  Context: How to adopt, scale and tailor agile methods depends on several
factors such as the size of the organization, business goals, operative model,
and needs. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) was developed to support
organizations to scale agile practices across the enterprise. Problem: Early
adopters of SAFe tend to be large multi-national enterprises who report that
the adoption of SAFe has led to significant productivity and quality gains.
However, little is known about whether these benefits translate to small to
medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Method: As part of a longitudinal study of an
SME transitioning to SAFe we ask, to what extent are SAFe practices adopted at
the team level? We targeted all team members and administrated a mixed method
survey in February, 2017 and in July, 2017 to identify and evaluate the
adoption rate of SAFe practices. Results: Initially in Quarter 1, teams were
struggling with PI/Release health and Technical health throughout the
organization as most of the teams were transitioning from plan-driven to SAFe .
But, during the transition period in Quarter 3, we observed discernible
improvements in different areas of SAFe practice adoption. Conclusion: The
observed improvement might be due to teams merely becoming more familiar with
the practices over-time. However, management had also made some structural
changes to the teams that may account for the change.
