  The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a framework for scaling agile methods in
large organizations. We have found several experience reports and white papers
describing SAFe adoptions in different banks, which indicates that SAFe is
being used in the banking industry. However, there is a lack of academic
publications on the topic, the banking industry is missing in the scientific
reports analyzing SAFe transformations. To fill this gap, we present a study on
the main challenges with a SAFe transformation at a large full-service bank. We
identify the challenges in the bank under study and compare the findings with
experience reports from other banks, as well as with research on SAFe
transformations in other domains. Many of the challenges reported in this paper
overlap with the generic SAFe challenges, including management and
organization, education and training, culture and mindset, requirements
engineering, quality assurance, and systems architecture. However, we also
report some novel challenges specific to the banking domain, e.g., the risk of
jeopardizing customer relations, stability, and trust of external stakeholders.
This study validates several SAFe-related challenges reported in previous work
in the banking context. It also brings up some novel challenges specific to the
banking industry. Therefore, we believe our results are particularly useful to
practitioners responsible for SAFe transformations at other banks.
