Coaching a banking programme from a 55% Say/Do rate toward the SAFe standard.
A banking programme running the Scaled Agile Framework wanted consistent, predictable delivery, but teams were committing to sprints they couldn’t complete. We coached them through the metrics, the refinement discipline, and the stakeholder conversation that came with telling the truth about what could actually be delivered.
Say / Do rate
55% → 80%+
Sprint commitments
55% → 80%+
Say/Do rate baseline vs. the SAFe delivery standard targeted
Cycle time & throughput
Used to right-size sprint commitments, not guesswork
DoR & DoD
Definition of Ready and Definition of Done embedded in every refinement
RAID-logged
Stakeholder options and delivery decisions tracked formally
The challenge
A programme committing to more than it could deliver.
The client had adopted the Scaled Agile Framework to bring consistency to delivery across a banking programme, but the Say/Do rate, the percentage of committed work teams actually completed, was sitting at 55%, well short of the 80%+ benchmark SAFe programmes are expected to hit.
A handful of sprints of guiding and coaching made the real causes clear: teams were overloading their sprints without accounting for dependencies, code review time or likely QA issues, and stories were entering sprints without the requirements, acceptance criteria or Definition of Done rigour that refinement sessions were supposed to enforce.
Fixing that properly meant an uncomfortable trade-off: if teams committed only to what they could actually complete, delivery timelines would move, and senior stakeholders needed to hear that directly rather than watch dates slip unexplained.
Our approach
Five workstreams. Metrics first, discipline second.
We coached the teams directly through their own delivery data, rebuilt the refinement discipline underneath it, and stayed involved through the stakeholder conversation that followed.
01
Baseline & metric diagnosis
Started with the numbers: a 55% Say/Do rate against SAFe's 80%+ benchmark, alongside cycle time, throughput and dependency data, to separate a genuine capacity problem from a planning and discipline problem.
02
Refinement discipline: Definition of Ready & Done
Embedded Definition of Ready and Definition of Done into every refinement session: clear user stories, explicit acceptance criteria, and no story entering a sprint with ambiguous scope.
03
Right-sizing sprint commitments
Coached teams to commit to what their own cycle time and throughput data showed they could actually complete, replacing optimistic overloading with sprints that were achievable and, critically, predictable.
04
Dependency & quality risk management
Surfaced cross-team dependencies, code review load and QA risk during planning instead of letting them derail a sprint midway through, closing off the most common reasons committed stories slipped.
05
Stakeholder communication & RAID governance
Took the harder conversation to senior stakeholders directly: realistic commitments meant revised delivery timelines. Presented options and trade-offs, and logged the agreed mitigation in the RAID log, rather than letting dates slip silently.
The outcome
Realistic commitments, and a Say/Do rate moving toward standard.
The teams stopped overcommitting, refinement started catching scope and dependency problems before the sprint, and stakeholders had the information they needed to make an informed call on timelines.
Say/Do rate moved off a 55% baseline onto a clear trajectory toward SAFe's 80%+ delivery standard
Definition of Ready and Definition of Done applied consistently in every refinement session, not just referenced
Sprint commitments matched to real cycle time and throughput data instead of optimistic overloading
Dependencies and code review/QA risk surfaced during planning, not discovered mid-sprint
Senior stakeholders briefed early with clear options, decisions logged in the RAID log rather than timelines slipping without warning
We were saying we’d deliver and only getting through half of it, and everyone had a different theory why. DOD’s coaching showed us it wasn’t effort, it was scope discipline and dependency planning. Once we fixed that, the hard conversation with stakeholders got easier, not harder.
Committing to more than your teams can deliver?
Delivery coaching and programme oversight that turns a roadmap into sprints your teams can actually hit. Start with a discovery call.