Each week in SAFe Connect, we share one practical tip from a member of the community to help you apply SAFe in more meaningful ways.
This week, Thomas Quartier shares why contextualization is the single most vital principle to keep in mind when navigating complex environments.
💡 Tip of the Week: Contextualize Before You Customize
Choosing just one practice or tip to help someone apply SAFe in a complex environment is difficult. But if I had to choose one, today I would choose contextualization.
Every complex organization carries distinct operational realities, constraints, and structures. Applying practices mechanically without understanding the surrounding environment limits their effectiveness. If I could add to that, I believe organizations must also train everyone, establish a shared glossary to eliminate confusion, and ban unauthorized deviations, while massively investing in the Value Stream Network to provide a true systemic understanding. However, contextualization remains the foundational anchor that makes any of those efforts viable.
To contextualize effectively, you cannot rely solely on theory or distant frameworks. In my own work, I view my path not simply as an Agile journey, but as a journey as an expert in complex organizations. To stay current and understand what an organization truly needs, I see only one way: being operational in the field, listening, understanding, and acting.
When you stay close to the field and take the time to deeply understand your specific environment, you can tailor your implementation to solve real organizational challenges rather than forcing a generic process onto a complex reality. My advice is to always ground your implementation choices in that context, taking the time to read core resources—such as the articles available on SAFe Studio across the Big Picture, Core SAFe, and AI-Native SAFe—and then deliberately adapting those concepts to fit the landscape you are working within.
