Contributors
Principal Contributors
Alex Yakyma
Principal Contributor
Alex is a transformation consultant, author, and technology leader that continues to be directly involved in building complex solutions. As a methodologist and trainer, he has led numerous rollouts of SAFe, involving teams in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has trained over a thousand coaches and change agents whose key role is to help their organizations achieve higher productivity and quality by adopting scalable, Agile methods.
Inbar Oren
Methodologist and SAFe Fellow
Inbar has more than 25 years of experience in the high-tech market. For the last fifteen years, he has been helping development organizations—in both software and integrated systems—improve results by adopting Lean-Agile best practices and SAFe. Inbar contributed to the evolution of the Framework from 2014-2025
Richard Knaster
SAFe Fellow and Principal Contributor
Richard has 30 years of experience in software and systems development and has led large-scale Agile transformations for over 15 years. He is a SAFe Fellow and a Principal Contributor to SAFe. He is the co-author of SAFe® Distilled and the SAFe® Reference Guide and contributed to the SAFe® Lean Portfolio Management course, among others. Richard is a keynote speaker and has written several white papers on SAFe, Value Stream Management, and Technology Business Management.
Luke Hohmann
SAFe Fellow and Principal Contributor
Luke is a Principal Contributor to the Framework and the founder of Conteneo (maker of Innovation Games®), which was acquired by Scaled Agile in 2019. The author of three books, Luke’s playfully diverse background of life experiences has uniquely prepared him to design and produce serious games to help professionals with strategic decision-making. As a member of the Framework team from 2018-2020, Luke focused on Agile Product Delivery and was the product owner for the Agile Product Management course.
Community Contributors
In addition to the direct participation of the Methodologists and Fellows in developing SAFe content, there is an active community of SPCs and others who contribute to the IP that makes SAFe safe. One such forum is the Community Contributions section of this website. These contributors provide articles that interpret and extend SAFe based on their direct, personal, and specialized experiences. These articles are peer-reviewed, but the opinions expressed are those of the attributed authors.
Jeroen Stoter
Operating Agile Management Teams Competency
Ron Van Vliet
SAFe and Obeya: A Game Changer for Strategy Execution
Bertus Groenewegen
SAFe and Obeya: A Game Changer for Strategy Execution
Eduardo Alvim
Building the Right Things at the Right Time: Capacity Allocation in SAFe Portfolios
Mirko Kleiner
Lean-Agile Procurement Competency
Odile Moreau
Enhance ART Performance with the Accelerating Flow Problem-Solving Workshop
Rune Christensen
Enhance ART Performance with the Accelerating Flow Problem-Solving Workshop
Mikael Broomé
The Role of People Managers in SAFe
Saahil Panikar
Enabling Strategic Alignment with an Enterprise Strategy Room
Marshall Guillory
Organizing Teams on the ART with the Team Formation Workshop
Claus Hirzmann
Improving Portfolio Outcomes with Real Options
Joseph Montalbano, SPC
Using Human-Centered Design With SAFe
Brad Lehman
Using Human-Centered Design With SAFe
Melissa Reeve
SAFe for Marketing white paper
Peter Vollmer, SPCT
Accelerating Flow with DevSecOps and the Software Factory
Cindy VanEpps, SPCT
Hardware Teams in SAFe
Jon Feld, COO of The Feld Group
Eliminating the Blind Spot: A Proven Approach to Enterprise Technology Strategy Formulation
Ken Pugh
Agile Software Engineering courseware plus collaboration on team-level competency, testing, and quality articles
Natalie Warnert, SPC
Lean UX and the SAFe PI Life Cycle
Lori Priller, SPC
An HR Playbook for a Successful SAFe Implementation
Zach Nies
Collaboration in the SAFe Lean Budget Guardrails article
Fabiola Eyholzer, SPC
Talent Enablement Guide for a SAFe Organization in FinTech
Joseph Barjis, PhD
Launching an Enterprise Agile Transformation at a Large Insurance Company
Scott Prugh, SPC
Continuous Delivery
Glenn Smith, SPCT
Running the transformation using a SAFe Agile Release Train
Charlie Fleet
Running the transformation using a SAFe Agile Release Train
Juha-Markus Aalto
Applying SAFe in the smaller enterprise
Hao Li, iSPCT
Embracing SAFe in Finance to become a Data-Driven Company
The Scaled Agile Framework has been proven to deliver substantial business benefits in a large number of software and systems enterprises. We admire these companies for the courage to innovate, and we are indebted to them for the feedback they have provided. Specifically, we’d like to thank the many companies in our Customer Stories, each of whom has adopted the Framework and many of whom have provided specific input to help it evolve.
Additional Acknowledgements
The contributors to Agile Software Requirements
Initial concepts behind the Framework were first documented in Scaling Software Agility, but the Framework per se was first documented in Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise (ASR), so it’s appropriate to repeat and update the book acknowledgments here. Thanks to the ASR reviewers, Gabor Gunyho, Robert Bogetti, Sarah Edrie, and Brad Jackson. Don Reinertsen provided permission to use elements of Principles of Product Development Flow. Thanks to my Finnish collaborators Juha-Markus Aalto, Maarit Laanti, Santeri Kangas, Gabor Gunyho, and Kuan Eeik Tan. Alistair Cockburn, Don Widrig, Mauricio Zamora, Pete Behrens, Jennifer Fawcett, and Alexander Yakyma contributed directly to book content.
A special acknowledgment to the Agile thought leaders
Of course, SAFe stands on the shoulders of many who came before us, particularly the Agile thought leaders who created the industry movement. It starts with the signers of the Agile Manifesto and continues with those outspoken thought leaders who have helped move the industry toward the new paradigm. The following have contributed most directly to our understanding of Agile development: Kent Beck, Alistair Cockburn, Ron Jeffries, Mike Cohn, David Anderson, Jeff Sutherland, Craig Larman, Ken Schwaber, Scott Ambler, and Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Others are acknowledged in the bibliography below.
A special acknowledgment to the Lean leaders
We are also fortunate to stand on the shoulders of Lean thought leaders, including Don Reinertsen, Jeffrey Liker, Gene Kim, Mik Kersten, Jez Humble, Eli Goldratt, Eric Ries, Jeff Gothelf, Josh Seiden, Henrik Kniberg, Dr. Alan Ward, Jim Sutton, Michael Kennedy, Dantar Oosterwal, Steve Womack, and Daniel Jones.
And to Edwards Deming
Finally, where would we be without the seminal works of W. Edwards Deming, to whom we perhaps owe the deepest gratitude of all? He was a visionary, whose tireless quest for the truth and unwavering belief in continual improvement led to a set of transformational theories and teachings that changed the way we think about quality, management, and leadership. The impact of his revolutionary ideas has been compared to those of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud. Others have referred to him as the father of the third phase of the Industrial Revolution.
LEARN MORE about Edwards Deming at The Deming Institute.
Last Update: 4 February 2026