Abstract
The research paper focuses on the benefits and challenges of scaled agile in financial institutions. The objective of this research is to analyse and understand the SAFe framework, in terms of its adoption in financial institutions. In addition to the above objective, to the study seeks to identify the benefits and challenges which financial institutions experience whilst adopting and using the SAFe framework. Subsequently, data were collected through a survey that was distributed through social media platforms such as LinkedIn. The researcher received 206 responses, whereby 108 were valid responses and this was the sample used for the research. In relation to the valid responses, it was responses received from participants whom managed to complete the entire questionnaire and these valid responses were enough to fulfill the statistical analysis that was required to be done on the data. The data were analysed using quantitative research methods such as IBM SPSS. The techniques used to analyse the data were: exploratory factor analysis, frequencies and descriptives which was used to indicate the means and standard deviations of the results that were analysed. Furthermore, the validity and reliability of the results were also tested in the research. Moreover, the results indicated the top 3 benefits and challenges of SAFe adoption and usage in financial institutions. The empirical evidence indicated “Increased alignment between teams and business units”, “Improved visibility” and “Increase in release frequency” as the top three (3) benefits. Lastly the top three (3) challenges, as per the empirical evidence, were: “Challenges with change of roles”, “Struggle to shift from the traditional waterfall culture” and “Resistance towards accepting change”