SAFe

Considering SAFe for your Agile transformation? Pause and explore a more tailored, effective approach - a leaner alternative to SAFe. Having led successful large-scale SAFe rollouts, I’ve seen its strengths and weaknesses. SAFe can work, but its success hinges on flexibility rather than rigid adherence. Here’s a streamlined, four-step alternative that prioritizes value, empowerment, and lasting results. Step 1: Define Clear Business Objectives Start by [...]

SAFe’s emphasis on writing Features and waterfalling them into the Agile Teams is unfortunate. This approach can easily result in what is commonly known as a “Feature Factory”. In a Feature Factory, the focus is on discovering and writing Features. Unempowered teams are handed Features to go off and build. This makes the Agile Team accountable for delivering Features (an output), instead of true business [...]

I’m often asked, “When will my team join an ART?” My typical go-to answer is, “Maybe never! It’s more about finding the leanest operating model than it is about launching ARTs.” SAFe does a great job introducing us to the notion of a Development Value Stream (DVS). SAFe also does a great job describing the Agile Release Train (ART) as a virtual structure of 5 [...]

Empowered Agile Transformation – Beyond the Framework, by Alexandra Stokes, 2023 What a great book! Alexandra Stokes has written the book many of us Agilists wanted to write. Her approach to Agile transformation is logical, empathetic, goal-oriented, and dare I say it "frameless". She includes over 30 personal stories of her Agile transformation successes and failures. One theme that really resonated with me was to [...]

We’ve all been there before, right? On one hand, we live in a classic siloed organization that is slow to respond to the market. Cross-org dependencies are the norm. The flow of value to the customer is slow. Painfully slow. Value stream identification is non-existent. On the other hand, we understand the power of “alignment to value” and its potential impact on the flow of [...]

Leaders and Executives considering a “scaled Agile transformation” – you have a choice. You can fall in line with the masses and install a scaling framework such as SAFe. Alternatively, you can take a much more targeted approach, one that addresses your needs specifically, and that actually simplifies (de-scales) product development. SAFe vs. Simple Scaling. Let’s compare these two approaches in an attempt to outfit [...]

Here I make the case for installing SAFe as-is. Note: Be sure and read to the end! The Case for Installing SAFe As-Is Installing SAFe as-is is appropriate when you have all of these situations: We need to “scale Agile up” to levels higher than Team-level Each team needs consistency of using ScrumXP or Kanban XP practices are needed to improve the quality of the [...]