What Are Spikes In SAFe®?

 

In the early 2000s, a software development company had a problem. They were forced to quickly respond to changing customer needs and requests, which left them with a lack of efficiency and scalability. They needed something new – a way to develop software more quickly and efficiently. This is when the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) was introduced.

Spikes in SAFe® are the solution to the question “What if?”. They are an agile way of exploring an idea or concept without getting bogged down in too much detail at first. They are a form of prototyping that can be used to explore something quickly and cheaply before deciding on the final design.

Let we will discuss in detail about Spikes in SAFe® in this article.

 

Spikes In SAFe®

 

Spikes are a type of SAFe Exploration Enable Stories. In the early days, it was referred to as Extreme Programming (XP). They characterize activities such as design, research, exploration, development, and prototyping.

Its goal is to gather knowledge on reducing risk, revealing requirements, and increasing project estimates. As in other stories, Spikes are evaluated and displayed at the end of the iteration. They also provide an agreed workflow and protocol that ART (Agile Release Train) uses to determine Epic suitability.

 

When Does Agile Teams Use Spikes?

1.      Evaluate new capabilities & features for behavioural analysis, and learn how to break them down into smaller, measurable parts.

2.      Do feasibility studies and other activities that will help determine the epics viability.

3.      Carry out basic research to introduce new technology or field.

4.      Gain confidence in the approaches (technical & functional) that reduces uncertainty and risk.

 

Spikes In Two Forms

 

1) Technical Spikes

Used to analyze and define the overall behaviour of a solution. It determines: how to divide it, how to organize work, find where there is risk and complexity, and how to use the insights to make decisions on implementation.

 

2) Functional Spikes

Used to explore different perspectives in solution space.

For example: Specify a decision to build and buy, assess the potential effectiveness of the new user's story, assess specific technical implementation options., and build confidence in the chosen solution

 

Spikes Guidelines

 

1) Quantifiable, Demonstrable, & Acceptable

 

As in other stories, spikes are incorporated into the team's backlog, scored, and adjusted to fit the iteration. Spike results differ from the story as spikes usually produce information. They should only collect the data they need to identify and organize the stories that are sure to drive them. Spike results can be verified by both the team and other stakeholders, making research and architectural efforts more visible and helping to create shared ownership and decision-making responsibility. The Product Owner accepts Spikes that demonstrate and meets the acceptance criteria.

 

2) Timing of Spikes

 

Since they reflect the uncertainty of at least one possible story, it is sometimes risky to plan both the resulting stories and spikes in the same iteration. However, if it's small, simple, and likely to fix it quickly, both apps of the same iteration can be very effective.

 

3) The Exception, Not the Rule

 

Each user's story is associated with uncertainty and risk; that is the Agile Development nature. The team finds the right solution through collaboration, negotiation, discussion, and experimentation.

So, in a sense, there are similar actions in the story of each user to identify functional and technical threats. The agile team’s goal is to learn to deal with uncertainty in every iteration. Spikes are very important when there is a lot of uncertainty or when there are many unknowns.

 

Begin SAFe Journey

The SAFe certification course educates participants on the fundamentals of Agile practices. This course is intended for Agile Practitioners who want to take their career to next level.

SAFe Training provides insights into the principles of SAFe, Lean, and Agile principles in general. It also covers how to work more effectively as individuals and as teams within an organization.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Implementation Strategies for Business Epics

  SAFe is a scalable agile framework that helps organizations quickly and intelligently transform. It has been used by hundreds of organizations and teams to improve their agility, productivity, and culture over the past decade. SAFe Certification gives you the knowledge and skills needed to develop software in an Agile, Lean-based process. Business epics are key SAFe initiatives that promote the business value and cross-organizational deadlines (PI), boundaries (trains), or sometimes both. Proper analysis and categorization of the business epic to be implemented is the basic competence of an Agile company. It is simple to think about epics as binary, large, monolithic work, in fact, to reap the benefits of agility, they need to be rolled out gradually. In addition, understanding the technology, benefits, and economics makes some of them not fully valuable as the initial effort provides most of the potential value to the business. In this article, we are going to see the vario...
Read more

Critical Behaviours for Agile Leaders

  Agile is a new way of working and thinking in the digital age. Business and personal agility are very important and depend on this journey. Agility is primarily due to the personal agility of individuals in an agile organization. In this group, the personal agile leader (AL: tribe/Chapter Leaders, Executives, etc.) in the organization is "a matter of life and death" for success in agile travel. The agility of individuals is primarily influenced by the fact that they "learn" something. Here are the main behaviours we think agile leaders need to learn. 1. Be A Window And Not As A Door You want to show that you value transparency. It is not about continuous KPI monitoring and micro-management. It's about knowing when to fail, telling the truth, and giving real perception into the vision. Your teams must know why you want them to prioritize one project over the other and are more likely to contact you when they feel their contribution is growing to achieve ...
Read more

How Do You Prioritize Value Delivery in Agile?

In an agile environment, the Product Manager & Product Owner are responsible for deciding what should be delivered first, during each iteration. Their work is crucial to the success of product development. To begin to understand how organizations make priority decisions in an agile environment, we must first define the meaning of the word "value." What is Value Delivery? Value is an important aspect of the agile environment; it is the process by which value is created through the collaboration between the customer and the development team. Value delivery is the act of shipping value to the customer. It is a process that has a positive impact on the customer and the business. It is an outcome of a development cycle that contains all the following: 1. Clear definition of what constitutes value for customers 2. Specification of what must be delivered to meet those criteria 3. Design and implementation of those deliverables 4. Feedback from those who receive t...
Read more

More About Professional Certification

Loading...