A few years ago, I promised myself that I wouldn’t write about (vent, rebut, defame, complain, rebuke, or otherwise whine about) SAFe any longer. It just frustrated me, made me an angry old curmudgeon, and significantly raised my blood pressure. And I realized that I needed to focus on more “positive” things in the agile community.
But dammit, it’s happened to me again. I’ve been SAFe’d…
Late last year I attended a meeting where a SAFe agilist and Fellow, presented a talk on finding purpose in SAFe. I’ll refer to them as Sam.
First Impressions
I don’t believe I’d met Sam before or at least not that I remembered. Sam seemed to be well-intentioned and principled. Sam was clearly a very smart and polished SAFe supporter and evangelist. And Sam also had a strong Kanban background and the lean side of that shined through the presentation.
I don’t want this to be interpreted as an opinion of Sam as a person. Instead, it’s an opinion (again) of SAFe and Sam representing SAFe as a Fellow.
His LENS
Sam seemed to have recent experience or a contextual lens that focused on—
Very large organizations; Fortune 50;
Collaborating largely (only) with senior leadership stakeholders;
Implementing Lean at an organizational level; not that interested in “team-level agility/Scrum”;
Following the SAFe roll-out map;
And generally having a very high-level view as to what lean, agile, scaling “looks like”.
And, while Sam tried to appear agnostic to some degree and, whether Sam realized it or not, SAFe was their answer or tool or lens for ALL aspects of large-scale business agility.
I think I’m being fair in this assessment—capturing it from the essence of what I heard in Sam’s presentation and in answers to the group’s questions.
If my LENS was…
And if my lens were the same as Sam’s, and I can’t believe I’m saying this…
I would probably look at SAFe as a viable framework and approach. I mean, heck, I’d need to have a top-down approach & strategy, largely abstract myself from the people, and try to instantiate an agile mindset with a framework with lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of guidance.
(respectful head nod to RUP or Rational Unified Process)
And I’m not being sarcastic. If I entered most large-scale organizations with this lens, then SAFe would make a lot of sense.
BUT…
My spider-sense is telling me that this lens can miss things. Important things that are necessary to create a—
Balanced;
Mindset and principles rooted;
Team-centric;
Respectful and Healthy;
instance of agility. You see, I really don’t buy the whole “we need to follow the leaders, top-down” approach of SAFe.
Yes, it can generate shit-tons of money for the SPC’s and consultants. And yes, it can create a healthy-looking agile façade.
But I don’t see it as creating a culture of top-down, middle-out, and bottom-up holistic engagement with empowerment, safety, and full, bring your whole self to work, engagement.
But I digress.
My Direct Issues
I have several specific issues with Sam’s presentation—
Sam seemed to imply that there was Scrum (for the team, in the small) and then SAFe (for everything else, for scale). With nothing in between. Sam mentioned Scrum wasn’t “good enough” several times and then used this to imply that SAFe was the next step up. Not even mentioning Scrum of Scrums or similar incremental and alternative approaches for scaling.
Sam’s position seemed to be, that if you optimize the organization (Lean, SAFe, LACE), then the teams will be fine. That is, it felt to me that Sam had lost interest in and empathy for the teams. That interacting only upwardly as a consultant had skewed Sam’s views and perceptions. In other words, Sam had gotten “pickled” to some degree with SAFe, the stakeholders, and enterprise-level complexity.
And team engagement seemed to be focused on simply “doing the work” or doing as you are told. The only opportunities I heard where the teams were listened to were the PI events in SAFe. Well, that and the leadership-driven LACE. So, the teams were relegated to a feedback source only.
My feelings at the end of the session were that Sam was a bit lost. Sam had lost the way in understanding that the value proposition, the leadership, the ideas, the strategies, and virtually everything we do in agile contexts should be inclusive of our teams. That they ARE where the rubber meets the road. It is about the teams. Period!
A Wee Bit of Weinberg
I believe Sam may have fallen into a trap that quite a lot of SAFe/Agile coaches have fallen into. And I’ll use two of Gerald Weinberg’s, Secrets of Consulting, principles to make the point.
First, there is—
The Law of the Hammer: “the child who receives a hammer for Christmas will discover that everything needs pounding.”
And second, there is—
Prescott’s Pickle Principle: “Cucumbers get more pickled than brine gets cucumbered.”
Wrapping Up
I guess my net-net reaction is that Sam and I will probably—agree to disagree.
As I said, Sam seemed well-intentioned and experienced. I think we simply look at the state of agile from two distinctly different lenses. And that’s ok.
If I were building a team of coaches, I would want Sam on my team. I’m sure I could learn a ton from him and not just about SAFe. And I truly appreciate his genuineness and thoughtfulness. Plus he would certainly challenge me on a number of views and positions.
But I wonder if Sam has gotten just a wee bit pickled in the barrel of SAFe and its associated contexts? Methinks, yes, But that’s only conjecture. But if one can become pickled, one can also unpickle themselves.
Stay agile AND unpickled my friends,
Bob.
https://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2016/5/22/its-about-the-agile-team-stupid
https://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2015/12/8/what-does-agile-maturity-look-like