Agile is an umbrella term for a set of iterative product development frameworks. With these methods, product development evolves through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customers and end users. It encourages adaptive planning, exploratory development, fast delivery, and continuous improvement. Rapid and flexible response to change is at the heart of the system.
Initially focusing strictly on empowering teams to be able to develop products and solutions faster and more efficiently, the tremendous success in doing business this way led to large enterprise-level organizations scaling the practice to meet their needs, even extending beyond the product organization. In 2011, Dean Leffingwell codified SAFe, the Scaled Agile Framework, in order to help bring the success that small teams have enjoyed with various agile methodologies such as Scrum or XP, but scaled to the enterprise. Using Jira Align, SAFe provides comprehensive guidance through the structure of Portfolio, Large Solution, Program, and Team Levels, connecting teams with vision and strategy.