Sound strategy starts with having the right goal. Strategy is about making choices and trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.
—Michael Porter, paraphrased from “What Is Strategy?” [1]
Strategic Themes
Definition: Strategic themes are portfolio-level business objectives that provide competitive differentiation and strategic advantage. They provide business context for portfolio strategy and decision-making, representing aspects of the enterprise’s strategic intent.
Strategic Themes are a vital tool for communicating critical business objectives to Agile Teams and ARTs, aligning their purpose with the purpose of the broader enterprise. They provide much of the organizational clarity that fuels effective decentralized decision-making and ensure that Value Streams are driven by measurable business outcomes.
This article describes strategic themes and explains the process of formulating and operationalizing them within a SAFe Portfolio.
Details
Strategic themes connect the enterprise strategy to a portfolio, as shown in Figure 1. They distill strategic factors such as the enterprise vision, competitive environment, and existing portfolio context into concise, actionable, measurable goals. Strategic themes are best stated in Objective and Key Result (OKR) format. Written in plain business language, these OKRs say what the portfolio will pursue, thus providing decision-makers and contributors at all levels the clarity needed for decentralized decision-making.
Portfolio leaders use strategic themes to steer the portfolio and to communicate to ARTs and teams the value of Solutions to the enterprise. Similarly, ARTs and teams maintain alignment with business objectives by referencing strategic themes as they define and deliver work in the form of Epics and Features.
Keeping strategic themes prominent ensures all decisions are connected to the enterprise strategy, preventing portfolio outcomes from drifting away from intended business results.