ITIL^® Certification & SAFe^® Certification: unbeatable together

Why is the double pack of ITIL^® Certification and SAFe^® Certification? At first glance, ITIL and SAFe do not seem to have much in common - after all, both initially deal with completely different areas. But with a little skill, SAFe and ITIL can be profitably combined!

Development in the SAFe Framework

The SAFe Framework (Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprises) describes how agile product development or enhancement can work when multiple teams are working on a cohesive product. In the SAFe framework, an Agile Release Train (ART) is created in which up to 125 people work together to develop, test, quality assure, and prepare various features on the same product for a release decision. SAFe borrows heavily from Scrum and lean management. It also leverages ideas from DevOps as it relates to Continuous Integration and Delivery. Those who have achieved SAFe certification are therefore familiar with a wide variety of agile techniques on a large scale.

ITIL Service Management

ITIL is a framework for service management that describes the everyday life of most people working in IT service operations. Areas such as a service desk, incident and problem management, service request management and change enablement are mostly structured according to ITIL best practice guidance. ITIL-oriented work is also prominent in the infrastructure sector. So, people with ITIL certification know about service management and mainly look at ITIL processes as well as holistic value streams.

Integrate ITIL with SAFe certification

Those with SAFe certification can be involved in development in a variety of ways. However, SAFe has a problem if you want to combine it with ITIL Service Management: SAFe ends with the finished, releasable product or increment and hands over the decision of whether to roll out and activate to the business. The scope of SAFe is thus exhausted - please change all passengers.

Introducing SAFe in development adds tremendous value in terms of alignment, focus, purposeful work, and customer satisfaction. But in many companies, operations and infrastructure management are left out. SAFe and the underlying SAFe certifications do not describe in detail how operations and infrastructure can be integrated.

There are several approaches to this problem:

• We integrate the operational teams into the agile teams.
  This only works if everyone involved - whether with SAFe certification or a focus on ITIL - is clear that this is effectively creating DevOps. This places additional demands on the company's tool landscape, resources and culture. Another hurdle on this path arises from the current shortage of skilled workers.
• We all just do SAFe.
  SAFe is all about coordinated planning. But operational work can only be planned in three-month intervals to a limited extent. Incidents and user requests have to be dealt with when they occur. It is therefore clear that SAFe certification is no more a panacea than Scrum, ITIL or chicken broth.
• We integrate the infrastructure areas and operations - which are often managed by the same people - into our ART in an appropriate way. Only how?

Bringing the SAFe Framework and ITIL together

For a targeted integration of operations and infrastructure areas into the SAFe framework, three points form a minimum criterion.

First, representatives from both areas must be present in PI Planning. This allows their tasks and the time required for them to be considered in the planning. Let's assume, for example, that a release is planned for January 1. For this, the infrastructure area must set up hardware and record it with the finished software. Two weeks are estimated for installation, recording and testing. This means that the software must already be ready in the previous increment. Dependencies like these must be made transparent when integrating ITIL into the SAFe framework.

Second, shared responsibility for bug fixes is needed. Development teams in the SAFe framework should not only have some capacity for problem management and bug fixing, there should also be a non-bureaucratic process for resolving them. This includes an awareness of shared responsibility for the product working at the customer site. So, like those responsible for service management under ITIL, SAFe-certified staff need an understanding that they share responsibility for the customer's satisfaction with the operation.

Thirdly, the people responsible for operations should be able to provide their requirements and feedback to Product Management as relevant stakeholders, and via them to the Product Owners. This allows their feedback to be scheduled in the Program Backlog and/or Team Backlogs with an appropriate priority. So, in order to walk the common path, operations owners also need to get involved in the SAFe framework.

Want to learn more about SAFE? Then listen in to episode 2 of the SERVIEW Podcast. In our bonus episode, my colleagues Moritz Wagner and Artur Stock explain why ITIL and SAFe are actually siblings in spirit!

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