Agile Australia 2014 presentation on the hype and debate surrounding SAFe

1. Mark Richards
Partner, Context Matters
@MarkAtScale
www.agilenotanarchy.com
mark@contextmatters.com.au
SAFe
Corruption, Cop-out or
Corporate Kaizen?
Agile Australia
June 2014

2. “Kanban – the anti-SAFe for almost a decade”
July 31, 2013
DAVID ANDERSON

3. “unSAFe at any speed”
August 6, 2013
KEN SCHWABER

4. “Don’t call SAFe ‘Agile at Scale’, it’s not”
August 21, 2013
JOHANNA ROTHMANN

5. “SAFe – Good but not good enough”
February 27, 2014
RON JEFFRIES

6. “SAFe: The infantilism of management”
March 25, 2014
DAVID SNOWDEN

7. “This effort has aligned our business focus and
our development focus”
20-25% increase in customer satisfaction
SEI

8. “We are creating an environment where engaged
people thrive”
76% decrease in time to deliver on a customer request
MITCHELL

9. “Conversations are fundamentally changing at
the Sr. executive team level focusing less on
tactical implementation and more on strategic
growth initiatives”
VALPAK

10. DOES DEAN LEFFINGWELL EAT BABIES?

11. THE “E” IN SAFE STANDS FOR “ENTERPRISE”

12. THE DREADED WORDS – “THAT’S NOT AGILE!”

13. AGILE IN THE ENTERPRISE – TECHNICAL VIEW
AGILE WEB
SAP
SIEBEL
EAI
AMDOCS
PEOPLESOFT

14. AGILE IN THE ENTERPRISE – ORGANISATIONAL VIEW
AGILE TEAM
ITIL
RELEASE
CALENDAR
PORTFOLIO
MANAGEMENT
CAPITAL PLANNING
ENTERPRISE
ARCHITECTURE
PROCUREMENT
SECURITY

16. WHAT MANY FEAR
PORTFOLIO
PROGRAM
TEAM
“The structure and teaching of SAFe are relentlessly top down.
All the important stuff is figured out up in the portfolio. All the
Features are figured out in the Program. Now you guys build and
Test that!?”
Ron Jeffries

17. CENTRALISE STRATEGY, LOCALISE EXECUTION
PORTFOLIO
PROGRAM
LOCAL PROGRAM CONTENT
DECISION-MAKING BY
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
BASED ON DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE,
CUSTOMER AND TEAM FEEDBACK
INVESTMENT THEMES
FUND STRATEGY
IMPLEMENTATION
EPICS CARRY
CENTRALISED
INITIATIVES

18. The Release Train
A long-lived, self organising team of
teams aligned around a value stream
employing Lean/Agile principles and
practices to optimise the flow of value.

19. THE PROGRAM INCREMENT
• A routine and continuous
planning cycle
• An aggregation of
iterations value into
larger piles of
newsworthy value
• A quantum unit of
thinking, roadmapping,
implementing and
measuring

20. PLAN TO CREATE ALIGNMENT, NOT FORCE CONFORMANCE
“Safe – central planning with Scrum below”
Arlo Belshee

21. IS SAFE TOO PRESCRIPTIVE?
“What SAFe prescribes is thoughtful and well-
intentioned. It just takes it a bit too far and defines
everything .. almost too much .. but I can see why this
is a great selling idea”
Peter Saddington

22. OR JUST STRUCTURED ENOUGH?
“This is the essence of control by release. Control by
turning loose within well-understood parameters.
Control by trusting the process. This doesn’t mean
anything goes.”
Rob Austin & Lee Devin – Artful Making

23. WHAT ABOUT LEADERSHIP?
“SAFe is not only a betrayal of the promise provided
by AGILE but is a massive retrograde step giving the
managerial class an excuse to avoid any significant
change”
David Snowden

24. • Take a Systems View
• Embrace the Agile Manifesto
• Implement Product Development Flow
• Unlock the Intrinsic Motivation of Knowledge
Workers
SAFe Principles of Lean|Agile Leadership

25. SAFE IS A FRAMEWORK
As scaling unfolds,
sometimes it is
necessary to inject a big
dose of complexity to
get through certain
phases – and then cart it
away when it is no
longer needed
Bob Sutton
(Scaling Excellence)

26. SAFE IS NOT A DESTINATION, IT’S A LAUNCHPAD
When big organisations scale
well, they focus on “moving a
thousand people a foot at a
time, rather than moving one
person forward by a
thousand feet”
Bob Sutton
(Scaling Excellence)

27. Mark Richards
Partner, Context Matters
@MarkAtScale
www.agilenotanarchy.com
mark@contextmatters.com.au
“The value of any practice depends on its context”
“There are good practices in context, but there are no best
practices”
Cem Kaner, James Bach