Hello everyone,

Those of us involved in courseware development at Scaled Agile strive to keep learning more about how to teach and convey the key concepts of the Framework. This is an important aspect of how we apply the spirit of continuous learning. Feedback from the community is critical to that effort and we’re excited to announce updates to the Leading SAFe^® and Implementing SAFe^® courses based on our learnings and input we’ve received since introducing SAFe 4.5 in June, 2017.

Here are a few of the updates in the new courseware:

• Two new lessons for Leading SAFe – The first lesson addresses how to create high-performing teams and programs. The second lesson will help students gain a better understanding of the SAFe Agilist (SA) exam, what it entails, and the benefits of becoming certified.
• Student workbook – We are now providing students with a real workbook, complete with structured space to write thoughts, take notes, and complete exercises. We’ve also embedded exercise articles directly into the lessons, instead of asking students to reference an appendix.
• Trainer Guide – For the Trainer Guide, we’ve added more slide notes about how to teach and run the exercises, as well as key messages for many of the slides, to make it easier to prepare for and teach the course.
• New look and feel – The updated courseware employs several different types of slides that leverage the latest insights into learning best practices. They also are much easier for instructors to use.
• Updated LPM content – We’ve updated Lesson 8, ‘Empowering a Lean Portfolio,’ with the latest insights into Lean Portfolio Management (LPM). As you might remember, we updated the LPM and related articles in the Framework, and this lesson aligns with that update. It provides a better flow of understanding to the students.
• Smoother lesson flow – We’ve redesigned one of the most important lessons, ‘Designing the Implementation,’ to create a smoother lesson flow.
• NEW Course Delivery Enablement (CDE) – We have a new set of enablement videos on the Community platform focusing not only on the changes in 4.5.1, but also on how to facilitate the exercises and how to teach some of the most complex topic areas in the class.

Thanks to all those who have provided and continue to provide feedback on the SAFe curriculum to help advance the Framework. We hope this new version will help all our SPCs and future SAs out there.

Always be SAFe!

– Inbar Oren, Methodologist, SAFe Fellow and Leading SAFe Product Owner