Take Your Agile Release Process to the Next Level with Compass 2.0.1 and EssentialSAFe® from HCL

As I’ve discussed before, HCL Compass is a very flexible tool to define and manage development and release processes at the enterprise level. In HCL’s own words: Low-code/no-code change management software for enterprise level scaling, process customization, and control to accelerate project delivery and increase developer productivity. These are lofty goals. Lean and agile processes are at the center of these kinds of initiatives, and there are many requirements to be met to achieve a lean and agile development process. A new release of HCL Compass is noteworthy with respect to these goals. Read on to see how to take your agile release process to the next level with Compass 2.0.1 and EssentialSAFe® from HCL.

Let’s first examine the nomenclature involved. EssentialSAFe is a new schema that ships with the latest release of Compass (2.01) that helps teams follow SAFe practices. SAFe, or Scaled Agile Framework is a set of organization and workflow patterns for implementing agile practices at enterprise scale. Essential SAFe contains the minimal set of roles, events, and artifacts required to continuously deliver business solutions via an Agile Release Train (ART).

The Agile Release Train is a long-lived team of agile teams, which, along with other stakeholders, incrementally develops, delivers, and where applicable operates, one or more solutions in a value stream. Agile teams are cross-functional groups of 5-11 individuals who define, build, test, and deliver an increment of value in a short time window. So, EssentialSAFe from HCL provides a comprehensive out-of-the-box schema to implement a lean and agile workflow for the enterprise.  The schema is also customizable, so you can fine tune the workflow for your organization.

In the EssentialSAFe schema, there are three work items available to scope, plan and implement experiences in your solutions. They are Features, Stories, and Tasks. These make up part of the SAFe Requirements Model, shown in the figure below.

A few more definitions will help:

• A Feature is a service that fulfills a stakeholder need. Each feature includes a benefit hypothesis and acceptance criteria and is sized or split as necessary to be delivered by a single Agile Release Train (ART) in a Program Increment (PI).
• Stories are short descriptions of a small piece of desired functionality, written in the user’s language. Agile Teams implement small, vertical slices of system functionality and are sized so they can be completed in a single Iteration. Stories provide just enough information for both business and technical people to understand the intent.
• Tasks are small work items that new teams might use to split stories into smaller parts. They are completed within a few days, but often finished in less than a day. Tasking stories is an optional practice in SAFe, but it can help new teams improve their sizing of stories and estimation of capacity.

For further reading, HCL provides more details about the new capabilities of Compass 2.0.1 and how to implement it in your enterprise here, with more detail provided here. A complete example implementation is provided that should be quite helpful.  The referenced posts are written by Adam Skwersky, senior software engineer at HCL Technologies. Adam hails from MIT, where he earned a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering. He was also a research assistant at MIT in robotics before spending 20 years in software development at IBM. He’s been at HCL for four years. You can learn a lot from Adam.

Check out his posts so you can take your agile release process to the next level with Compass 2.0.1 and EssentialSAFe® from HCL.

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog belong solely to the author, and not to the author’s employer, organization, committee or any other group or individual.