The ART of Avoiding a Train Wreck: Practical Tips and Tricks for Launching and Operating SAFe Agile Release Trains

So you want to launch an Agile Release Train?

In The ART of Avoiding a Train Wreck, Em and Adrienne share their "trade secrets" for launching and operating powerful and effective Agile Release Trains (ART). A lot is at stake when launching an ART. When taking on an Enterprise Lean-Agile Transformation, you only get one shot at a first impression. Runaway trains are expensive. Money gets wasted, time gets lost, and reputational damage can take years to repair.

A lot has changed since the first edition. SAFe has moved beyond 6.0, PI Planning has moved online, and AI has shown up in every team. This second edition has been rewritten for all three, drawing on seven more years of launching and coaching trains across the globe: the full-sized Agile Release Train, the Agile Release Tram, its smaller cousin, and the globally distributed ART that never meets in one room. Alongside the anecdotes, cautionary tales and ProTips, you will find tips for running ART events online, and AI Tips: where Em and Adrienne have used AI on a real ART, and where they suggest caution. This is a book about Core SAFe, because the road to AI-Native SAFe runs through mastering it.

You will learn how to get a ticket on the SAFe railway, get the right people on board, load the cargo and keep the train on the tracks all the way to the station. No matter your context, you'll find plenty of actionable ideas for launching and operating Agile Release Trains. Let's face it, any train can derail, so let The ART of Avoiding a Train Wreck be the coach in your pocket, warning you of the obstacles on the tracks ahead before you train wreck!

Note: The paperback interior is printed in black and white; the ebook carries every figure in colour.

Em Campbell-Pretty and Adrienne L. Wilson are SAFe Fellows and SPCTs who have launched Agile Release Trains from start-ups to Fortune 5 companies across Australia, South-East Asia and the United States. Em is also the author of Tribal Unity.

Em Campbell-Pretty is one of the world's most experienced SAFe practitioners, and has been working with SAFe since before it was called SAFe. She came to it from the business side. In late 2011, as the business sponsor turned general manager of delivery for Telstra's enterprise data warehouse, she read Dean Leffingwell's Scaling Software Agility, and in early 2012 she launched Australia's first Agile Release Train. Its employee engagement score started at −49, impressive for all the wrong reasons, and two years later stood at +56. That story became her first book, Tribal Unity.

She founded Pretty Agile in 2014. One of the original four SAFe Fellows and an SPCT, she has spoken at every global SAFe Summit since the first in 2016. She is also one of the first 50 Certified AI-Native Trainers globally, and runs Pretty Agile with AI agents every day.

Adrienne L. Wilson started her career as an aerospace engineer, building flight guidance systems for commercial and military aircraft. She met Agile during an IT modernisation at a Boeing-owned business, and a few years later was asked to run "this thing called a release train." She has been launching trains ever since: as a Release Train Engineer and Solution Train Engineer, then as a consultant from start-ups to Fortune 5 companies in the United States, South-East Asia and Australia.

A SAFe Fellow and SPCT, she is the COO of Pretty Agile and a contributing author to Scaled Agile's SAFe for Hardware courseware. She is one of the first 50 Certified AI-Native Trainers globally.