Product Management plays an integral role in bridging portfolio strategy and execution. Customer needs must be translated into solution concepts that can be delivered by Agile Teams and achieve measurable business outcomes.

Create and communicate a compelling vision– Product Management continuously refines and communicates the product vision to the ART. During each PI Planning session, Product Management presents the vision, highlighting prioritized features and relevant Milestones. When appropriate, Product Management works with Solution Management during Pre-PI Planning to communicate the product vision to Solution Train stakeholders and calibrate it with the solution vision.These icons can also be used to visualize the likely interactions between the teams through their relative positioning. The names of the specific teams can then be added to these icons for a complete picture. Visualizing the teams on the ART in this manner helps to compare and contrast the merits of competing designs and also provides an indication of how well any particular design is aligned to the flow of value. Figure 5. Applying team topologies to Agile teams on an ART Critical ART Roles In the latter case, enterprises apply the elements and practices of Large Solution SAFe and create a Solution Train to help coordinate the contributions of ARTs and Suppliers to build and deliver some of the world’s largest systems. Businesses need to balance their execution focus with a customer focus to help ensure that they are creating the right solutions, for the right customers, at the right time. APD is grounded in customer-centricity, design thinking, and Lean UX putting the customer at the center of every decision. It applies design thinking to ensure the solution is desirable, feasible, viable, and sustainable.

Internal customers are part of the enterprise. They receive solutions from one or more development value streams and leverage them in one or more operational value streams. For example, a team of underwriting managers at a bank may be internal customers of a credit scoring solution created by the IT department (Figure 3). Stabilize and Operate describes the practices needed to make sure the solution is working well from a functional and non-functional perspective

Responsibilities of the Product Owner

Similarly, the overview of the a product owner’s potential responsibilities frames the discussion about what really happens. Understand end-user needs – Ensuring that solutions deliver maximum business benefit requires a deep understanding of the needs of end users. Product Management employs iterative elicitation techniques such as Lean UX, human-centered design (HCD), and journey mapping to evolve product strategy in alignment with these ever-changing needs. Measure describes the practices to quantify if the newly-released functionality provides the intended value Instead, the ART applies cadence and synchronization to assure that the system is iterating as a whole (Figure 8). Figure 8. Aligned development: this system is iterating

ARTs include the teams that define, build, and test features, as well as those that deploy, release, and operate the solution. Individual teams have a choice of Agile practices, based primarily on Scrum, XP, and Kanban. Each Agile team has 5 – 11 dedicated individual contributors, covering all the roles necessary to build a quality increment of value every iteration. Teams may be technology-focused—delivering software, hardware, and any combination—or business-focused. Each Agile team has two specialty roles, the Scrum Master and the Product Owner. And of course, Agile teams within the ART are themselves cross-functional, as shown in Figure 4. Figure 4. Agile teams are cross-functional Successful solutions progress through the four distinct stages of the product life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Product Management guides each solution through these stages, ensuring that maximum business value is achieved over the life of the solution. Automation – Automation is used to reduce or eliminate human intervention from the CDP to decrease errors and reduce the overall cycle time of the release process. System Architect/Engineering is an individual or team that defines the overall architecture of the system. They work at a level of abstraction above the teams and components and define Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs), major system elements, subsystems, and interfaces. Building and maintaining a Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP) allows each ART to define, build, validate, and release new functionality to meet their PI objectives. DevOps and the Continuous Delivery PipelineFocus on the customer – Employ user and market research, including developing personas, to align and focus the organization on specific, targeted user segments. Gothelf, Jeff, and Josh Seiden. Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams. O’Reilly Media, 2021. Each ART builds and maintains (or shares) a Continuous Delivery Pipeline with the assets and technologies needed to deliver solution value as independently as possible. The first three elements of the pipeline work together to support the deployment of small batches of new functionality, which are released to meet market demands.