First 30 days of a Release Train Engineer
You’ve joined an existing ART as a new RTE. What should you do in your first 30 days?
Q: I’ve recently stepped into a SAFe Scrum Master / RTE-type role for an Agile Release Train that already existed before I joined. I don’t know where to start with this ART as an RTE. What should I do in my first 30 days?
Thank you for the question.
Joining an existing Agile Release Train as a new RTE (or a hybrid SM/RTE) is really quite different from launching one.
An existing Train has a heartbeat, a history, habits, good and bad, and there are people who are watching to see what you are going to change. The worst thing you can do in your first 30 days is walk in with a checklist of SAFe best practices and start "fixing" things.
Everyone feels pressure to “add value” quickly when they join a new team.
Resist that urge.
In your first 30 days, you are NOT going to fix the Train… or anything
The first thing you are going to do is understand the system you have joined, build trust, and discover where your help is actually needed.
And this is exactly what we are going to cover in this post.
Let’s get started.
Got an urgent question?
Get a quick answer by joining the subscriber chat below.
