Each week inside SAFe Connect, our spotlight member shares practical insights from their experience applying SAFe in real environments. This week, Alhad Akole shares actionable practices to help teams navigate complexity and stay focused on delivering value.
1. Make work visible to reduce complexity
âMake the work visible and brutally visible. Complexity hides in invisible queues, unclear decision rights, and unvalidated assumptions. The most powerful thing you can do is create shared visibility through story maps, capacity views, dependency boards, customer journeys, and lightweight economic models. Once everyone sees the same picture, alignment becomes a natural outcome rather than a forced conversation.â
2. Use economic thinking to guide decisions
âI recommend Agile Product Management by Don Reinertsen and the SAFe Lean Agile Principles. Reinertsenâs work explains the economics behind flow, queues, variability, and decision latency. Pairing that with SAFe principles creates a strong foundation for making better decisions at every level of the system.â
3. Focus on outcomes, not activity
âMy go to productivity habit is structured clarity. Every morning I create a three item impact list focused on the outcomes that will meaningfully move value forward. Not tasks, outcomes. It keeps me focused on leverage, not activity.â
4. Stay close to real work and keep learning
âI stay close to real teams and real customers. Every transformation, every PI Planning, and every product workshop teaches something new. I also read widely across systems thinking, behavioral economics, product strategy, and flow science because agility is multidisciplinary at its core.â
