The Agile Team is still ten or fewer
Inside the train, an Agile Team is a cross-functional group of typically ten or fewer people with all the skills to define, build, test and deliver value. Scaling in SAFe means more teams on a train, not bigger teams.
Why it is like this
The small-team bound is a communication limit, not a convention, and it does not move because the enterprise is large. SAFe scales by adding a coordinating structure above the team rather than by relaxing the thing that makes a team work.
Not to be confused with
A relaxed version of Scrum's guidance. The numbers are effectively the same — which is why a Scrum practitioner recognises the team level immediately and then gets lost one layer up.
In practice
Twelve teams of eight is a plausible ART. Four teams of thirty is not a SAFe structure at all, whatever the org chart says.
Source: SAFe Glossary (Scaled Agile, Inc.) — Agile Teams. Read on .
SAFe® and Scaled Agile Framework® are registered trade marks of Scaled Agile, Inc. ytyk.org is not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by Scaled Agile, Inc. These cards are independent commentary written in our own words; no SAFe text, graphic or Big Picture is reproduced here.
Connects to
- Scrum — The Scrum Guide's "typically 10 or fewer" is the same bound
Predict Check yourself
How does SAFe's definition of an Agile Team compare with the Scrum Guide's Scrum Team?
Show the answer
Near-identical on size — both land at around ten or fewer, cross-functional, with the skills to deliver value.
The team level is where the two frameworks agree most closely. Everything contentious between them is above it.