SAFe Certification SAFe-SASM Updated Exam

WIP (Work in Process):Refers to the number of work items that are in progress at any given time.

Impact of High WIP:Having too many items in progress can lead to context switching, inefficiencies, and delays, ultimately slowing down the overall throughput of the team.

Throughput:The rate at which the team completes work items. Reducing WIP helps the team focus on completing tasks, leading to faster throughput and better flow of work.

SAFe Scrum Master References:

SAFe emphasizes limiting WIP to improve flow efficiency, reduce bottlenecks, and increase throughput.

Decentralized decision-making is a principle in SAFe aimed at distributing decision authority to the people closest to the information and most affected by the decisions. The primary goal of decentralized decision-making is to reduce delay in the decision-making process, which can often occur when decisions need to pass through multiple layers of hierarchy. By empowering individuals and teams to make decisions quickly, organizations can respond faster to changes, improve agility, and maintain a steady flow of work.

Two specific anti-patterns likely present within the team's retrospectives are:

The team identifies improvements but is not allowed to address them (B): This anti-pattern occurs when the team discusses potential improvements but lacks the authority or support to implement them. This leads to frustration and a sense of futility, as the team feels their efforts in retrospectives do not result in meaningful change.

The team does not identify and commit to improvement items for how they do their work (C): Effective retrospectives should result in actionable items that the team commits to addressing in the next iteration. If the team fails to identify and commit to these improvements, the retrospective becomes an empty ritual without real impact on the team's performance or processes.

SAFe Scrum Master References

SAFe Principles: continuous improvement and the importance of retrospectives

SAFe 5.0 framework: best practices for effective retrospectives