True story – I once did some consulting at a Fortune 50 company where the SAFe transformation success was measured by “number of ARTs launched”. You can guess what happened… Fake Agile Release Trains (FARTs).
Entire VP and Director organizations were now calling themselves an “Agile Release Train” and going through the motions of a cadenced PI Planning event. When I asked one of the VPs about this he responded “This is required of us to go SAFe.” I asked if he knew what a value stream was. He replied “We are being asked to launch trains, not value streams.” Uh, OK.
In other words, lets launch Fake Agile Release Trains (FARTs). Nothing changed other than the facade of scaled agility. Oh, and a +1 in the metrics column.
True story.
Stop the Madness!
Folks, again – stop launching ARTs around org boundaries. Stop launching 2- and 3-team ARTs. Stop the madness!
Straight from SAFe (paraphrased): Agile Release Trains are organized around significant development value streams to realize that value through building and delivering the solution together. That’s right, an ART represents a VALUE STREAM (typically not an org)!
ARTs are intended to be 50 – 125 people. Having a 2- or 3-team ART makes no sense whatsoever. It is entirely possible that a development value stream is manifested by a single team building the product. No need for an ART, and certainly no need for a FART!
Wrap
If that’s not your situation, then don’t launch Fake Agile Release Trains (FARTs). That would be like redrawing the Mona Lisa with a Mr. Bean face.
If it is your situation, then perform a value stream identification activity and go for it!
For more information on SAFe Agile Release Trains, go here. For more information on what all is involved in an Agile transformation, go here.