Books on SAFe
SAFe® Explained: Succeeding with Lean and Agile at Scale
Scaled Agile, Inc.
Ready to discover how you can succeed with Lean and Agile at scale? The SAFe Explained eBook is a distilled view of SAFe that makes understanding the key elements and business impacts easier for first-time readers and those who need a quick refresher. You can find clear answers to your most pressing questions, such as: ‘Why Lean and Agile?’, ‘What is SAFe?’, ‘How do we measure value?’ and ‘What is Lean Portfolio Management?
If you struggle with quantifying the benefits of Agile or think that SAFe is too rigid, this is the eBook for you.
SAFe® Explained for Government: Succeeding with Lean and Agile at Scale in Government
Scaled Agile, Inc.
Ready to explore how Lean and Agile principles apply in a government context? The SAFe Explained for Government eBook is a streamlined guide to understanding SAFe through a public sector lens—ideal for first-time readers and those seeking a quick, clear refresher. It answers your most pressing questions, like: “Why Lean-Agile for government?”, “What does value delivery look like in the public sector?”, and “How do we ensure compliance while remaining adaptable?”
If you’re facing challenges proving the benefits of Agile in a government setting or believe SAFe can’t flex to meet agency needs, this eBook is for you.
Engineering Agility: A Pragmatic Approach to Adapting Agile Practices for Hardware Product Development
by Ali Hajou, Marina Voropaeva
This book shows how the principles of the Agile Manifesto can be applied specifically to the challenges of building physical products. You will explore how to form effective, stable engineering teams, improve communication amongst multiple engineering competences, and adapt agile practices to different situations hardware teams experience. We will elaborate on the inherent risks seen in hardware projects, such as team instability, the domino effect of delays, and the high cost of late design changes, and share approaches on how to overcome them. This book helps you understand how to adjust methods, practices, and techniques to speed up hardware development, work more efficiently, and overcome costly project overruns.
Using the principles of the Agile Manifesto as a base, but explaining them through the lens of hardware product development, this book allows you to construct or “engineer” your own Agile way of working using practical examples, proven approaches, and best practices.
The Release Train Engineer Handbook: Transform your Agile Release Train (ART) with practical, result-driven approaches
by Glenn Smith, Tim Jackson, Gez Smith
Scaling Agile is a complex undertaking, and the SAFe® Release Train Engineer (RTE) is key to its success. Written by three SPCT-certified experts with over 20 years of experience each, this book is your essential guide to mastering the RTE role.
You’ll learn how to differentiate the RTE role from Scrum Masters and PMOs and understand how to enable flow across the Agile Release Train (ART). The book walks you through every critical phase of PI Planning, including pre-planning logistics, live and online facilitation, and post-planning execution. You’ll also explore advanced areas, such as working with Solution Trains, Lean Portfolio Management, and the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE).
With real-world examples, tips, and a guided approach, this book builds your competence and confidence, from launching new ARTs to running effective System Demos and Inspect and Adapt workshops. It also offers exam prep tips for SAFe RTE certification and insights on coaching PI execution and delivery improvements.
By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped to lead ARTs with authority, drive meaningful change in your organization, and expand your influence across the enterprise.
Business Agility
by Maarit Laanti and Nora Bäckman
In the first Finnish book, Maarit Laanti and Nora Bäckman present the basics and practical applications of agile operating models in companies. The Handbook of Business Agility opens the door to the core of modern organizational culture and offers a deep understanding of what it means to move from a traditional operating model to an Agile approach.
The book offers a comprehensive overview of the meaning of agility from both the creators’ and management’s perspectives. Through practical examples and company stories, Laanti and Bäckman shed light on how companies can implement a successful change toward a more agile operating model. The author duo’s solid experience and expertise in Agile operating models make the book a valuable guide for both beginners and experienced operators.
The Handbook of Business Agility is a timely and inspiring guide that prepares companies to face the challenges of the future flexibly and successfully.
Escalando agilidad con SAFe (Scaling Agility in SAFe)
Angel Galan Carretero
This Spanish-language book navigates SAFe, offering practical insights, real-world experiences, and solutions to implementation challenges. It covers theoretical foundations, key roles, events, and metrics, moving into effective techniques and adaptations for various company contexts. Guía esencial para navegar por el complejo pero poderoso mundo del marco de trabajo ágil de Scaled Agile. Este libro no solo desglosa la teoría detrás de SAFe, sino que va más allá al proporcionar una visión práctica, rica en experiencias reales, técnicas y soluciones a los desafíos en las diferentes implementaciones en que nos podemos encontrar.
The book addresses successes and common dilemmas, equipping readers—from beginners to experienced professionals—with practical knowledge and inspiration for SAFe triumph.
SAFe to Scale: The practical guide to Scaled Agile for Product Managers and Product Owners
by Valerio Zanini
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is the world’s leading framework for scaling agile practices for dozens or even hundreds of agile teams. Product Managers and Product Owners play a pivotal role in the success of any SAFe implementation by adopting a product-thinking mindset. SAFe to Scale by Valerio Zanini equips them with the knowledge and tools to excel in the SAFe environment by adopting product thinking.
You will learn to refine and prioritize the backlog, moving from Epics to Features to Stories, while adopting a product thinking mindset for continuous value delivery. It focuses on fostering strong collaboration with Agile Teams and stakeholders, and leveraging essential SAFe artifacts like the ART Backlog and Planning Board. The guide also covers identifying MVPs using Product Journey Maps focused on key hypotheses, and tracking progress on PI Objectives to drive customer and business value.
The Rock Crusher: A Model for Flow-Based Backlog Management
by Steve Adolph, Shane Hastie, and Ryland Leyton
The Rock Crusher offers an agile approach to backlog management, highlighting the power and simplicity of this essential tool in modern agile organizations. The publication emphasizes the importance of the backlog as a single repository from which a team pulls its next most valuable work item, enabling agility through the ability to add, remove, reprioritize, and visualize potential work for a product. With a focus on fostering efficiency and productivity, The Rock Crusher provides a practical guide to maximizing the potential of the backlog and ensuring success in agile development.
SAFe® Coaches Handbook: Proven tips and techniques for launching and running SAFe® Teams, ARTs, and Portfolios in an Agile Enterprise
By Darren Wilmshurst and Lindy Quick
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) is widely recognized as an effective methodology for implementing Agile practices at the Enterprise level. However, the complexity of SAFe® can make it challenging for Teams and organizations to determine which practices can be safely adapted to their unique needs. Although SAFe® is a framework rather than a set of rules promoting adaptation, it’s crucial to understand why SAFe® practices are designed the way they are along with the consequences of modifying them.
The SAFe® Coaches Handbook is a comprehensive resource that goes beyond a how-to guide, providing a deep understanding of SAFe® principles and practices. The chapters are designed in a way to teach you how to successfully implement SAFe® in your organization and effectively manage the Team’s Backlog while avoiding common pitfalls. You’ll discover optimal ways to create SAFe® Teams and run successful Events. You’ll also learn how to plan Agile Release Trains (ARTs), manage the ART Backlog, conduct PI Planning, and grasp the importance of Value Stream Identification in driving value delivery.
By the end of this book, you’ll be armed with practical tips and advice to help you successfully customize the Scaled Agile Framework to your Enterprise’s needs while preserving the aspects that make it work successfully.
Lean-Agile Procurement: How to get Twice the Value in Half the Time
by Mirko Kleiner
John Donne once wrote “no man is an island entire of itself”. As the world becomes more complex and interconnected, today’s challenges can only be solved when organizations come together with a common purpose, and Lean-Agile Procurement enables this. Learn how to become true partners, starting with co-creating proposals with multiple vendors in the same room to significantly reduce time-to-market to days instead of months, and collectively improve the solution of a strategic sourcing case for better outcomes. Lean-Agile Procurement has been recognized and awarded by the three leading procurement alliances and professional bodies. The winning cases come from both the private and public sectors and across a range of industries.
Industrial DevOps: Build Better Systems Faster
by Dr. Suzette Johnson and Robin Yeman
The benefits of adopting agile ways of working are well-understood in the digital world. But those in cyber-physical systems (combining software, hardware, and firmware) think it is risky. But with today’s speed of change, maybe the risk is in not changing.
Industrial DevOps: Build Better Systems Faster shows readers how applying Agile and DevOps ways of working into cyber-physical systems presents the opportunity to reap huge rewards, including increased adaptability, shorter delivery schedules, reduced development cost, increased quality, and higher transparency into delivery.
This book shows you how to couple the results of Agile and DevOps implementation in development with Lean and Agile in manufacturing. Through a successful application of nine key principles, Industrial DevOps provides the foundational success patterns for the development of cyber-physical systems in the digital age. The benefits that have been obtained across industries can be transferred to the cyber-physical domain and they have the potential to provide an even greater impact in the delivery of products.
SAFe® for DevOps Practitioners: Implement Robust, Secure, and Scaled Agile Solutions with the Continuous Delivery Pipeline
by Robert Wen
Product development and release face overlapping challenges due to the combined pressure of delivering high-quality products in shorter time-to-market cycles, maintaining proper operation, and ensuring security in a complex high-tech environment. This calls for new ways to overcome these challenges from design to development, to release, and beyond. SAFe® for DevOps Practitioners helps practitioners apply a DevOps technical approach with the Scaled Agile Framework and details how value streams help resolve these challenges using examples and use cases.
SAFe practitioners will connect with the book’s organizing structure around CALMR, value streams, and SAFe’s Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP). The book begins by explaining how the CALMR approach makes DevOps effective in resolving product development roadblocks. Next, you’ll learn to apply value stream management to establish a value stream that enables product development flow, measure its effectiveness through appropriate feedback loops, and find ways of improving it. Finally, you’ll get to grips with implementing a continuous delivery pipeline that optimizes the value stream through four phases, from continuous exploration to release on demand.
Humans Are Not Resources: 50 Great Ideas For Managing A Modern Lean – Agile Workforce
by Gez Smith
The world of work is changing, so the way we manage people must change too. Humans Are Not Resources sets out 50 different practical ideas and experiments for you to run in your own organization in order to improve the way you hire, manage, grow, retain, and generally get the best out of your workforce. Collectively, these ideas challenge you to rethink the world of work in order to realize the full benefits of modern lean-agile ways of working.
The ART of Avoiding a Train Wreck: Practical Tips and Tricks for Launching and Operating SAFe Agile Release Trains
by Em Campbell-Pretty and Adrienne L. Wilson
In The ART of Avoiding a Train Wreck, Em and Adrienne share their “trade secrets” for launching and operating powerful and effective Agile Release Trains. There’s a lot at stake when launching an Agile Release Train. When taking on an Enterprise Lean-Agile Transformation you only get one shot at a first impression. Runaway trains are expensive. Money gets wasted, time gets lost and the reputational damage can take years to repair.
Going well beyond the standard SAFe training, this book deep dives into the practical tips and tricks that only over 15 years of combined real-world experience can teach. Peppered with innumerable war stories, this book provides plenty of entertainment (as well as education) in the form of personal anecdotes, cautionary tales and pro-tips for both the colocated Agile Release Train and its more complicated globally distributed cousins.You will learn how to get a ticket on the SAFe railway, load the cargo on your train, set the timetable, SAFely board and stay on the tracks. No matter your context, you are sure to find plenty of actionable ideas for launching and operating Agile Release Trains. Let’s face it, any train can derail, so let The ART of Avoiding a Train Wreck be the coach in your pocket, warning you of the obstacles on the tracks ahead before you train wreck.
The Rollout: A Novel about Leadership and Building a Lean-Agile Enterprise
by Alex Yakyma
Are you a change agent, consultant, coach or Lean-Agile leader? If so, then this novel about leadership and building a Lean-Agile enterprise is for you!
Fictional but based on a broad range of real-life SAFe implementations, the book features Ethan, the newly appointed transformation team leader at VeraComm Systems. He finds himself in the middle of turbulent action—the company has failed to cope with the increasing complexities of building competitive communications solutions, and is rapidly losing market share. Caught between a traditional approach to program and portfolio management, and half-baked Agile methods at the team level, he struggles to help his company find a way out. Ethan finally discovers a glimpse of hope—a method that applies the notion of agility at a much higher scale. Inspired by this discovery, Ethan charges into action, launching the rollout of a new method at his company. But in no time, he runs into a many obstacles. which puts the rollout, and his own career, in grave danger. You will be quickly immersed into an action-packed story of a transformation that will change your concept of adopting Lean and Agile at scale. This book will help you will learn many lessons about leading a Lean-Agile transformation, before you venture out on your own and possibly make some critical missteps. “The Rollout” will provide you with many techniques and tools to support large-scale rollouts of Lean and Agile methods. It will guide you through:
- Acquiring a Lean-Agile leadership mindset, which enables creating the right habits and culture
- Training stakeholders and teams
- Launching Agile Release Trains and supporting value delivery
- Relentlessly improving the system in which people work, as a whole
- Advancing engineering practices
- Organizing teams and trains around value
- Building a Lean-Agile portfolio
- Effectively leading change in the organization
Tribal Unity: Getting from Teams to Tribes by Creating a One Team Culture
by Em Campbell-Pretty
Tribal Unity is a real world, practical guide, for Lean-Agile Leaders committed to making their organizations truly great places to work. In Tribal Unity, SAFe Fellow Em Campbell-Pretty draws a parallel between tribes and the Agile Release Train, highlighting the impact of culture on effectiveness.
Based on many years of field experience, Tribal Unity is a ‘culture first’ approach to launching and operating SAFe Agile Release Trains, providing a step-by-step roadmap for scaling culture beyond a single team to a team of teams. Filled with concrete practices, illustrated through personal anecdotes, this book serves as an inspiration for those wanting to transform the culture of their organization. Put simply Tribal Unity is a distillation of proven patterns that are revolutionizing the way teams of teams connect and perform.
Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise
by Dean Leffingwell
Effective requirements discovery and analysis is a critical best practice for serious application development. Until now, however, requirements and Agile methods have rarely coexisted peacefully. For many enterprises considering Agile approaches, the absence of effective and scalable Agile requirements processes has been a showstopper for Agile adoption. In Agile Software Requirements, Dean Leffingwell shows exactly how to create effective requirements in Agile environments.
This book will help you leverage the benefits of Agile without sacrificing the value of effective requirements discovery and analysis. You’ll find proven solutions you can apply right now–whether you’re a software developer or tester, executive, project/program manager, architect, or team leader.
Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises
by Dean Leffingwell
Agile development practices, while still controversial in some circles, offer undeniable benefits: faster time to market, better responsiveness to changing customer requirements, and higher quality. However, agile practices have been defined and recommended primarily to small teams. In Scaling Software Agility, Dean Leffingwell describes how agile methods can be applied to enterprise-class development.
This book is invaluable to software developers, testers and QA personnel, managers and team leads, as well as to executives of software organizations whose objective is to increase the quality and productivity of the software development process but who are faced with all the challenges of developing software on an enterprise scale.
Last Update: 2 December 2025