Sense and Respond
When amplification happens well, signals are generated and transmitted so that they are received and understood clearly by the receiver and the appropriate corrective actions can be taken. This requires generating and transmitting signals that are frequent enough, fast enough, precise enough, accurate enough, and loud enough to get us to decide to act differently based on what is being observed and understood.
— Gene Kim, Steven J Spear [1]
Summary
Sense and Respond is a two-hour cadenced event designed for AI-Native Agile Release Trains (ARTs) to translate execution evidence into action. It allows teams to pause and align on collective learning, ensuring technical coherence and strategic focus despite high operational speeds. These events occur at the boundary of every iteration, though leadership may trigger additional sessions when significant data requires an immediate system-level response. Attendees include the Release Train Engineer who facilitates, the AI-Native Teams, Product Management, System Architects, Business Owners, and AI Value Architects. The agenda is divided into two halves. The first hour focuses on sensing through reviews of metrics, customer feedback, and product demonstrations. The second hour involves responding by identifying response areas, exploring options, and agreeing on decisions regarding system pivots or capacity adjustments. This regular cadence ensures the organization learns and evolves based on objective data.
What is the Sense and Respond event?
SAFe has always used nested cadences – iterations, typically a week or two weeks long, and planning intervals (PIs) every 8 to 12 weeks. While the nature and purpose of the cadences remain fairly consistent, the increased variability and speed introduced by AI have driven significant changes to the events associated with them.
In AI-Native SAFe:
- The half-day Inspect and Adapt event that drove ART-level learning cycles on a PI cadence has been replaced by a two-hour Sense and Respond event every iteration, driving accelerated learning. This Sense and Respond event also includes the activities formally present in the System Demo.
NOTE: Some ARTs may choose to run the problem-solving portion of the Core SAFe Inspect and Adapt event periodically if it supports their ongoing approach to problem-solving.
- The two-day PI Planning event that provided the time and space for the entire ART to create a set of plans for the upcoming PI has been replaced by a one-day PI Outcome Planning event that focuses on in-flight re-alignment.
Read more about PI Outcome Planning:
These events are shown in Figure 1 below:
The Sense and Respond event is an AI-Native ART event designed to translate evidence and data into actionable decisions. Sense and Respond events occur on a cadence, at least once every iteration. These events allow the ART to pause, evaluate the rapid flow of local experiments, and ensure that collective learning is applied across the entire system.
While AI-Native Teams take a flow-based approach, operating at high speed with high levels of autonomy, the ART Sense and Respond event provides the necessary cadence to maintain technical coherence and strategic alignment across all teams.
What is the purpose of the Sense and Respond event?
Last Update: 28 July 2026