3 key opportunities for finance teams in SAFe 6.0

In today’s dynamic business landscape, the widespread adoption of agile methodologies and scaling of agile practices across teams and departments have opened new possibilities. The latest version of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe 6.0) creates an exciting opportunity for finance teams to actively contribute to the success of their organizations. SAFe 6.0 offers three key avenues through which finance teams can leverage: Lean Portfolio Management, financial planning and budgeting, and value stream optimization.

Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) in SAFe 6.0 provides an alignment and governance model for a portfolio. It enables organizations to align strategy and execution, prioritize and fund initiatives, and effectively track progress at the portfolio level. LPM gives finance teams the ability to contribute to portfolio decision-making, drive financial success, and align business strategy with execution. LPM enables structured financial planning, optimized resource allocation, investment prioritization and financial performance tracking. By aligning investment decisions with strategic goals and understanding value streams, finance teams allocate funds strategically to maximize value and achieve desired outcomes.

LPM in SAFe 6.0 supports the concept of continuous financial planning, allowing finance teams to adapt and adjust financial plans as needed. By incorporating iterative planning and feedback loops, finance teams can respond to market dynamics and changing business needs, helping ensure that financial resources are allocated effectively. Through LPM best practices, finance teams can improve financial control, align investments with strategic objectives and drive the financial success of the organization.

SAFe 6.0 promotes a lean and agile approach to planning and budgeting. By adopting iterative budgeting and forecasting practices, finance teams gain the ability to respond swiftly to evolving business needs and adjust budgets based on shifting business priorities. The lean approach to planning and budgeting enables finance teams to achieve effective financial control over their investments while minimizing overhead and frictions—all while supporting a higher throughput of development work. Also, this approach provides improved financial visibility, setting up for better resource allocation and more efficient financial decision-making.

Value streams, which represent the end-to-end flow of value to customers, are emphasized in SAFe 6.0. For every value-stream defined, finance teams can collaborate with agile teams to identify financial waste, bottlenecks and improvement opportunities. By analyzing financial data within the context of value streams, finance teams become valuable contributors, offering insights and recommendations to optimize costs, improve resource utilization, and maximize the value delivered to customers.

SAFe Summit Nashville brought the spotlight back onto flow and value streams this year. In addition to spreading the importance of applying the eight flow accelerators introduced in SAFe 6.0 to eliminate impediments and simplify value streams throughout, the Summit also emphasizes another critical aspect. It focuses on the criticality of measuring and optimizing value stream flow with Flow Metrics, a key to true business agility.

SAFe 6.0 also differentiates between development, operational and business agility value streams (BAVS), which opens additional need and opportunities for finance teams to contribute. This partnership between finance and agile teams fosters a culture of continuous improvement and financial efficiency at the core of how value is delivered.

With the right tool, finance teams can adapt quickly and thrive with SAFe 6.0 by leveraging the framework’s most effective lean-agile practices of lean budgeting, financial visibility and value stream mapping.

IBM® Targetprocess empowers finance teams with comprehensive visibility into portfolio finances and initiatives, driving significant benefits. Through the LPM solution, finance teams effortlessly align financial planning and resource allocation with strategic priorities, helping ensure decisions support portfolio goals. Robust reporting and analytics capabilities enable tracking of key financial metrics such as ROI, budget variance and cost savings, providing actionable insights for data-driven decisions and continuous improvement. Targetprocess' lean budgeting solution facilitates effective budget planning and management in line with SAFe 6.0 principles. The solution bridges the gap between portfolio managers and finance teams, enabling optimized spending, value stream funding, guardrails and horizon planning.

Advanced reporting and analytics help finance teams gain insights into budget utilization, spending trends and ROI, driving financial efficiency. Targetprocess provides features and tools that allow finance teams to map out and visualize value streams. Finance teams can create value stream diagrams, identify various value-adding activities, and visualize the flow of financial processes and information. This mapping helps finance teams gain a clear understanding of the end-to-end financial processes and identify potential areas for improvement.

SAFe 6.0 offers great opportunities for finance teams, enabling them to collaborate more closely across the organization and contribute to the success of the business. By enabling Lean Portfolio Management, finance teams align business strategy with execution, helping ensure that financial resources are allocated to initiatives that drive strategic outcomes. By embracing iterative planning and budgeting, finance teams enhance their agility and responsiveness to evolving business needs, and through value stream optimization, finance teams drive financial efficiency and maximize value delivery. Moreover, SAFe 6.0 empowers finance teams to become true partners in the agile journey, fostering collaboration, transparency and the pursuit of business agility.

Unlock the full potential of Targetprocess' SAFe 6.0 capabilities by starting a free trial today.