Our thinking on the Economic Framework evolved quite a bit with the release of SAFe 4.6. Specifically, we added lean budget guardrails and some more clarity around how both WSJF and Suppliers are material to economic decision-making. In 4.6, we reflected that in a complete rewrite of the article attached to the icon.  However, although it applies at all levels, that icon is physically located only on the large solution level, which not everyone uses. We had thoughts of moving the icon to the spanning palette to make it more obvious, but we didn’t do so because it’s busy there, too.

In order to make the guidance clearer— and in the spirit of continuous value delivery—we’ve just moved most of this new content into a just-published update to the Principle 1 article. If you are already familiar with both those articles, you won’t find much new here, but now the economic principle is better grounded, more specific and more consistent.

While there isn’t much new in this particular refactoring, we always try to inform you of any incremental updates to SAFe, and changing a principle is certainly one of them.

—Dean and the Framework team