Goodbye SAFe?


#1

Bob makes some good points which seem to echo some of my own. Thoughts?


#2

Organizations only see the full placemat because that what the consultants shown them. Itā€™s like me at the Waffle House at 3 am after half a bottle of Knobb Creek. I want it all.

In reality they needed only essential SAFe.

I am no SAFe fanboy, but I use a modified per PI and PI planning, Because it allows us to build the planning rhythm in the organization that we need right now. We will iteratively remove it later.

Be smart donā€™t create roles for job security sake.
Our RTE is just a PM who is there to keep grease in the wheels.


#3

I agree that there are some fair points in the article. I would like only to know the other best alternative. Is there another framework that Bob would rather promote? And why?

I think A framework is needed for organisations to use for multiple reasons. Firstly, they can rely on something that has been tested across different organisations and they can use that experience. Of course there may still need to make some modifications, but they donā€™t have to reinvent the wheel. Secondly, if the organisation agrees to use one framework they can use the same terminology and definitions. I believe itā€™s a key factor to limit misunderstandings and chaos.


#4

Zofia-wait till our podcast series finishes and we can discuss the alternatives to SAFe and what you think some of the pros and cons areā€¦ :grinning:


#5

Im also not a fan of SAFe, but i have seen some ok implementations. Its better suited for very large projects and orgaizational transformation. Scaling should always be considered situational. The approach is dependent on a lot of factors. For incremental scaling i like LeSS. In a recent team we used LeSS and also introduced PI planning at 6 week intervals which has proved to be useful.


#6

My two cents on the frameworks: each one has pros/cons and are context specific. Itā€™s not like thereā€™s a Power Ranking which chooses one over the otherā€¦as mature practitioners we should be stealing from each one whatever will work for us in each of our situations.


#7

We have been using SAFe and have been very happy with it. It has been working very well for a large complex organization like ours


#8

Iā€™ve only used bits and pieces of SAFe. There are some parts that deserve praise, but overall, I agree with Bobā€™s blog post. I think if you need training to understand a diagram, then itā€™s too much.


#9

@johnpcutler tweeted something recently that I am shocked hadnā€™t already occurred to me. It was something like this: SAFe isnā€™t a ā€œScaling Frameworkā€. Itā€™s life support. Itā€™s a stent for large systems that are dying from dependencies.

Scaling means going from small to big. SAFe goes from Big to Different Big. If it had actually ā€˜scaledā€™ in an ā€˜agileā€™ way, it would probably end up very different from what SAFe is.

ā€¦I need to find that tweetā€¦