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.
My friend and colleague Mike Hall inspired me with a recent article he shared on Choosing a SAFe Training Partner.
To be clear, I was once an SPC but I fell away from being an active practitioner of SAFe. That being said, I’m often quite opinionated about it, but over time, I have less and less direct experience.
Mike is the opposite. He’s incredibly experienced with it. So, when Mike tells me something from a SAFe perspective, I know that’s not based on opinion but on hard-won experience. And I respect that.
I really appreciated his questions about engaging a SAFe training partner. But I felt there might be some additional questions to add. Not only for a training partner but for a consultant who is prescribing SAFe as the scaling solution for my organization.
Last week I attended a 4-day Scaled Agile Framework class with a result of sitting for my SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) test. A few days after the class, I received an email telling me I passed the exam. I am now a proud and newly minted SPC. This enables me to teach several SAFe courses, to kick-off and coach Agile Release Trains (PSI’s), and to generally coach organizations that are adopting SAFe.
But to be honest, I’m still digesting SAFe. It’s not that I’m having trouble with the concepts or approaches. It’s more so that I’m having a challenge fitting them into my own experience in a useful way. You see much of what I learned in the class I’ve been using and doing for a long time in my own agile journey. But I’ve couched those techniques under Scrum of Scrums for agile scaling—and with fairly good success.
I just registered for the Scaled Agile Framework, SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) class.
I’ll be taking the course April 22-25 in Boulder. One of the reasons I picked this class is that Dean Leffingwell, the creator and prime instigator of SAFe, is teaching it. Much as I did in 2004 when I took my CSM certification with Ken Schwaber, I want to get it “from the horses mouth” so to speak.
I’ve been sitting around far too long observing it from the sidelines or peripherally and feeling quite apprehensive about the implications that SAFe has across a variety of agile principles.
Another driver is that many of my coaching colleagues have taken this course and are recommending & leading SAFe initiatives. I respect them and their balanced judgment, so I want to approach the class with as few preconceptions as I can. I’ve long respected Dean for his work in RUP and software requirements, so I want to give it (and him) a fair shot.
