedback loops, and deliver value that delights their customers. Design thinking helps teams achieve the core competency of Customer Centricity in SAFe. References: Customer Centricity, Design Thinking

From the workbook section on forming cross-functional Agile Teams:

“Agile Teams are cross-functional self-organizing entities that can define, build, test, and—where applicable—deploy increments of value.”

“Optimized for communication and delivery of value” is also mentioned but for this question, the best indicators of a cross-functional team are the capabilities of the team members and their ability to deliver value independently.

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.

This is how SAFe recommends using a second operating system to deliver value. A second 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 second operating system helps enterprises achieve organizational agility, which is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. Organizing development around the flow of value means creating cross-functional Agile teams and ARTs that deliver value in a regular cadence. Maintaining the hierarchies means preserving the existing roles and functions that provide governance, compliance, and support. References: Organizational Agility, Dual Operating System

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

In the Design Thinking section, the workbook specifies:

“Use empathy maps to identify with Customers… This helps teams develop deep shared understanding and empathy for the Customer.”

This tool is essential in capturing user perspectives, making it a key Design Thinking practice.

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Pages 4-7 to 4-9

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.”

SAFe describes DevOps as:

“DevOps tries to bridge the gap between new Features and stable solutions… DevOps joins development and operations to enable continuous delivery.”

This integration supports both speed and stability in software delivery.

From the “Leading by Example” section:

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

Attributes include insatiable learning, courage, and emotional competence.

The next step for an epic with a completed Lean business case in the analyzing step of the Portfolio Kanban is to move it to the ready state if it receives a ‘go’ decision from Lean Portfolio Management. The analyzing step is where the epic hypothesis statement and the Lean business case are developed and validated. The Lean business case provides the economic justification, assumptions, risks, and potential benefits of the epic. The Lean Portfolio Management is the authority that reviews and approves the Lean business case and decides whether to fund and implement the epic or not. If the epic receives a ‘go’ decision, it moves to the ready state, where it waits for implementation capacity. If the epic receives a ‘no go’ decision, it is either deferred or cancelled. References: Portfolio Kanban, Lean Portfolio Management

This is how SAFe describes Customer Centricity. Customer Centricity is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. Customer Centricity means putting the customer at the center of everything the enterprise does, and understanding their needs, desires, and problems deeply. Customer Centricity also means adopting a mindset that focuses on observing and learning from customer behaviors that produce the best innovations, rather than relying on assumptions or opinions. Customer Centricity helps enterprises deliver solutions that delight their customers and achieve market differentiation. References: Customer Centricity

SWOT and TOWS are used to brainstorm potential portfolio future states. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. SWOT analysis is a tool that helps identify the internal and external factors that affect the portfolio’s performance and position in the market. TOWS is an acronym for Threats, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Strengths. TOWS analysis is a tool that helps generate strategic alternatives based on the SWOT factors. SWOT and TOWS help create a portfolio vision that reflects the desired future state of the portfolio. References: SAFe Portfolio, Portfolio Canvas

Lean Portfolio Management is responsible for managing the Portfolio Kanban. The Portfolio Kanban is a method for visualizing and managing the flow of portfolio epics from ideation to implementation and completion. The Portfolio Kanban helps align strategy with execution, prioritize demand with capacity, reduce cycle time and variability, and foster collaboration and feedback. Lean Portfolio Management is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. Lean Portfolio Management aligns strategy and execution by applying Lean and systems thinking approaches to strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance. References: Lean Portfolio Management, Portfolio Kanban

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Apply SAFe Principles, when basing decisions on economics, lead time, product cost, value, and development expense are used to:

Evaluate the economic impact of different design alternatives

Optimize the flow of value delivery by minimizing delays and waste

Maximize the return on investment by delivering the most valuable features first

Balance the tradeoffs between speed, quality, and cost

https://scaledagileframework.com/take-an-economic-view/

The SAFe workbook explicitly describes how ART events form a feedback-driven cycle:

“ART events, such as PI Planning, Iteration Planning, Reviews, and Retrospectives form a plan-do-check-adjust (PDCA) learning cycle.”

This continuous improvement cycle enables adaptation and learning throughout the ART’s execution.

SAFe draws from Kotter’s model and describes the dual operating system:

“Organize the Enterprise around the flow of value while maintaining the hierarchies… This dual system leverages stability and speed.”

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

Strategic themes are an example of differentiating business objectives. Strategic themes are specific, itemized business objectives that connect a portfolio to the enterprise strategy. Strategic themes provide guidance and direction for portfolio vision, budget allocation, value stream identification, epic prioritization, and metric definition. Strategic themes help differentiate a portfolio from its competitors and create a unique value proposition for its customers. References: SAFe Portfolio, Strategic Themes

The reason why business owners assign business value to team PI objectives is to empower teams to make decisions around work. Business value is a relative measure of the importance of a work item or an outcome to the business. Team PI objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals that reflect the value that each team intends to deliver in a PI. Business owners assign business value points to each team PI objective based on their alignment with the program vision and objectives. This helps teams prioritize their work, balance their capacity, negotiate dependencies, and make trade-offs based on value delivery. References: PI Planning, Business Owners

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

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

The Lean Budget Guardrails defined in SAFe include "Guiding investments by horizon" as one of the main components. This ensures strategic alignment and responsible use of funds.

“Fund Value Streams; Lean budgets and Guardrails… Value Stream budgets adjusted dynamically…”

The workbook lists multiple benefits of SAFe and Agile adoption including:

“Faster time-to-market” and “Ability to respond to changing priorities” are consistently shown as primary motivators in SAFe case studies and business agility metrics.