Coordinating Large Solution Delivery Competency
Business Problem
We struggle to manage large-scale development efforts that involve multiple teams, Agile Release Trains (ARTs), and suppliers, leading to delays and quality issues.
Business Outcomes
- Reduce bottlenecks and dependencies through effective coordination activities.
- Deliver frequent, integrated Solution Demos and cross-ART planning events.
- Integrate Suppliers and develop long-term partnerships.
- Decrease resolution time for delivery impediments and promote a culture of continuous improvement.
Why is the Coordinating Large Solution Delivery Competency important?
Coordinating the delivery of large solutions is essential in today’s world, where complex products and systems require the skills of many Agile Teams, ARTs, and Suppliers. These large solutions often involve hundreds or even thousands of engineers, and they must often meet strict regulatory and compliance requirements.
The inherent complexity not only encompasses technical challenges but also involves crafting user journeys that span multiple products and business lines. In the case of cyber-physical systems, a diverse range of engineering disciplines is necessary, along with the integration of hardware and long lead-time components. This is why a structured approach becomes crucial for managing these complex initiatives. When this coordination is done well, organizations create significant value for their customers. But without it, it becomes really difficult to ensure smooth and reliable delivery.
This becomes especially important for large solutions that involve “nested value streams”, where multiple components need to be integrated into a single cohesive solution, and for “networked value streams”, where multiple development efforts must be kept in sync to deliver related solutions. Effective coordination in these scenarios is key to achieving successful results, and the Coordinating Large Solution Delivery competency provides crucial insights for companies dealing with these “systems-of-systems.”
Solution Trains, whether we’re building new ones from scratch or combining existing ARTs, are one commonly used approach to coordinating at this scale and aligning multiple ARTs and suppliers effectively.
Which roles would benefit from mastering this competency?
Content authority roles, most often realized by Product and Solution Management, technical authority roles, most often realized by System and Solution Architect, and value delivery roles, most commonly Release Train Engineers (RTEs) and Solution Train Engineers (STEs). Additionally, Business Owners, members of the Value Management Office (VMO), and individuals coaching across large solutions.
Learning about the Coordinating Large Solution Delivery Competency
The resources listed below are ideal for starting your learning journey in the Competency of Coordinating Large Solution Delivery. It is recommended to read the articles in the order presented, focusing first on the “Solution Train” followed by “Operating Large Solutions”, “Coordinate and Delivery”, and “Supplier”. These articles will provide all the necessary guidance on the roles, artifacts, and events needed for the successful coordination and delivery of large solutions.
Solution Train
The Solution Train article describes the additional roles, events, and artifacts needed to build large solutions that require contributions from multiple ARTs and suppliers. These solutions often have an unacceptable social or economic cost for failure, are often subject to industry and regulatory standards, and must provide objective evidence of compliance with those standards
Operating Large Solutions
Although organizing around value is a critical step, successful execution also relies on effectively operating these value streams. While SAFe guidance applies to most organizations, very large solution development often presents additional challenges. This article offers new strategies for operating value streams at this large scale including considerations for operating nested and networked value streams across large solutions.
- Nested value streams – multiple development value streams that must collaborate to deliver a single integrated solution
- Networked value streams – multiple development value streams that must maintain alignment to deliver various related solutions
Coordinate and Deliver
Large solutions require the work of many value streams, Solution Trains, and/or Agile Release Trains (ARTs) that need to coordinate their delivery activities. This article describes the activities, artifacts, and events needed to achieve this.
Supplier
Suppliers play a key role in large solution development. They provide expert knowledge and ready-made components that accelerate delivery. SAFe values long-term partnerships with these suppliers, getting them involved in planning and collaboratively delivering solutions. This guidance promotes Lean-Agile practices for everyone’s benefit.
Given what you have just learnt, review the videos below to hear how some of the world’s largest organizations have applied these techniques successfully to coordinate and deliver large solutions at scale.
Expert Talk: Building the World’s Largest Systems with SAFe
In this talk, listen to SAFe Fellow and Methodologist Dr. Harry Koehnemann share insights on large solution patterns and how to operate large systems. Harry walks you through the reasons this competence is needed, as well as specific explanations and use cases from various industries on how they organize and coordinate large solution delivery.
Applying the Coordinating Large Solution Delivery Competency
Here are some key initial considerations as you begin to apply your knowledge:
Identify Service Boundaries: Break down the large solutions into smaller, independent components and capabilities, each with a well-defined responsibility and interface. Decoupling solutions reduce dependencies and are a key element in simplifying the coordination of the teams and ARTs involved.
Define Events: Key events like integrated Solution Demos and cross-ART planning are essential to ensure alignment when developing a large solution. Different parts of the solution may need these and other events more frequently and require even closer collaboration. Focus on applying events with enough frequency to facilitate the required level of coordination while allowing ARTs and Agile Teams enough time between the events to respond to the feedback and decisions. Events should focus on actionable insights to promote efficient progress and maintain alignment.
Identify necessary roles: Three key roles representing content authority, technical authority, and value delivery guide the progress of large solution development at every level. Each ART instantiates these roles through Product Management, System Architect, and Release Train Engineer (RTE). Similar roles need to be identified to provide leadership across each Solution Train identified, and even for the value streams themselves. These roles will coordinate the connected backlogs, vision, and the in-progress work, guiding the delivery and integration of large solutions.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Foster collaboration between teams and ARTs with diverse skill sets to ensure a holistic and well-rounded solution. Empower teams to make decisions and take ownership of their work within clearly defined intent and architecture.
Continuous Improvement: Foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement through retrospectives, Inspect and Adapt events, experimentation, and data-driven insights. Maintain open and transparent communication with stakeholders and customers throughout the development process.
Dependency Visualization: To anticipate and address bottlenecks, create a visual representation of dependencies between teams, features, and systems. For large solutions that require high-level plans and milestones beyond a PI, this should be a multiple PI view that is adjusted as more information is uncovered.
The following resources will help you develop your skills in applying the Coordinate and Deliver competency and provide resources that you can use inside your organization.
Building Really Big Systems with SAFe Toolkit
The Building Really Big Systems with SAFe Toolkit provides further information on the activities and events that will help with the organization, specifications, management, delivery, and design for large solutions.
Robert Bosch Automotive Steering Large Solution Customer Story
In this video, Simon Porro and Matthias Stroessner share the journey they took within Bosch to create, cadence, and deliver across many Agile Release Trains (ARTs), suppliers, contractors, employees, hardware, and software. It is filled with great tips and examples.
Supersizing SAFe Customer Story
In 2019, the DE program at Boeing included 16 ARTs, 3 Solution Trains, and a ‘Super Solution’ Train, as well as a Portfolio with continued growth with every PI. Teams on the ARTs were developing business and technical process solutions, COTS configurations, integrations with legacy systems, as well as software development.
In this talk, you will learn about a year-over-year journey of their large solution. Debbie will share some of the techniques that were developed in order to accommodate the size of the transformation. This talk was done prior to the latest guidance on Large Solutions, yet it contains great insights on how an organization grows large solution coordination mastery over time.
Mastering the Coordinating Large Solution Delivery Competency
Successful large solution coordination and delivery will unlock the ability to make large and complex scale feel local and connected. Mastery of Coordinating Large Solution Delivery means:
- Running regular coordination events effectively and with energy, leading to quick decisions. Solution demos, Planning, and Backlog Refinement are seen as helpful and interesting for those attending, making developers and stakeholders excited to participate instead of frustrated.
- Seeking feedback from various sources, including customers, stakeholders, and development teams. Organizations that have mastered this use different ways to get feedback, like formal meetings, user research, and data analysis, to fully understand and improve their solutions.
- Keeping options open through set-based design across all the different components and systems shows a deep understanding of the changing nature of large solution delivery. This flexibility is necessary to effectively respond to new requirements and insights.
- Strategic telemetry and value stream mapping are used to deeply understand complex systems development. Agile Teams use real-time data to monitor the system’s health, performance, and use. This helps them find and fix problems early, use resources wisely, and ensure the system’s stability overall.
- Strong cooperative relationships have been built with suppliers who feel connected and part of the whole delivery process. This teamwork allows for anticipating needs, finding potential problems early, and quickly changing solutions as needed.
Take the Coordinating Large Solutions SAFe Portfolios Competency Assessment
Taking this assessment will help you understand your organization’s proficiency in coordinating Large Solution Delivery and help identify areas for improvement.
Transforming Challenges into Success: The Automotive Dynamics Journey
Automotive Dynamics Inc. once struggled with the complex task of integrating countless subsystems across its sprawling international operations. Their new electric vehicle line was plagued with delays, costing millions and severely impacting customer satisfaction. Cross-team and supplier communication bottlenecks were rife, leading to a tangle of dependencies and frustrated stakeholders. Defects discovered post-release were alarmingly high, eroding consumer trust and impacting the bottom line.
To overcome these hurdles, Automotive Dynamics embraced the Coordinating Large Solution Delivery Competency. Sarah, an exasperated Head of Engineering, breathed a sigh of relief as they shifted their development to Solution Trains and interconnected ARTs. Suddenly, the previously siloed software groups and hardware divisions found their responsibilities and interfaces clearly defined, reducing the frustrating web of dependencies they’d battled for months. Key events, such as the newly implemented integrated Solution Demos championed by a proactive Solution Train Engineer and the cross-ART planning sessions, began to inject a rhythm that accelerated decision-making. These weren’t just status updates; they were focused discussions that yielded tangible progress and kept everyone aligned.
Clear content, technical, and value delivery leadership roles were established across all ARTs in the Solution Train and their external suppliers, providing much-needed coordination. Communities of practice for each of these areas were established to provide guidance and headed up by a sharp Product Manager, Lisa, a visionary System Architect, Tom, and a results-oriented Release Train Engineer, Mark.
Critically, a culture of continuous improvement and cross-functional teamwork took root. Junior engineers were feeling empowered to make decisions within well-defined guardrails, fostering a sense of ownership they hadn’t experienced before. Dependency tracking, a practice championed by a meticulous former Project Manager, became a living document, enabling teams to anticipate roadblocks. Feedback wasn’t just requested; it was actively sought. Product Management eagerly gathered insights, while the operations team, guided by a data-savvy analyst, leveraged telemetry to gain real-time visibility into system health. Suppliers, once feeling like distant entities, were now integrated as valued partners through consistent communication and feedback loops.
As a result, Automotive Dynamics witnessed a significant reduction in cross-team and supplier bottlenecks. Stakeholder satisfaction soared, as did the number of integrated Solution Demos. Frustrations with cross-ART dependency decreased, and on-time delivery of their new EV line improved dramatically. Post-release defects dropped sharply, and the time to resolve delivery impediments was drastically reduced. The company’s innovative solutions and rapid delivery earned them industry acclaim and a loyal customer base.
Ultimately, Automotive Dynamics’ journey demonstrated how mastering the Coordinating Large Solution Delivery Competency can transform a complex organization. By focusing on structured coordination, clear roles, frequent events, continuous feedback, and strong supplier relationships, they unlocked the ability to make their scale feel local and connected. The company moved from struggling with delays and defects to becoming a leader in innovation and efficiency in the competitive automotive market.
Continuing Your Journey through the Large Solution Integration and Delivery Discipline
Organizing around Value for Large Solution Development
Large Solutions require ARTs, Solution Trains, and Agile Teams organized in ways that enable decentralized decision-making while maintaining connectivity and focus.
Last Update: 13 February 2026