We are planning to rollout SAFe with Jira Software for about 7k users in a 10,000 user instance. We are searching for best practices and procedures to lead our SAFe transformation planning.
Ideally we want to have a Proof of Concept within one month and a partner on site with us to help and guide us. How would you propose doing this proof of concept, what would be involved, and what is the cost.
Can you share with us how this happens with Agile Hive and the project plans?
Thank you so much for your interest in Agile Hive, our certified Scaled Agile (SAFe) solution for Atlassian Jira. Please refer to our introductory video for a description of the features of Agile Hive (below) and the information on our website for our SAFe tool for a general introduction to our product.
To answer your question, Iāve outlined below how we typically implement Agile Hive proof of concept projects to implement SAFe within an organization.
As the very first step, we would give you a demonstration of the Agile Hive software solution in a remote session. This takes about an hour and can be easily scheduled via our Calendly booking system for Agile Hive.
Normally we provide our clients and prospects with their own fully functional and unlimited demonstration environment including templated demonstration data that you can test your own customizations on. You can create such an environment for free right now via our SWIFT platform: simply choose āAgile Hiveā as the product and generate a demonstration instance for free.
The next step would be to schedule a call and install Agile Hive in your own Jira instance (even behind the firewall). Seeing is believing. And thatās why organizations want to try the software themselves, in their own environment and with their own data. We can help you do this easily in a proof of concept phase.
To accomplish this, we would hold a longer remote session with administrator access to your Jira and Confluence instances. Your own administrators can be part of this session. In fact, we recommend this, so they can see how Agile Hive works and how it is configured. You can review the configuration processes and see how to use the software in our detailed public Agile Hive documentation.
The timeline for such a proof of concept is easily manageable within 2 and 6 weeks depending on how urgent this is and the availability of our experts and Agile Hive partners.
A full implementation of SAFe and Agile Hive in your environment usually takes between 4 and 16 weeks depending on the complexity of your internal organization and requirements. We have seen teams do this implementation themselves. But we do recommend you take advantage of our well-tested approach to achieve a standardized and stable SAFe implementation with a certified Atlassian partner, SAFe partner or preferably an Agile Hive partner.
We do not have detailed template project plans as Agile Hive projects are heavily customized based on individual customer requirements. Although there is a lot of customization involved, it is simple and straight forward, so that less than a handful of meetings are required. This also means there is very little risk of failure. Sophisticated project plans based on complex templates are overkill in most situations.
We do understand that implementing SAFe itself is highly complex, especially with the changes required to processes and teamwork, and we believe this needs a good plan. Once you have this plan, you only need to find the right tools and configure them. Often Atlassian Jira is already in place which decreases the complexity even further.
TLDR: It is absolutely reasonable and achievable to plan a proof of concept within one month and deliver it successfully.
The cost of licenses and our professional services is publicly available on our Agile Hive website and will depend on your specific Jira license type and tier. For professional services, our partners may differ from our pricing, but in most cases they will offer the standard package at the same price.
In your specific case with a Jira instance for 10,000 users, your core licensing price would be 30k USD. And the basic service package would also be 30k USD.
We work tightly together with our Agile Hive partners and if youād like to work with a local expert, we can highly recommend a local partner who can collaborate with your teams on-site and work closely with your other service providers. A SAFe transformation project is complex and can benefit from expert guidance and regular interaction. Both our own experts and our partners are experienced in delivering such services and advice on-site, in addition to helping you configure and implement Agile Hive and Jira.
Thank you very much for the very detailed answer. I will contact you directly these days.