1. Invite key team members to discuss proposed environment.

Interested stakeholders may include:

• Release train engineer
• Business owners

Ideally the Release Train Engineer is familiar with the SAFe process template and Engineering Workflow Management, and so can explain configuration options to the other stakeholders.

2. Review the information provided by the Portfolio Management team.

Review the vision and objectives.  Review the Portfolio Backlog content and priorities and identify the teams involved.

Topics to discuss include:

• timelines
• project areas / team areas needed
• roles/permissions (if different than the standard SAFe template)
• any other unique configuration requirements for this program.

Log in as a member of the portfolio project area. See Logging in for project administrators and team leads (web). 

Vision and objective for each program should be accessible from the portfolio and/or solution dashboard.

1. Create a new project area.

The process template preconfigures the program's project area with a default timeline, work item types, dashboards, and so on.

Note that this project area is just for the Program; the Portfolio is managed elsewhere.

Follow these instructions: Creating a project area, using the SAFe 4.5 Process (Essential SAFe) template. (Note that Program and Team areas use this same template for all configurations of SAFe - Full, Large Solution, Portfolio, and Essential  SAFe variants).

1.  Post Project Initialization Task

A task entitled Post Project Initialization is created when the project area is created.  You can use this task to track your progress configuring the program and team areas.

You can find a link to the post project initialization task on the program dashboard.

See Accessing project and team dashboards.

2. Add members to the project and assign appropriate process roles

After you create the project area, scroll to the Members section and assign process roles to members to ensure that they have the permissions required to work on project area artifacts.

As a minimum, someone should be assigned to the Release Train Engineer role.

Adding and modifying users as members of project areas and team areas 

Adding and modifying roles and permissions

3. Define categories

Categories are used to group work items. By default, a category for the program "Program Name <rename>" and example teams are created. 

Rename and add additional categories as needed.

Defining categories that work items can be filed against

1. Go to Plans > All Plans on the web browser
2. Rename the backlog names to desired names

5. (Optional) Create and Assign Work Items for the "Program Initiation"

Now that you have a project area defined, you can create and assign work items.

Use the Program Initiation work item template to create standard work items for the start of a program.

Creating work items from a template  

6. (Optional) Create and Assign Work Items for the "Program Increment"

Use the Program Increment work item template to create standard work items for the first program increment. 

Creating work items from a template

8. Define project timelines

When the project area was created, a default timeline was created.

Update the start and end dates for the first release to be correct for your project.

Add additional Iterations for each Program Increment to the timeline as needed for the first release.

Update the start and end dates of each Iteration to match your preferred Program Increment duration.

It is good practice to avoid any gaps between start and end of a timeline. If gaps should exist and work items are completed during such a gap, the burndown charts would not be able to catch this and would thus be broken.

By default, there will not be gaps, because iterations will start at 12.00 AM and end at 11.59 PM.

1. Click the Administration  icon and select Manage This Project Area.  See Logging in for project administrators and team leads.
2. Select Timelines from the left pane.
3. Select each of the timelines, click Edit Properties, and rename to match your particular program.
4. For each PI and Sprint timeline, change the start and end dates to match your program's PIs.

For more information see Setting up timelines, iterations, and team areas.

To create iterations, see Creating timelines and iterations.

1. Set the current iteration by clicking the Set Current Iteration button.

9. Update views

Projects may refine the content and organization of different views.

Configuring existing plan views