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Team coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is a success.” – Hendy Ford.

In the digital era, organizations are working on building a proper system to achieve business agility. The agility revolves around customer centricity. It is about surviving in the highly competitive business market by satisfying the customer requirements in a shorter timeframe. It is all about producing valuable results that cater to the client’s needs in a faster way.

Adapting to change could be daunting if only you lack the technology knowledge. When business owners get familiar with the ruling methodology and technologies to develop their business, they achieve business agility and manage to survive in the ever-changing business landscape.

So, as an agile professional if you plan to join businesses that skyrocket in their industry, then you must obtain relevant knowledge regarding the SAFe methodology and its best practices.

Talking about SAFe methodology, in this article, let’s discuss the role of a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence that helps make the SAFe transformation in any organization.

What are the best practices of the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence?

Before we begin, make a guess. Which of the following is a responsibility of a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence?

Supporting portfolio management

Coaching leadership

Fostering Lean-Agile Learning

Managing the transformation backlog

Well, all the options mentioned above are the responsibility of a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence. Let’s expand on this aspect in the subsequent sessions. Let’s discuss the responsibilities of the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence which is also known as the best practices to perform SAFe transformation of an organization.

1. Facilitating SAFe Transformation: The Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) is an agile team created to support SAFe transformation with persistent attention to the current state and vision of the company. The team works based on the mission statement generated at the start of the SAFe Implementation Roadmap. The LACE can consist of 3 to 5 members at the start that collaborate with ARTs to plan, inspect, and adapt agile team behavior.

The LACE team participates in certification courses like Implementing SAFe and SPC programs to understand the Lean SAFe methodology and SAFe implementation roadmap. They make use of qualitative and quantitative feedback to prepare changes for the future. And make sure to communicate the progress and issues with team members.

2. Maintaining Transformation Backlog: The LACE can efficiently work by maintaining a transformation backlog. This helps fulfil tasks that hold much priority to maintain the flow. Preparing and updating the backlog can help understand the progress better. And also, provides easy access to include changes for other team member’s reference.

The backlog includes a Funnel, Defining, Implementing, Validating, and Done. The transformation backlog helps create a foundation for the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence to understand the portfolio by measuring the progress. Maintaining a transformation backlog involves identifying the right OKRs. Using OKRs the team can measure the results of the transformation process.

3. Promoting Lean-Agile Learning: The LACE must participate in training sessions throughout the implementation process. It includes embracing new thoughts, and conflicting opinions, and connecting with peer communities. The team is also accountable for preparing learning plans in collaboration with other team members and agile coaches.

Once the learning plan is set, the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence moves ahead with measuring the learning results of the team to make up their mindset for the role-based competencies to achieve results.

4. Coaching Leadership: The Lean-Agile Center of Excellence also facilitates leadership programs and updates other leadership workshops for agile leaders. The goal is to maintain the flow of the development process. This includes arranging for educational workshops to strategy alignment programs.

Most organizations have existing leadership programs that can be developed according to the digital age with the help of the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence.

5. Supporting Lean Portfolio Management: This SAFe practice involves initiating the adoption of Lean Portfolio Management methodology that promotes reducing waste to improve the workflow. The Lean-Agile Center of Excellence initiates the association with other agile leaders to practice facilitation and sharing information collected from different resources to maintain the SAFe transformation.

The LACE is responsible for identifying the Value Stream workshops and can assist with portfolio reviews, participatory budgeting, portfolio sync, and receiving inputs from agile leaders. Other important responsibilities of the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence include developing team execution patterns and maintaining PI Planning and operational excellence.

Thus, these are the important roles that form the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence for improving value delivery.