Scaled Agile SAFe-Agilist SAFe 6 Agilist - Leading SAFe (SA) (6.0) Exam Practice Test

This is how SAFe recommends using a second operating system to deliver value. A second operating system is a way of organizing an enterprise that combines two complementary structures: a traditional hierarchy that provides stability, alignment, and efficiency; and a network of empowered teams that provides speed, agility, and creativity. A second operating system helps enterprises achieve organizational agility, which is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. Organizing development around the flow of value means creating cross-functional Agile teams and ARTs that deliver value in a regular cadence. Maintaining the hierarchies means preserving the existing roles and functions that provide governance, compliance, and support. References: Organizational Agility, Dual Operating System

The business owner is the person who decides the team PI objective business value scoring after negotiation. The business owner is a key stakeholder who has the primary business and technical responsibility for governance, compliance, and return on investment (ROI) for a specific value stream. The business owner participates in the PI planning event and assigns business value points to each team PI objective based on their alignment with the program vision and objectives. The business owner also reviews and approves the final plan and value scores after the team and program risks are resolved. References: PI Planning, Business Owners

The Lean Budget Guardrails defined in SAFe include "Guiding investments by horizon" as one of the main components. This ensures strategic alignment and responsible use of funds.

“Fund Value Streams; Lean budgets and Guardrails… Value Stream budgets adjusted dynamically…”

The SAFe Lean-Agile Principle that includes the critical part of “delaying decisions to the last responsible moment” is “Assume variability; preserve options”. This principle is based on the concept of set-based design, which is a way of managing uncertainty and complexity in product development. Set-based design means exploring multiple possible solutions in parallel, eliminating inferior options over time, and converging on the best solution as more information becomes available. Delaying decisions to the last responsible moment means keeping multiple options open until enough data and feedback are gathered to make an informed decision, which reduces risk and waste. References: SAFe Lean-Agile Principles, SAFe Principle #4

The SAFe Implementation Roadmap provides an ordered sequence of transformation activities. After training leaders, the next step is:

“Identify Value Streams and ARTs – this step is essential to organizing around value, ensuring future trains are aligned with value delivery.”

SAFe emphasizes that effective DevOps implementation is key to enabling continuous value delivery. The workbook highlights that:

“DevOps helps ensure a constant flow of value by automating the Continuous Delivery Pipeline and enabling continuous integration and deployment… A Value Stream with DevOps capabilities implements automation and integration for consistent quality and faster delivery.”

This makes automation a cornerstone in enabling flow within a Value Stream.

The SAFe Workbook outlines the elements of enterprise strategy formulation and emphasizes:

“Enterprise Strategy Formulation includes Vision, Mission, Core Values, Business Drivers, Competitive Environment, Financial Goals, and Distinctive Competence.”

Among these, Portfolio Vision is identified as a direct outcome that aligns the portfolio with strategy.

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Page 5-12

Reducing delays is the focus of Lean thinking. Lean thinking is a philosophy and a set of principles and practices that aim to eliminate waste and optimize value delivery. Waste is anything that does not directly contribute to customer value or that causes delays in delivering value. Delays are the primary cause of waste, as they increase inventory, risk, variability, overhead, and dissatisfaction. Reducing delays means minimizing the time between customer need and value delivery, which improves quality, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. References: Thriving in the Digital Age, SAFe Principle #2

Restoring the speed and innovation of the entrepreneurial network while leveraging the stability of the hierarchical system is a benefit of adopting a dual operating system. A dual operating system is a way of organizing an enterprise that combines two complementary structures: a traditional hierarchy that provides stability, alignment, and efficiency; and a network of empowered teams that provides speed, agility, and creativity. A dual operating system helps enterprises achieve organizational agility, which is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. References: Organizational Agility, Dual Operating System

The "Relentless Improvement" pillar in the House of Lean supports:

“Let facts guide improvements” and encourages a culture of learning and innovation where “hypotheses are tested and changes are embraced without mercy or guilt.”

Uncommitted objectives are counted when calculating load. Load is a measure of how much work a team can realistically accomplish in a PI. Load is calculated by adding up the story points of all the committed and uncommitted objectives of a team. Committed objectives are SMART goals that reflect the value that each team intends to deliver in a PI with high confidence. Uncommitted objectives are stretch goals that reflect additional value that each team may be able to deliver in a PI if they have extra capacity or time. Uncommitted objectives are not included in the commitment or the business value scoring, but they are included in the load to account for their potential impact on team capacity. References: PI Planning, Team PI Objectives

An enabling team is a type of cross-functional Agile team that is organized to assist other teams with specialized capabilities and help them become more proficient in new technologies. Enabling teams provide coaching, mentoring, training, and technical guidance to other teams in areas such as DevOps, test automation, security, compliance, etc. Enabling teams help other teams achieve the core competency of Technical Agility in SAFe. References: Cross-functional Agile Teams, Technical Agility

The SAFe workbook explicitly describes how ART events form a feedback-driven cycle:

“ART events, such as PI Planning, Iteration Planning, Reviews, and Retrospectives form a plan-do-check-adjust (PDCA) learning cycle.”

This continuous improvement cycle enables adaptation and learning throughout the ART’s execution.

From the workbook section on forming cross-functional Agile Teams:

“Agile Teams are cross-functional self-organizing entities that can define, build, test, and—where applicable—deploy increments of value.”

“Optimized for communication and delivery of value” is also mentioned but for this question, the best indicators of a cross-functional team are the capabilities of the team members and their ability to deliver value independently.

SAFe describes Continuous Deployment as:

“An aspect of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline that enables faster delivery of new functionality to customers.”

By automating the pipeline and decoupling deployment from release, enterprises can release value more frequently and responsively.

SAFe describes DevOps as:

“DevOps tries to bridge the gap between new Features and stable solutions… DevOps joins development and operations to enable continuous delivery.”

This integration supports both speed and stability in software delivery.

Autonomy is one of the requirements besides purpose and minimum possible constraints for unlocking the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers. Autonomy is the ability of individuals and teams to self-organize, self-manage, and make decisions about their work without excessive interference or control from others. Autonomy fosters creativity, innovation, ownership, and engagement among knowledge workers. Autonomy is one of the aspects of the Lean-Agile mindset and one of the SAFe core values. References: Lean-Agile Mindset, SAFe Core Values, SAFe Principle #8

From the workbook's role definitions:

"Scrum Master/Team Coach Responsibilities: Supporting Iteration Execution, Improving ART Performance, Facilitating PI Planning, Building High-Performing Teams."

This makes "supporting iteration execution" a primary responsibility.

Source: Workbook, Lesson 3.1, Page 3-7

In the SAFe Workbook under Principle #1 ("Take an economic view"), it states:

“Deliver early and often. Deliver value incrementally… Accelerates feedback and learning, allows early and continuous delivery.”

This principle is illustrated using the difference between waterfall and Agile delivery models.

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Pages 2-26 to 2-28

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Built-in Quality, this practice reduces bottlenecks and ensures consistency by:

Encouraging teams to share responsibility for the quality of their work products

Establishing common standards and guidelines for coding, testing, documentation, etc.

Enabling teams to collaborate and coordinate across domains and dependencies

Promoting a culture of continuous improvement and learning

According to the SAFe Workbook:

“The Continuous Delivery Pipeline represents the workflows, activities, and automation needed to deliver new functionality more frequently… It enables continuous exploration, integration, deployment, and release on demand—fostering ongoing learning.”

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Pages 4-81 to 4-84

A SAFe portfolio is a collection of development value streams. A development value stream is a long-lived series of steps that an enterprise uses to continuously deliver value to a customer or stakeholder. A development value stream typically consists of one or more ARTs and Solution Trains that build and deliver solutions. A SAFe portfolio aligns and governs one or more development value streams that share a common business mission, vision, strategy, and funding. A SAFe portfolio helps enterprises achieve Lean Portfolio Management, which is one of the core competencies of business agility in SAFe. References: SAFe Portfolio, Development Value Streams

According to the SAFe Agilist 6.0 domain of Apply SAFe Principles, when basing decisions on economics, lead time, product cost, value, and development expense are used to:

Evaluate the economic impact of different design alternatives

Optimize the flow of value delivery by minimizing delays and waste

Maximize the return on investment by delivering the most valuable features first

Balance the tradeoffs between speed, quality, and cost

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The items “Sense Opportunity,” “Fund MVP,” “Pivot or Persevere,” and “Deliver Value Continuously” are official step names in SAFe 6.0’s Business Agility Value Stream (BAVS). In SAFe 6.0, the BAVS describes the end-to-end steps an enterprise uses to rapidly explore opportunities, fund and test hypotheses via MVPs, make an evidence-based “pivot or persevere” decision, and then scale and deliver value continuously. (Note: corrected the typo from “Preserve” → Persevere.)

For completeness, SAFe 6.0 defines the BAVS steps as:

Sense Opportunity

Fund MVP

Organize Around Value

Connect to the Customer

Deliver MVP

Pivot or Persevere

Deliver Value Continuously

These terms are presented by SAFe as the canonical step names (proper nouns) and are used consistently across the SAFe 6.0 website and the SA (SAFe Agilist) study materials when describing the Business Agility Value Stream.

References (Authoritative SAFe 6.0 sources):

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe 6.0) — Business Agility Value Stream (BAVS)(Official SAFe article that lists the steps above and explains each step’s purpose.)

SAFe Agilist (SA) Exam Study Guide (v6.0) — Topics on Business Agility and Business Agility Value Stream

Related SAFe 6.0 pages: Lean Portfolio Management, Organize Around Value, Customer Centricity & Design Thinking, Continuous Delivery Pipeline

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The foundation of SAFe is the Lean-Agile mindset, which is based on two primary knowledge areas:

The House of Lean (values of respect for people, flow, innovation, and relentless improvement)

Agile Manifesto values and principles

Together, these form Mindset, Values, and Principles, which underpin all other aspects of SAFe.

(Source: Scaled Agile Framework – Lean-Agile Mindset)

The Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) plays a key role in enabling transformation and follows the SAFe Implementation Roadmap.

“LACE uses the SAFe Implementation Roadmap to guide the transformation… The roadmap outlines a step-by-step strategy from reaching the tipping point to sustaining and accelerating SAFe.”

The reason why business owners assign business value to team PI objectives is to empower teams to make decisions around work. Business value is a relative measure of the importance of a work item or an outcome to the business. Team PI objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals that reflect the value that each team intends to deliver in a PI. Business owners assign business value points to each team PI objective based on their alignment with the program vision and objectives. This helps teams prioritize their work, balance their capacity, negotiate dependencies, and make trade-offs based on value delivery. References: PI Planning, Business Owners

The Agile Manifesto states:

“We have come to value: Customer collaboration over contract negotiation”

This is one of the four core value statements of the Agile Manifesto and is cited verbatim in the SAFe Workbook.

Source: Workbook, Page 2-13

The SAFe Workbook emphasizes that:

“Large batch sizes increase variability… Small batches go through the system faster with lower variability.”

The workbook includes exercises demonstrating that smaller batch sizes reduce cycle time and increase predictability, while large batches slow flow and introduce delays.

Source: 01 Workbook SA (6.0).pdf, Pages 2-54 to 2-56