SAFe® 4.0 Distilled: Applying the Scaled Agile Framework® for Lean Software and Systems Engineering, First Edition

8. Executing a Program Increment

Vision without execution is hallucination.

—Thomas Edison

Overview

The Iteration Cycle

Building Quality In

Improving Team Flow with Kanban

Managing ART Flow

System Demo

Innovation and Planning

Inspect and Adapt

Summary

Overview

The Big Picture illustrates how the Agile Release Train (ART) teams and stakeholders continuously deliver value in a series of Program Increments (PIs).

As we described in the previous chapter, each PI starts with a planning session and is followed by four (the default number)¹ execution iterations.

1. Although this is the default pattern, there is no fixed rule for how many iterations are in a PI. Experience has shown that PIs with a duration of between eight and twelve weeks work best, ...