SAFe 5.0 Distilled: Achieving Business Agility with the Scaled Agile Framework

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The Guiding Coalition

“A strong guiding coalition is always needed. One with the right composition, level of trust, and shared objective.”

—John Kotter

Introduction

Organizations arrive at the need for change from a wide range of starting points. Once the rationale and urgency for a significant change has been established, the difficult work begins, and the first critical move is to form what Kotter calls a ‘sufficient powerful guiding collation.’ This is accomplished by following the first four steps of the SAFe implementation roadmap.

1. Reach the tipping point.

2. Train Lean-Agile change agents.

3. Train executives, managers, and leaders.

4. Create a Lean-Agile center of excellence.

This chapter describes these first four steps of the journey. ...