Analyzing SAFe Practices with Respect to Quality Requirements: Findings from a Qualitative Study

Quality Requirements (QRs) pose challenges in many agile large-scale distributed projects. Often, project organizations counter these challenges by borrowing some heavyweight practices, e.g. adding more documentation. At the same time, agile methodologists proposed a few scaled agile frameworks to specifically serve agile organizations working on large and distributed systems. Little is known about the extent to which these proposals address QRs and the specific ways in which this happens. Moreover, evidence regarding the practical implementation of these frameworks with respect to QRs is scarce. Our paper makes a step towards narrowing this gap of knowledge. Using an exploratory research process, we analyze one well-documented framework, namely the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). We first analyzed the elements of SAFe as they were described in the methodological book of SAFe to identify the possible remedies to the QRs challenges reported in previous work. We then conducted a qualitative interview-based study to understand the practices that SAFe practitioners actually use to mitigate those QRs challenges. Our documentary analysis of SAFe resulted in identifying 25 SAFe elements that could (at least partially) mitigate one or more of the reported QRs challenges. Nine of those SAFe elements were reported in our interview-based study by SAFe practitioners as remedy for some of the reported QRs challenges. While practitioners attempted to use the recommended SAFe strategies for QRs, they often changed them in their own ways, or altogether resorted to heavyweight practices that the case study organizations knew from previously done non-SAFe projects.