Roles and Responsibilities: Solution Management
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) comes into play, providing a comprehensive approach to adopting agile principles at scale. The Solution Management plays a pivotal role in SAFe, bridging the gap between strategy and execution ensuring that complex solutions are planned, developed, and delivered seamlessly. In this blog, we will delve into the roles and responsibilities of Solution Management in detail. But before we start, let’s take a brief overlook on what exactly is Solution Management.
What is Solution Management?
Solution Management is the function responsible for defining desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable large solutions that meet customer needs and for supporting development across the solution life cycle.
The Solution Management role is key to successful enterprise solution delivery. Defining the solution Vision, aligning the Solution Train and its stakeholders to the vision, and coordinating development progress across multiple ARTs and Suppliers is a challenging and critical task for every enterprise. But as is the case with Product Management, the role of Solution Management for a Solution Train is typically fulfilled by multiple people, each guiding different aspects of the solution.
Roles and Responsibilities of Solution Management
Roles and Responsibilities of the Solution Management falls into the following five areas as shown in the figure below, followed by a detail look into each of these areas.
First Responsibility: Connecting with the Customer
The first responsibility can be further explained with the following sub-set responsibilities.
1. Determine customer needs and personas
It is the SMs responsibility to determine what customer personas will benefit the most from the solutions. This relies on continual research which feeds onto new Solution Train backlog items.
Often, Design Thinking facilitates exploring personas and uncovering their specific solution needs.
2. Understand solution context
Solution Management determines which aspects of Solution Context are critical to solution development.
To thoroughly understand the solution context, Solution Management works with architects and other technology subject-matter experts to navigate the complexities of the solution deployment and execution environment. To understand the operational context, Solution Management also interacts with the participants of the Operational Value Streams that the solution is serving.
3. Measure solution usage
Important data points come from solution telemetry that reveals user actions as a part of use-case scenarios realized in the solution. To generate this data, Solution Management proactively collaborates with Product Management of ARTs to define and instrument the necessary measures.
Second Responsibility: Defining the Large Solution
1. Define and evolve the solution intent
Solution Management leads the effort in defining and maintaining the Solution Intent. This involves multiple roles, including Product Management, architects, and other subject-matter experts from ARTs and suppliers.
2. Manage solution hypotheses, MVP, and leading indicators
Large Solution Development involves building a MVP (minimum viable product) to realize a business hypothesis. SMs define a measurement criteria to support this hypothesis and exercises the decision to pivot or persevere, depending on the experiment’s outcome.
3. Define solution epics and capabilities
SM’s have a recurring task of defining the upcoming work for the Solution Train. The definition process is realized via the Solution Train Backlog and involves multiple steps that support additional elaboration.
4. Elaborate solution definition with ARTs and suppliers
Solution Intent and solution capabilities get further elaborated with ARTs and suppliers, accounting for more detail in the systems’ behavior, architecture, and implementation constraints. This elaboration is usually performed leading up to PI planning.
Third Responsibility: Planning and Managing the Solution Roadmap
1. Align with portfolio stakeholders
It is the SMs responsibility to ensure that the solution vision reflects the portfolio strategy and accommodates the portfolio initiatives that affect the Solution Train. Besides directly involving stakeholders in the PI Planning of Solution Train, SM also participates in sessions supporting the Portfolio backlog and Kanban system.
2. Build and maintain solution roadmap
To ensure desired solution progression over time, SM creates and maintains the Solution Roadmap. It provides sufficient specificity in the near term to guide the development effort.
3. Manage Value Stream KPIs
Collaborating with portfolio stakeholders, SMs defines the Value Stream KPIs that are used to measure the business outcomes.
Fourth Responsibility: Managing and Prioritizing the Solution Train Backlog
1. Continually prioritize the Solution Train Backlog
SMs must make critical decisions regarding work priorities for the Solution Train at every PI boundary. Prioritization and elaboration work happens continually as new work items emerge or new facts are revealed.
2. Participate in Pre- and PI Planning
SMs should lead the preparation of work content to help Solution Train to perform a productive Pre-Planning and PI Planning.
3. Define and manage capacity allocations
SMs should determine the capacity allocations for the Solution Train, by usually including capacity for developing new business capabilities, architectural enablers, or performing maintenance work. They should also help in determining how much capacity ARTs should dedicate to Solution Train backlog items versus work that emerges locally.
Fifth Responsibility: Working with ARTs and Suppliers to Deliver Value
1. Participate in release governance
Solution Management plays a vital role in approving releases and influencing their timing and scope. They also participate actively in defining the release-level definition of done.
2. Regularly review integrated solution increments
Solution Management regularly reviews integrated increments of value and makes necessary adjustments to development plans.
3. Coordinate value delivery across ARTs and suppliers
As multiple ARTs and suppliers are involved, a significant responsibility of the SM is to ensure each participant in the development process is moving towards the common goal. SM does this by leading the Product Management Sync multiple times per PI. A Solution Train planning board is used to track the progress of business capabilities across ARTs and suppliers.
4. Participate in I&A with ARTs and suppliers
Solution Management participates in the Solution Train Inspect and Adapt (I&A) to review and act on opportunities for improvement. This allows Solution Management to hear firsthand the challenges that the Solution Train experiences along with the ideas on how to address them.
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