Agile practices are a group of behaviors and TECHNIQUES that USE an empirical approach to deliver as much business value as possible in a given AMOUNT of time. They use iterations followed by inspect-and-adapt POINTS to accommodate emerging requirements. It is a broad term that covers a number of different methods. It was created by a group of people who represented the methods that existed at the time (Scrum, Extreme Programming, Feature Driven Development, Crystal, etc.) Prior to the creation of the manifesto they were referred to as “Lightweight Methods.” Agile, in fact, is a way of thinking.

On the contrary, SAFe is an acronym for the Scaled Agile Framework, which is a branded version of a scaling model. Other scaling models include Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) and Scrum@Scale. Scaling models add extra layers of communication and controls to allow people to use agile methods (like Scrum) with very large groups. It is an attempt to take Scrum/ Kanban/ ScrumXp and make it work in large organizations with lots of teams working on the same product. SAFe DEFINES an approach for scaling lightweight methods to an enterprise level and dealing with some of the challenges at that level that a team-level process based on Scrum does not address.