It is a misuse of our power to take responsibility for solving problems that belong to others.

—Peter Block

Release Train Engineer

The Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train (ART). The RTE’s major responsibilities are to facilitate the ART events and processes and assist the teams in delivering value. RTEs communicate with stakeholders, escalate impediments, help manage risk, and drive relentless improvement.

Although Agile Release Trains (ARTs) are composed of self-organizing and self-managing teams, trains don’t drive or steer themselves on autopilot. That responsibility falls to the RTE, who operate most effectively as servant leaders. They have a solid grasp of how to scale Lean and Agile practices and understand the unique opportunities and challenges associated with facilitating and continuously aligning a large development program.

Details

The RTE facilitates ART processes and execution. They escalate impediments, manage risk, help ensure value delivery, and help drive relentless improvement. Many also participate in the Lean-Agile transformation, coaching leaders, teams, and Scrum Masters in the new processes and mindsets. They help configure SAFe to the organization’s needs, standardizing and documenting practices.

Responsibilities

RTEs typically fulfill the following responsibilities:

• Manage and optimize the flow of value through the ART using various tools, such as the Program Kanban and other information radiators
• Establish and communicate the annual calendars for Iterations and Program Increments (PIs)
• Facilitate PI Planning readiness by fostering a Continuous Exploration process that drives the synthesis of a Vision, a Roadmap, and Backlogs, and through Pre- and Post-PI Planning events
• Facilitate the PI planning event
• Summarize Team PI Objectives into Program PI Objectives (the RTE) and publish them for visibility and transparency
• Assist in tracking the execution of features and capabilities
• Facilitate periodic synchronization events, including the ART sync
• Assist with economic decision-making by facilitating feature and capability estimation by teams and the roll-up to Epics, where necessary
• Coach leaders, teams, and Scrum Masters in Lean-Agile practices and mindsets
• Help manage risks and dependencies
• Escalate and track impediments
• Provide input on resourcing to address critical bottlenecks
• Encourage collaboration between teams and System and Solution Architects/Engineering
• Work with Product and Solution Management, Product Owners, and other stakeholders to help ensure strategy and execution alignment
• Improve the flow of value through value streams by improving and assessing the practices associated with DevOps and Release on Demand in the Continuous Delivery Pipeline
• Help drive the Lean User Experience (UX) innovation cycle
• Work with the Agile Program Management Office (APMO) on program execution and operational excellence (see Lean Portfolio Management)
• Understand and operate within Lean Budgets and ensure adherence to Guardrails
• Facilitate System Demos
• Drive relentless improvement via Inspect and Adapt workshops; assess the agility level of the ART and help them improve
• Foster Communities of Practice and the use of engineering and Built-In Quality practices

Reporting Structure

SAFe doesn’t prescribe a reporting structure, but the RTE typically reports to the development organization or an APMO, which, in SAFe, is considered a part of Lean Portfolio Management. For enterprises with existing PMO organizations, a program manager often plays this role.

RTEs Are Servant Leaders

While new RTEs typically have the organizational skills to perform their roles, they may need to learn and adopt Lean-Agile Mindsets. They may need to transition from directing and managing activities to acting as a servant leader. Servant leadership is a philosophy that implies a comprehensive view of the quality of people, work, and community spirit [1]. The focus is on providing the support needed by the teams and ARTs to be self-organizing and self-managing. Characteristic servant leader actions include:

• Listen and support teams in problem identification and decision-making
• Create an environment of mutual influence
• Understand and empathize with others
• Encourage and support the personal development of each individual and the development of teams
• Coach people with powerful questions rather than use authority
• Think beyond day-to-day activities; apply systems thinking
• Support the teams’ commitments
• Be open and appreciate openness in others

As Robert Greenleaf, the father of servant leadership, said, “Good leaders must first become good servants.” Just as there are Lean-Agile transformational patterns for the LPM function, there are also transformational patterns for a traditional manager moving to a servant leader. The ‘from’ and ‘to’ states are:

• From coordinating team activities and contributions to coaching the teams to collaborate
• From deadlines to objectives
• From driving toward specific outcomes to being invested in the program’s overall performance
• From knowing the answer to asking the teams for the answer
• From directing to letting the teams self-organize and hit their stride
• From fixing problems to helping others fix them

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Learn More

[1] See Servant Leadership at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership

[2] Leffingwell, Dean. Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley, 2011.

[3] Trompenaars, Fons, and Ed Voerman. Servant-Leadership Across Cultures: Harnessing the Strengths of the World’s Most Powerful Management Philosophy. McGraw-Hill, 2009.

 

Last update: 14 December 2021