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Are you ready to scale?

Are you ready to scale?
This is list of preliminary questions that an organization ask itself as to whether or not it is ready to scale to start delivering larger products.
Each question has a comment with a details on what the question is referring to and what is expected.
The organization should go over these questions with an Agile Coach with scaling experience in order to fully understand what answers should be given and to understand where the organization is at.
These questions are meant as discussion points and not necessarily a set of gauges.
Organizations should use Column C to show their current status. Column D is used for the organization or Coach to put their comments.

Requirement Status Comment
1 Leadership committed to taking 'Leading SAFe' (or has already taken the class)
2 Teams currently running Scrum or Kanban or Scrumban
3 Teams are reasonably stable and predictable
4 Four or more teams needed to collaborate
5 Organization committed to a value stream and not just a project
6 Organization committed to one SM per team
7 Organization committed to having POs
8 Organization committed to having a full time RTE
9 Organization committed to having a system team
10 Organization committed to creating a backlog of features
11 Organization committed to doing PI planning
12 Organization committed to at least one SAFe coach
13 Jira set up for portfolio reporting
14 Organization committed to Agile workshops
15 Teams committed to understanding how Agile team metrics are used
16 Organization committed to understanding and using program level metrics
17 Organization has committed to an Agile Mindset and to changing its culture
18 Organization ready to commit to SAFe organizational structure
19 The organization must publish the compelling reason for wanting to change to a scaling framework for delivering products
20 Is there a vision for change that includes purpose, motivation and alignment?
21 Is the organization budgeted to support the required scope?
22 Is the organization committed to providing or training Lean-Agile Change Agents
23 Does the organization have the commitment from partner organizations to work with it?
24 Does the organization have the commitment of its PMO?
25 Can the organization define what is currently broken and how scaling will fix the issues?
26 Do we know who will set the business context and present the Product/Solution vision?


Yes Complete as required
No Not completed, not necessarily will be completed
PWOP Partially, WithOut Plan - Partially complete, but no plans to fully complete
PWP Partially, With Plan - Partially complete with a plan to finish
Mod Modified requirement for situation


last updated september 2019