Viewing entries tagged
agile at scale

The GREAT Enterprise Agile Coaching Mistake

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The GREAT Enterprise Agile Coaching Mistake

I have a good friend and colleague who works in a rather large enterprise. Among others, she’s tasked with bringing “agile” into the organization and “transforming” their work. She’s largely leading the effort, so has a tremendous amount of responsibility for its success.

They’ve chosen Scrum for this effort.

They’ve engaged a rather large agile coaching firm to help them “go Agile”.

So far their strategy has been along the following lines:

  1. Hire full-time agile coaches
  2. Do a little training for “Leaders and Managers”, less than a ½ day, usually 60-90 minutes
  3. Spin-up Scrum teams (a little training), with Technical Leads as ScrumMasters and limited Product Owners (time and skill)
  4. Start sprinting
  5. Hire more agile coaches
  6. Spin up more Scrum teams…start sprinting
  7. Rinse & repeat…

To-date, there are more than 50+ newly minted Scrum teams who are dutifully sprinting away creating lots and lots of value.

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What Problems Are Executives Trying To Solve With Agile?

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What Problems Are Executives Trying To Solve With Agile?

Mike Cottmeyer is one of my favorite agile coaches and leaders within our community. When he worked for VersionOne years ago, I used to read his blogs fairly often. Now that he’s been out on his own with LeadingAgile, I don’t get the chance as often to experience his thoughts.

So I was pleased when I ran into a recent post by Mike that had the same title as this post. I read it with anticipation, and as with all of his writing, Mike made me stop and think a bit. Here’s a context snippet from Mike’s post:

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Scaled Agile Framework - Is it SAFe?

I attended an Agile Leadership Network (ALN-Raleigh/Durham) meeting a few weeks ago where Dean Leffingwell presented the Scaled Agile Framework. It was a solid meeting and quite thought provoking.

As with any "good" meeting, I went away thinking about what I heard, the contrasts against my own experience, and tried to sort through my reactions - both good & bad.

I've written some of them down in this article. I hope it comes off even handed, while still clearly communicating my concerns.

I guess the point is: Is SAFe...safe? I'm not quite sure yet ;-)

Thanks for listening,

Bob.