🔷 SAFe 6.0 – Seven Core Competencies of Business Agility

Each core competency represents a critical organizational capability needed for achieving business agility and sustainable success in a Lean enterprise.

🧭 1. Lean-Agile Leadership

Purpose: Enable transformation by helping leaders at all levels embrace Lean Thinking, Agile principles, and a growth mindset.

Key Elements:

• Lean Thinking Principles: Leaders model behaviors aligned with flow efficiency, customer focus, and systems thinking.

• Leading with Empathy and Clarity: Creating psychological safety, transparency, and shared vision.

• Developing Others: Coaching, mentoring, and empowering teams to make decentralized decisions.

SAFe 6.0 Focus:

• Leaders are expected to practice and promote Lean Thinking across all levels, driving long-term cultural change.

• Emphasis on enabling value flow and breaking down silos.

👥 2. Team and Technical Agility

Purpose: Ensure that Agile teams have the structure, practices, and technical discipline to deliver value with high quality.

Key Elements:

• Agile Teams: Cross-functional, self-managing teams using Scrum, Kanban, or XP.

• Built-in Quality: Ensures every solution element meets quality standards via automated testing, CI/CD, code quality checks, etc.

• Technical Agility: Adoption of Agile architecture, test-first practices, and secure coding principles.

SAFe 6.0 Focus:

• Stronger emphasis on modern engineering practices, DevSecOps, and security compliance.

• Aligning team skills with product-centric delivery and innovation.

📦 3. Agile Product Delivery

Purpose: Deliver solutions that are valuable, viable, feasible, and sustainable in a customer-centric and flow-based manner.

Key Elements:

• Customer Centricity and Design Thinking: Deep customer empathy to guide product strategy.

• Continuous Delivery Pipeline: Enables frequent releases with Continuous Exploration, Integration, and Deployment.

• DevOps and Release on Demand: Ensures fast, reliable, and secure value delivery.

SAFe 6.0 Focus:

• Stronger integration of flow metrics to optimize time-to-market.

• Greater use of design thinking to validate desirability and usability.

🏗️ 4. Enterprise Solution Delivery

Purpose: Apply Lean-Agile principles to build, evolve, and operate large, complex solutions—often cyber-physical systems.

Key Elements:

• Solution Trains: Coordinated Agile Release Trains and suppliers deliver integrated capabilities.

• Solution Intent & Compliance: Documented understanding of what needs to be built and how compliance is maintained.

• Continual Validation: Systems integration and real-time solution demos to ensure alignment with needs.

SAFe 6.0 Focus:

• Incorporates flow-based approaches to large solution delivery.

• Focus on MBSE (Model-Based Systems Engineering), capability-based planning, and compliance integration.

🧾 5. Lean Portfolio Management (LPM)

Purpose: Align portfolio execution with enterprise strategy using Lean budgeting, Kanban, and objective decision-making.

Key Elements:

• Strategic Alignment: Clear connection between portfolio epics and business outcomes.

• Lean Budgets & Guardrails: Funds allocated to value streams, not projects, with regular financial governance.

• Flow-Based Portfolio Operations: Manage flow of initiatives from ideation to implementation using Portfolio Kanban.

SAFe 6.0 Focus:

• Enhanced guidance for Value Stream Identification and Operational Value Streams.

• Introduces OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) as a key tool for portfolio strategy execution.

🏃 6. Organizational Agility

Purpose: Make the entire organization — not just development — more adaptive, responsive, and aligned around customer value.

Key Elements:

• Lean-Thinking People & Agile Teams: Apply Lean principles enterprise-wide.

• Agile Business Functions: Marketing, HR, Finance, and others adopt Agile ways of working.

• Strategy Agility: Ability to pivot quickly using continuous market sensing and feedback.

SAFe 6.0 Focus:

• Supports a business-wide Lean operating model.

• Emphasizes collaboration between business and technology teams as value streams.

🔄 7. Continuous Learning Culture

Purpose: Promote learning at all levels to drive innovation, resilience, and sustained competitiveness.

Key Elements:

• Learning Organization: Encourage individual growth, team learning, and enterprise knowledge sharing.

• Innovation Culture: Dedicated time (e.g., Innovation & Planning Iteration) for exploration, experimentation, and hackathons.

• Relentless Improvement: Root cause analysis, metrics-driven improvements, and feedback loops.

SAFe 6.0 Focus:

• Supports continuous learning loops within the flow framework.

• Promotes employee engagement and growth as part of organizational effectiveness.