Organizing Around Value for Large Solutions Competency

Which roles would benefit from mastering the Organizing Around Value for Large Solutions Competency?

Solution Management, Solution Train Engineers, Solution Architects, VMO and LACE leaders, Agile transformation leaders, and department leaders within an organization developing large, complex, integrated solutions.

---

Learning about the Organizing Around Value for Large Solutions Competency

The concept of a value stream is central to SAFe. SAFe identifies two types of value streams, operational and development. Defining, visualizing, and measuring your value streams provides the opportunity to improve the flow of value through them.

An Operational Value Stream (OVS) is the sequence of activities needed to deliver direct value to a customer. Think of it as the end-to-end journey from customer request to customer fulfillment. Examples include fulfilling an order, admitting and treating a medical patient, providing a loan, or delivering a service.

While the OVS delivers operational value, a Development Value Stream (DVS) is the sequence of activities we use to build a digitally enabled product or solution that the OVS uses to carry out its operational work or that the OVS might sell or provide to the customer.

Organizing around value is a fundamental principle in SAFe, and its application becomes more challenging when dealing with large solutions. These complex endeavors, often spanning multiple operational value streams and requiring the coordination of numerous development value streams, necessitate careful consideration of structure and integration.

Considerations when Organizing Around Value for Large Solutions

The following example helps to illustrate some of the considerations needed when organizing around value at this scale. An automotive company, serving customers through various experiences like purchasing, driving, and servicing, often has multiple Operational Value Streams, shown in green in Figure 1. To support these, multiple development value streams must tightly integrate and coordinate. This complex structure can be efficiently organized into multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and Solution Trains. Furthermore, various suppliers contribute essential components and services, such as payment processing and vehicle operations, which are built by other development value streams. All these interconnected elements must integrate and coordinate seamlessly to deliver a cohesive and comprehensive solution to the customer.

A 4-Step Approach

Successfully organizing around value for large solution development follows a four-step process designed to systematically guide an organization through the process of re-aligning its organizational structure to maximize value delivery for large and complex solutions. Each of these steps is covered in more detail below.

Step 1: Explore the current state organizational structure and define optimization goals

This first step is about establishing a shared understanding of the current organizational structure and identifying improvement areas. Start by clearly defining the large solution, identifying its primary customers, and listing the main products and systems that comprise it. Next, map out the current organizational structure, grouping products and systems into development value streams and identifying teams and suppliers within each. This visual representation reveals existing silos and bottlenecks.

To make informed decisions about organizing large solutions around value, such as the example above, it is essential to gather a comprehensive set of data inputs, divided into “current state” and “future state” categories.

Current state inputs help you understand your organization’s existing structure and performance. This often includes vision and strategy artifacts, architectural documents, key dependencies across teams and value streams, and a list of upcoming work over the next 6-12 months. Gathering insights on market performance, employee satisfaction, and feedback from empathy interviews with current leaders is also crucial for identifying challenges and opportunities. Understanding the current state also helps to identify pain points with the existing organizational structure and opportunities for improvement.

When planning for the future, it’s important to collaborate with Solution and Portfolio Management to understand any changes to the vision or strategy, and objectives and key results (OKRs) that will be used to measure success. Enterprise Architecture can share insights on how the future architecture is expected to evolve. Additionally, Finance can provide insights on funding guidelines and budget allocations for specific initiatives. All of these future inputs will guide you towards the most appropriate structure for organizing around large solution development.

Once this information has been reviewed, it should be used to define a set of clear optimization goals that will help to guide the next step of defining a future state. Example optimization goals might include

• Reduce handoffs and delays, reducing time to market and employee frustration
• Bring together necessary research, development, and service personnel in ways that promote continuous delivery.
• Provide intense customer and business outcome focus across all departments.
• Measure the success of each component via meaningful, outcome-based key performance indicators.

Step 2: Create multiple options for a future state organizational structure

Begin by identifying possibilities for future organizational structures. Review considerations for organizing around large solutions, emphasizing that there is no single correct answer and that compromises are necessary.

The next step is to draft initial organizational structure options that align with the agreed-upon optimization goals and future vision for the large solution development. The recommendation here is to identify multiple options, being aware that no single option will likely address each optimization goal. As part of this step, identify the potential ARTs and Solution Trains, and the products and components each would be responsible for.

Identify the pros and cons of each option. These options will be taken into the next step, where they will be evaluated and the viability of each one tested.

Step 3: Evaluate options and agree on the best approach

Apply a rigorous evaluation of the viable organizational structure options to reach a collective consensus on the best approach. Discuss and evaluate the options as a group, making adjustments and addressing potential issues until a single best option is chosen. Once the best option is selected, document the value streams and ARTs in further detail, defining their purpose, accountability, key initiatives, and potential leadership. Remember that organizational structures are not permanent and may evolve over time.

Step 4: Create a plan of action

To build a plan of action, identify all necessary steps to transition to the new structure. These actions are then planned on a roadmap, detailing when each action must be completed over time. Clear owners should be assigned to each action item, establishing accountability. The plan should also include several additional elements. It defines the schedule for alignment meetings, where the change team will gather to monitor progress. It also outlines a communication strategy for sharing decisions throughout the organization. Additionally, the plan develops a thoughtful transition strategy for individuals impacted by the changes, ensuring they receive support and can smoothly integrate into any new ARTs or teams. 

A facilitator for the overall change should also be identified to guide the implementation process. Common actions often include communicating workshop outcomes, scheduling progress sync sessions, announcing Train Leads, completing the Large Solution Canvas, updating Agile Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools, confirming staffing plans, and facilitating ART-specific value stream identification workshops as needed.

Applying the Organizing Around Value for Large Solutions Competency

The Optimizing Value Streams for Large Solution Delivery workshop, downloadable below, is structured into four distinct sections that match the steps described above. From understanding the current landscape to planning future implementation, the workshop fosters a collaborative environment to drive significant organizational change.

A consultative approach, involving everyone involved in the large solution development, is central to successfully organizing and reorganizing value streams. This includes ensuring stakeholder buy-in, establishing regular feedback loops, and embracing continuous iteration. Rather than assuming that ARTs and Solution Trains are permanent structures, it can be healthy to adjust boundaries across teams as you learn more over time. Similarly, there will be times when a market or strategy has shifted significantly enough that a larger change is needed. For these reasons, the Optimizing Value Streams for Large Solution Delivery Workshop can be utilized to create deep discussion around how much needs to change at any given time.

NOTE: If your organization doesn’t have an internal SAFe® Practice Consultant Trainer (SPCT) to facilitate the Optimizing Value Streams for Large Solution Delivery workshop, consider engaging a SAFe SPCT Partner. These partners offer experienced SPCTs who can expertly guide your teams through the workshop, ensuring a deep understanding of value stream optimization.

One of the workshop’s outcomes will be the ability to effectively describe and communicate the future state. While this may seem straightforward, experience shows that organizations often fail to clearly outline how their teams are structured to achieve the strategy. The Large Solution Canvas, shown below, outlines the information that needs to be captured.

Mastering the Organizing Around Value for Large Solutions Competency

Mastering the Organizing Around Value for Large Solutions competency means becoming an organization that knows how and when to reorganize itself to maximize flow, adaptability, and customer centricity.

Indications that the organization is mastering this competency include:

• Accelerated Value Delivery: For large, complex solutions, new functionalities are developed and delivered more rapidly, directly addressing diverse customer needs and market demands.
• Efficient Problem Resolution: Any blocking issues within large solution development are identified and fixed quickly due to clear ownership and streamlined workflows across multiple teams.
• Continuous Innovation: The organization consistently generates ideas for both continuous improvement and disruptive innovation across the entire solution, driven by a deep understanding of customer feedback and market opportunities.
• Proactive Problem Solving: New problems within the large solution are identified and solved before they escalate, leveraging an organizational structure that facilitates early detection and adaptive responses across interconnected components.
• Optimized Resource Utilization: Resources are optimally allocated to value-generating activities across the large solution, reducing waste and increasing overall organizational effectiveness.
• Enhanced Employee Engagement: Reduced frustration from handoffs and delays across the large solution, coupled with a clear connection to customer value, leads to higher employee morale and engagement within complex development efforts.

The Road to Harmony: Automotive Dynamics Inc.

Automotive Dynamics Inc. (ADI) once struggled mightily. Their new electric vehicle (EV) line, a beacon of their future, was instead a monument to their organizational woes. Millions bled away in delays, customer satisfaction plummeted, and their once-stellar reputation teetered on the brink. The core problem: a sprawling international operation where countless subsystems, teams, and suppliers operated in isolated silos. Communication was a labyrinth of bottlenecks, dependencies were a Gordian knot, and post-release defects were a bitter pill for consumers.

Their leadership understood that mere process tweaks wouldn’t suffice; a fundamental shift was needed to organize around value, with the “Organizing Around Value for Large Solutions Competency” becoming their guiding star.

They knew that first, they needed to understand more deeply what was happening right now. Solution Architects and Product Management collaboratively mapped the existing EV architecture and large solution vision, unearthing hidden dependencies and bottlenecks that had long plagued development. Existing agile coaches and team leaders shared insights on the flow of in-progress work, revealing where efforts stalled due to fragmented ownership across globally dispersed teams. Empathy interviews with current leaders and market research gathered from strategy roles and product provided vital insights into customer frustrations and emerging opportunities.

ADI envisioned a seamless flow for their EV solution, focusing on rapid response to market shifts. They designed customer journey maps and a modular architecture with clear subsystem interfaces. Audacious OKRs were set, targeting a 30% reduction in time-to-market for new features and a 15% increase in customer satisfaction. Finance and Resource Management aligned financial plans with this vision, investing in IT and workflow solutions. AI-driven systems were deployed to automate tasks and enhance efficiency. They also mapped architectural pipelines to coordinate global development.

The Optimizing Value Streams for Large Solution Delivery workshop was scheduled, bringing together diverse stakeholders—from engineering to marketing, finance to HR. This workshop fostered intense discussions that led to gradual yet impactful adjustments in Agile Release Train (ART) and Solution Train boundaries, for instance, consolidating previously disparate teams working on powertrain components into a single Solution Train with clear end-to-end ownership. The Large Solution Canvas became an invaluable tool to communicate these decisions, providing templates that clarified the structure, purpose, and interdependencies of each new organizational unit, defining how component teams like battery management and motor control would interact within the larger EV solution.

Consolidating previously disparate teams working on powertrain components into a single Solution Train exemplified ADI’s shift from functional silos to end-to-end ownership, directly streamlining value delivery. This change meant that components like battery management and motor control, once managed independently, were now integrated within a cohesive unit, reducing handoffs and accelerating development.

As ADI applied the Organizing Around Value for Large Solutions Competency, the changes were palpable. Fueled by these optimizations, teams and workers enthusiastically embraced the new organizational structure. The prospect of swiftly identifying and resolving blocking issues, once protracted nightmares, energized them; a critical software bug affecting multiple vehicle functions, which used to take days to diagnose and resolve across different teams, was now isolated and fixed within hours due to clear ownership and streamlined workflows.

They anticipated that continuous innovation could finally begin, driven by a strong understanding of customer feedback collected through integrated product feedback loops. They envisioned proactive problem-solving taking the place of reactive firefighting, as their new structure enabled early detection of issues through continuous integration and deployment pipelines. The idea of optimized utilization, reducing waste by eliminating redundant efforts, and increasing overall effectiveness resonated deeply. And perhaps most importantly, they anticipated their own engagement soaring as frustration from handoffs and delays dissipated, replaced by a clear connection to customer value and a visible impact of their work on the final product.

The journey was far from over, but Automotive Dynamics Inc. had begun to transform from a fragmented giant into a harmonized force. They had taken a critical first move towards the ability to dance with complexity, orchestrating their vast operations to deliver unparalleled customer value, evidenced by improved delivery predictability and increased customer satisfaction. The stage was now set for their next triumph: mastering the art of coordinating their delivery with precision and predictability, a direct outcome of their newfound organizational agility.

Continuing your Journey Through the Large Solution Integration and Delivery Discipline

Last Update: 11 July 2025