SAFe Dual Operating System

In SAFe, the concept of a dual operating system was introduced. This operating model aims to help organizations compete and develop in the digital age. The good thing about this model is that it has proven its efficiency in many instances. Now, it has become a method with a meaning for separating the concerns of developing and launching innovative new solutions. It even, aids with efficiently running and improving a business that benefits from those solutions. Here, the former is the responsibility of the network, while the latter is the hierarchy's responsibility.

Responsibilities of Dual Operating System:

You can better understand the responsibilities of the SAFe dual operating system from the picture below:

Business Agility:

Business Agility is nothing but the ability of a business to compete and improve in the present digital age. A business can achieve agility when it quickly responds to the changes in the market. Also, opportunities should emerge with digitally enabled business solutions and innovations. Every person involved in the solution delivery should use Lean and Agile Practices for a business to achieve agility. Only then can they continue delivering high-quality and innovative products and services. Further, they can do it at a faster pace than their competitors. The participants include security, compliance, support, finance, marketing, legal, IT operations, development teams and business and technology leaders. Businesses face hardships with achieving agility. This happens due to different reasons. But, as a solution, John P. Kotter in his book XLR8, introduced the dual operating system as one of the key concepts. As mentioned earlier, This concept or model helps businesses easily achieve agility.

Why do Businesses Strive to Achieve Business Agility?

In organizations that follow traditional approaches, the leaders are aware of the threat of digital disruption. Nevertheless, many leaders fail to make the transition. When talking about the reason for the unwillingness to make this transition, John Kotter explains one thing. Successful organizations do not start cumbersome and large. Nevertheless, they instigate an adaptive and fast-moving group of motivated people. They pay attention to responding to the customer. They are also highly focused on new business opportunities coming their way moving forward.

In general, reporting relationships and roles are fluid. People in organizations are associated with each other organically. They do this to explore potential business opportunities and to collaborate with customers. They do these things to deliver value in any way they can. With customer-centricity as the key component, they go for a flexible entrepreneurial group of people. They do this for grabbing opportunities, as you can understand from the picture below:

When a business starts to succeed, it naturally expects expansion on its success to grow. In other words, the responsibilities of individuals should turn clearer. Only then will it be possible to ensure crucial details are carried out without overlooking them. In this process, businesses hire specialists for their expertise and they engage in department creation. Even, they establish procedures and policies for ensuring compliance and legality. Also, they pay attention to driving cost-effective and repeatable operations. Businesses begin to organize things based on function and this leads to the formation of silos. At the same time, with parallel operations, the group continues to look for new opportunities. They do this intending to deliver customer value.

The hierarchy faces ongoing development to improve the economies of scale. Nevertheless, considering the responsibilities and practices of large businesses, they start to experience conflicts with the entrepreneurial network. With the authority of present profitability and revenue behind it, the hierarchical organization faces hindrances with a more adaptive and faster-moving network. The outcome will be that the network crashes in the process. One of the casualties of this network crash is the attention on customers.

Still, as long as the market remains relatively stable, the economies of scale provide a hindrance against competitors. The business can continue to enjoy growth and success. Nevertheless, when a disruptive technology comes up or when customers need a dramatic shift, the business will lack the speediness to respond. In turn, the years of profitability and market dominance gained so far can vanish overnight. As a result, the business's very survival comes to a point of stake.

Even, when this happens, the organizational structure that has been built over the past few years will do a great job of offering time-tested policies, practices and structures. They underwrite the growth, retention and recruitment of thousands of employees across the world. In other words, their service is still needed. However, the question here is how to organize and reintroduce the entrepreneurial network again? As a solution to this problem, Kotter suggests not trashing what the business already knows and starting everything from the first again. Rather, he suggests the introduction of a second system. He calls this solution a dual operating system. As mentioned earlier, this second system aims at restoring the speed and innovative ideas of the entrepreneurial network. But, it does not leave the hierarchical system as such but it benefits from the advantages and stability of the traditional system. Now comes the question of how to create a dual-operating system. Here is the answer:​​​​​

How To Create A Dual Operating System?

SAFe offers a solution for businesses to pay attention to customers and growth, innovation and products. This is possible by arranging the second operating system close to value streams as against departments as given in the image below:

The second operating system is built on time-tested SAFe and lean practices and it is flexible. It can help organize and swiftly reorganize without entirely disrupting the present hierarchy. This is what business agility expects. To achieve the same, organizations need a considerable degree of expertise across 7 digital-age core competencies. You can get the same easily with the image below:

Each of these competencies can indeed deliver value on its own. In addition, they are also interdependent. True business agility is possible only when an organization achieves a meaningful state of mastery in all seven competencies.

Each of these competencies offers behaviors, skills, and knowledge that allow enterprises to achieve business agility.

Seven Competencies of Business Agility:

1. Lean-Agile Leadership:

This competency describes the method followed by Lean-Agile leaders to drive and retain organizational change by making individuals and groups competent enough to reach their highest potential. They achieve the same by forerunning by example, adopting a lean-agile mentality and forerunning the change to new working ways. The outcome will be more engaged employees, increased innovation and productivity and successful organizational change.

2. The Continuous Learning Culture:

This competency explains a set of practices and values that motivate individuals and organizations to continually improve innovation, performance, competence, and knowledge. Businesses that commit to continuous improvement and promote a culture of innovation become learning organizations.

3. Team and Technical Agility:

The competency explains the crucial lean-agile principles, skills, and practices. These are used by high-performing Agile teams and groups of Agile teams to create high-quality solutions for their customers. The outcome is predictable value delivery, faster time to market, better quality, and increased productivity.

4. The Agile Product Delivery Competency:

This is a customer-centric approach for explaining, releasing and building an ongoing flow of valuable services and products to users and customers. This competency helps organizations to provide solutions that outperform the competition, reduce risk, lowers developmental costs and delighting customers.

5. Enterprise Solution Delivery:

This competency explains how to apply Lean-Agile practices and principles to the operation, deployment, development and specification of the most sophisticated and the largest software applications, cyber-physical systems and networks.

6. Lean Portfolio Management:

This competency aims to align strategy and its execution by applying Lean and System thinking approaches for investment funding and strategy, Agile portfolio governance and operations. These associations allow the business to align its strategy for execution, meet present commitments dependably, and give way to innovation.

7. Organizational Agility Competence:

It explains how lean-thinking Agile teams and people improve their business processes. It also explains strategy with decisive and clear commitments and quickly adapting the organization as required to capitalize on new opportunities.​​​​​​​

Measuring the Business Agility Value Stream:

These competencies work with each other for aiding with business agility. Nevertheless, to achieve it, the right things should be evaluated at the right time. The Scaled Agile dual operating system addresses this via three measurement domains. They can be applied to any value stream. They are competency, outcomes and flow as you can understand from the picture below:

Here, the Flow metrics aid in identifying how quickly the value stream creates and delivers value. It is denoted by flow predictability, flow efficiency, flow load, flow time, flow velocity, and flow distribution.

The outcome metrics help ensure that what has been delivered brings value to customers and the business. Value stream KPIs are used to measure these results.

​​​​​​​Evaluating organizational competency is done using a couple of individual assessment mechanisms. Each of these mechanisms is designed for considerably different purposes and audiences. For instance, the SAFe Core Competency Assessment mechanism helps Agile release trains and teams improve their business and technical practices. They aid the portfolio in achieving larger goals. The SAFe Business Agility assessment mechanism is designed for the portfolio and business stakeholders to evaluate their overall progress on the ultimate objective of true business agility. 

Conclusion :

In conclusion, the SAFe dual operating system offers organizations a strategic framework to navigate the complexities of the digital age. By separating the responsibilities of innovation and operational efficiency, businesses can achieve greater agility and responsiveness to market changes. This model acknowledges the importance of maintaining stability and leveraging traditional hierarchical structures while fostering an environment conducive to innovation and adaptation. Organizations can measure their progress and ensure alignment with strategic objectives by focusing on the seven core competencies of business agility. Embracing the principles of the SAFe dual operating system can position businesses for sustained growth and success in today's dynamic marketplace

Simpliaxis offers comprehensive training and consulting services to help your organization implement SAFe principles and optimize its organizational agility. Simpliaxis provides expertise to thrive in today's dynamic business landscape