Lean-Agile Mindset
Agility is principally about mindset, not practices.
―Jim Highsmith, Agile Project Management [1]
Definition: The Lean-Agile Mindset is the combination of beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and actions of SAFe leaders and practitioners who embrace the concepts of Lean Thinking and the Agile Manifesto.
Summary
To grasp how a Lean-Agile mindset boosts productivity, organizations must first understand what a mindset is and how it functions. Our mindsets, shaped by our life experiences, education, and work culture, act like lenses through which we perceive the world, enabling our brains to process the vast amount of daily information. These subconscious beliefs and attitudes can either contribute to our success or hinder us, often without our explicit awareness of their influence on our actions and interactions.
What is a Lean-Agile Mindset?
To cultivate a “growth mindset,” individuals must first understand what a mindset is and how it develops. Then, it’s crucial to believe that personal thinking can be improved. If a company aims to become more Agile, its employees must grasp the core ideas of Lean Thinking and the Agile Manifesto rather than just following rules. When these concepts are fully understood and embraced by everyone, they foster a better work environment and make the organization open to change. Figure 1 illustrates a growth mindset.
Changing mindsets is an essential part of implementing SAFe. Too often, leaders and teams adopt SAFe methods and utilize SAFe terminology without fully embracing the core principles and guidelines that represent a new approach to working. Using ‘SAFe in name only’ might yield some small wins initially. However, in the long run, not fully adopting the Lean-Agile mindset will not deliver the lasting business results leaders want from SAFe.
To use SAFe effectively, we need a growth mindset and be open to learning the essential ideas of Lean Thinking and Agile. Both have a long history with extensive background and real-world examples. For the principles of both Lean and Agile to become part of how the company talks, works, and makes decisions, their main ideas need to be understood and used. Ideally, they become ‘how we do things around here’ and are a deep part of the company’s culture.
The following sections discuss the main ideas of Lean Thinking and Agile that create the Lean-Agile mindset, shown in Figure 2.
What is Lean Thinking?
Adopting Lean product development can double labor productivity through the entire system, cut time-to-market for new products in half, and enable a wider variety of products within product families to be offered at very modest additional cost.
—James Womack & Daniel Jones, Lean Thinking [2]
First used in making factory production, the concepts behind Lean thinking are now widely applied to create software, products, and systems. For example, Ward [4], Reinertsen [5], Poppendieck [6], Kersten [7], Leffingwell [8], and others discuss different parts of Lean thinking and have brought many of those ideas into product development. Transitioning toward a smooth flow where the customer’s needs pull the work can lead to significant improvements. Lean thinking can be summarized as shown in Figure 3:
Figure 3 shows that Lean Thinking aims to deliver the most value (which SAFe calls “a solution”) to the customer as quickly as possible after the need is first known. How the value is created also matters. High quality, respect for people and society, worker morale, safety, and customer delight are also central to Lean Thinking. To reach these goals, organizations must apply the five basics of Lean, as shown in Figure 3 and explained in the following sections.
What are the core principles of Lean Thinking?
Precisely specify value by product
An organization’s success hinges on the value it delivers, a definition solely determined by the customer. This value is realized only when a product, service, or combination thereof precisely fulfills customer needs at an acceptable price and within a given timeframe. Therefore, the foundational principle of Lean Thinking emphasizes the critical importance of deeply understanding customer requirements and subsequently quantifying the value of the solutions provided. It is the delivered solution itself that embodies value, not the initiating project or the intermediary steps taken to create it.
Identify the Value Stream for each product
Once you know what ‘value’ is for each product and type of customer, the next idea in Lean Thinking is to show how the company creates that value from when a need is found to when the solution is given. This flow of work is called the “value stream,” and it includes all the people, steps, tools, and information needed to provide value. Any delays in this system mean that the customer receives value later.
Make value flow without interruptions
The third principle of Lean Thinking emphasizes creating a steady flow of value in small batches, with continuous feedback to drive improvements. By adopting Built-In Quality practices and making data-driven decisions, teams can dramatically enhance quality and consistently deliver value with unparalleled efficiency.
To maintain this smooth, uninterrupted flow, Agile Teams must rigorously focus on eight critical ideas:
- Relentlessly track and strictly limit the amount of work in progress
- Resolve problems the instant they arise
- Decisively minimize dependencies and eliminate unnecessary communication
- Demand and obtain rapid, actionable feedback
- Work in small, manageable increments
- Proactively manage and decisively address tasks that cause delays
- Maintain unwavering focus on defining and delivering value
- Align with others to update or discard outdated rules and processes
Further details on these crucial concepts can be found in the SAFe Principle 6 article and the comprehensive articles on Team Flow, ART Flow, Solution Train Flow, and Portfolio Flow. These principles are absolutely essential for enabling large organizations to achieve a truly continuous and optimized flow of value at scale.
Let the Customer pull value from the producer
Lean thinking encourages companies to create value streams that allow customers to request solutions based on their needs rather than pushing what they think customers want. This is key to figuring out how much the value stream can handle. An excessive ability to produce compared to what the market wants leads to waste. A lack of ability to produce creates delays, defeating the purpose of providing the customer with a consistent flow of value.
Pursue Perfection
The last idea of Lean Thinking is to ‘pursue perfection.’ It means that no matter how well you follow the first four ideas, creating a fast and effective flow of value is not something you do just once. Events in the market, customer needs, and the technology available are only a few things that can affect value streams and require improvements or total change.
For a deeper understanding of how SAFe enables making value flow without interruption, review the following guidance articles
What are the original values of Agile?
Agile is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries. An attitude has no boundaries, so we wouldn’t ask ‘can I use Agile here,’ but rather ‘how would I act in the Agile way here,’ or ‘how Agile can we be, here?’
—Alistair Cockburn, Agile Software Development [9]
In the 1990s, new and simpler approaches for developing software replaced the problematic “waterfall” methods. In 2001, the creators of these methods wrote the Agile Manifesto to explain their core ideas. This transformational event clarified the new Agile approach and helped bring its benefits to many industries. Since then, Agile has been used outside of software. Hardware, infrastructure, and support teams embraced it. Now, even non-tech business teams use Agile principles.
When discussing values and principles from the Agile Manifesto, remember that ‘software’ can refer to any working result from an Agile Team, regardless of the field they’re in.
Deming said, “If you can’t explain what you do as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” [12] Deming emphasized that a well-defined process is crucial for understanding and improving work, promoting continuous improvement through systematic analysis rather than relying on intuition or uncontrolled efforts. His work highlighted that without a clear process, identifying bottlenecks, reducing waste, and consistently achieving desired outcomes becomes impossible.
This clarifies why processes like Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe are vital to Agile. However, processes are just a way to reach a goal. If a process isn’t working, it wastes time and delays progress. So, it’s better to focus on people and how they work together, and then change the processes if needed. Tools are helpful but should support, not replace, talking face-to-face.
Value working ‘software’ over comprehensive documentation
Although documents are useful, creating them to satisfy outdated rules can delay progress. When a company is trying to change, the guidelines for making documents need to change to align with a Lean-Agile way of working. Instead of filing detailed documents too soon, it’s better to show customers working products and systems to get their feedback. It’s more useful to check progress by looking at the work and creating only the necessary documents.
Prefer customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Because customers determine value, collaboration is vital to business agility. Contracts may explain rights and responsibilities, but they can also limit flexibility. They don’t replace communication, teamwork, and trust. Contracts should benefit all parties. Unfair contracts lead to poor outcomes and distrust and may harm relationships. Prioritize customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
Adapt to change over following a plan
In the digital age, change is a reality and part of achieving agility. The strength of Lean-Agile processes is how they embrace change. As things develop, teams also learn more about issues and how to solve them. Business stakeholder knowledge also improves over time, along with evolving customer needs. Those changes add value to the system. Of course, planning is an essential part of Agile. Agile teams and teams-of-teams plan continuously and more often than their waterfall counterparts. However, plans must adapt as new learning occurs, new information becomes visible, and situations change. Worse, evaluating success by measuring compliance drives the wrong behaviors. Sticking to a plan, even when it’s not working, can lead to bad decisions.
What are the principles of Agile?
As shown in Figure 5, Agile has 12 self-explanatory principles that support its values. These principles take Agile values a step further and specifically describe what it means to be Agile.
The combination of these values and principles is the essence of Agile. The overwhelming evidence from success stories in all industries and across every geography demonstrates the extraordinary business and personal benefits of this new way of thinking and working.
How are Lean Thinking and Agile applied in SAFe?
Collectively, the values and principles of Lean Thinking and Agile form the basis of everything in SAFe. All the roles, practices, events, and artifacts are designed to provide practical guidance for adopting these two bodies of knowledge as the new way of working throughout the enterprise. Thousands of SAFe implementations over the last decade show that Lean Thinking and Agile principles and practices have unique implications when applied at scale. For example, providing an uninterrupted flow of value within the context of a single Agile Team will look different than when this same principle is applied to an entire portfolio. Yet the principle is equally important in both cases. The implications of Lean and Agile at scale have been captured in the SAFe Core Values and SAFe Principles articles.
Together, the principles of Lean Thinking and Agile form the bedrock of SAFe. They inform every role, event, and artifact, providing practical guidance for organizations embracing this new way of working. Successful SAFe implementations over the past years unequivocally demonstrate that Lean and Agile principles, while adaptable to different contexts, consistently deliver value at scale. The fundamental concept of continuous flow, for example, holds true whether applied within a small Agile Team or across an entire portfolio.
For a deeper understanding of how Lean and Agile principles are powerfully applied in larger enterprises, refer to the SAFe Core Values and SAFe Principles articles.
References
[1] Highsmith, Jim. Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2009.
[2] Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. Free Press, 2003.
[3] Manifesto for Agile Software Development. http://AgileManifesto.org/
World: The Story of Lean Production—Toyota’s Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Revolutionizing World Industry. Free Press, 2007.
[4] Ward, Allen C., and Durward K. Sobeck II. Lean Product and Process Development. Lean Enterprise Institute, 2014.
[5] Reinertsen, Donald G. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development. Celeritas Publishing, 2009.
[6] Poppendieck, Mary, and Tom Poppendieck. Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2006.
[7] Kersten, Mik. Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework. IT Revolution Press, 2018.
[8] Leffingwell, Dean. Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2010.
[9] Cockburn, Alistair. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2006.
[12] Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis. The MIT Press, 2018.
Last update: 14 October 2025