SAFe and Obeya: A Game-Changer in Strategy Execution

In the complex landscape of modern organizations, effective strategy execution is essential for achieving competitive advantage and realizing business objectives. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) provides a structured approach for scaling and coordinating Agile practices at the enterprise level. Obeya is a visual management concept that emphasizes transparency and collaboration where you connect strategy to execution. Although Obeya isn’t (yet) part of the SAFe framework, the use of Obeya and SAFe can contribute to improved strategy execution. Below, we will share our learnings how Obeya became our game-changer by describing our four mentioned success factors as we experienced in using Obeya within our SAFe Agile Release Trains (ART/departments) within Aegon Netherlands.

Apply Visual Management: Delivery & Performance is visually connected to Strategy

Before working with Obeya we used the standard SAFe practices like the Planning Board and the Measure & Growth metrics, but as separate practices. Since the use of the visual management instrument Obeya, the actual work is now directly visually linked to our organization’s strategic direction and associated performance metrics. This enabled our teams to quickly respond and take action when metrics deviated from desired goals. Through visual indicators, our teams could monitor work performance in real-time and make adjustments as needed to continue pursuing our strategic objectives. By connecting delivery and performance to strategy the use of Obeya added value for us to SAFe by providing the performance metrics and the actual work in one overview.

Optimize rhythm and routine to improve strategy execution

With using SAFe we also held the SAFe events, like the ART/PO Sync, Scrum of Scrums and the Inspect & Adapt. In our ART/PO Sync in which we discussed progress of feature delivery, scope, priority adjustments, impediments, risks and dependencies. Due to the financial products and the organizational complexity of Aegon Netherlands legacy policies and practices, this led to urgent and burning issues. Discussing these issues in the ART/PO Sync meant there was less/little time for discussing the import things like progress and how this progress contributed to our strategy execution.

Inspired by the Leading With Obeya method we have split the ART/PO Sync into three different Sync meeting with each a different focus and meeting routine:

1. Focus on short term, urgent and burning issues at least twice a week

2. Focus on delivery progress, dependencies & impediments, held bi-weekly

3. Focus on system/train performance, held bi-weekly

Cascading and connecting strategy throughout the Organization

We visualized the whole system in the digital Obeya per ART based on the company and IT strategy. Within every Obeya you could see the same strategic Themes:

1. Customer Satisfaction (Value Delivery)
2. Employee Engagement
3. Security & Compliancy
4. Reliability
5. Time to learn (market)
6. Finance