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I recently took a mandatory SAFe course. The introduction consisted of mainly justifying the practice by comparing it to the waterfall method. The latter being

I recently took a mandatory SAFe course. The introduction consisted of mainly justifying the practice by comparing it to the waterfall method. The latter being defined absolutely ridiculos. The client is not allowed to see incremental versions until the entire thing is completely finalized, maybe 2 years later. The initial design is not allowed to be altered. Testing can't start until the entire application is done, etc. If you have to misrepresent the alternative (false dichotomy anyway) then maybe you don't have anything of value to bring to the table. That's what it felt to me.

chasd00 6y ago
“client is not allowed to see” lol yeah that is so removed from reality as to be laughable. If I told a client you can’t see what we have the client would reply “ok, you can’t see a bank deposit until I get a demo of progress”.
- detaro 6y ago
  Presumably this is in a context where the money is paid out in a very small number of batches upon hitting milestones, and the majority upon finalizing. There it wouldn't suprise me to see a "progress only gets shown at the milestone dates/review meetings/..." (likely still a bad idea, unless you have some pathological politics at work at the client)
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  In the defense contracting (and much of government contracting) world the way things are paid out is on hitting milestones. Milestones are not, necessarily (in the best case they are), incremental releases that could possibly stand alone without much further development. https://acqnotes.com/acqnote/acquisitions/milestone-overview https://acqnotes.com/acqnote/acquisitions/milestone-overview This is literally the way the US DoD has done acquisition for decades. In the early phases there are often (but not always) multiple R&D efforts which are evaluated later (in the aircraft world think about the various X aircraft that compete to become the next fighter). But once it's selected, it's very waterfall-esque from within the context of the program office which encourages (but does not mandate) a waterfall approach from whoever is doing the work as well. They do periodic check-ins, but they're basically waiting for the entire thing to be produced before it can be evaluated properly. The checkins are just smaller milestones, again not necessarily increments which could standalone if the project were to stop there. And yes, US DoD does big bang testing at the end. They have test organizations which receive software/hardware systems (cyber-physical systems is a common phrasing for them) and evaluate them at the end of the development process. Ideally, of course, the development team is also doing testing. But even then, in software, they tend to do scattershot testing during development with one big bang test run at the end.
caymanjim 6y ago
SAFe is the opposite of agile. It's what companies practicing waterfall (or any other heavyweight, non-agile process) turn to when they don't understand the problem, lack the will to solve it, but are compelled by external forces to make a change. When the board issues an edict to "adopt agile" because someone told them it was good, SAFe is what they turn to. It's anti-agile. Not only does it not solve the problem, it adds even more overhead. There's a whole industry built around the lie.
Jtsummers 6y ago
> The client is not allowed to see incremental versions until the entire thing is completely finalized, maybe 2 years later. The initial design is not allowed to be altered. Testing can't start until the entire application is done, etc. TBF, in the defense and defense contracting world that is not an unusual situation. It's a terrible situation, but it's not unusual. I've seen multimillion and multibillion dollar mistakes caused by this repeatedly. It's improving, but SAFe is not the answer. If it were, the F-35 may not have been such a clusterfuck. SAFe is overly prescriptive and inflexible, it's a way to make managers happy but does little to actually improve the situation.
datavirtue 6y ago
It's a compelling simple story for the decision makers that only requires them to spend other people's money and avoid changing themselves or their organization. Irresistible.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
You just have to look at the SAFe diagram to see that it’s complete insanity. Basically the pipe dream of managers who want a fully automated, predictable process. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ https://www.scaledagileframework.com/
- Izkata 6y ago
  I like how, outside of the central diagram, there's random buzzwords not connected to anything.

chasd00 6y ago

“client is not allowed to see” lol yeah that is so removed from reality as to be laughable. If I told a client you can’t see what we have the client would reply “ok, you can’t see a bank deposit until I get a demo of progress”.

detaro 6y ago
Presumably this is in a context where the money is paid out in a very small number of batches upon hitting milestones, and the majority upon finalizing. There it wouldn't suprise me to see a "progress only gets shown at the milestone dates/review meetings/..." (likely still a bad idea, unless you have some pathological politics at work at the client)
Jtsummers 6y ago
In the defense contracting (and much of government contracting) world the way things are paid out is on hitting milestones. Milestones are not, necessarily (in the best case they are), incremental releases that could possibly stand alone without much further development. https://acqnotes.com/acqnote/acquisitions/milestone-overview https://acqnotes.com/acqnote/acquisitions/milestone-overview This is literally the way the US DoD has done acquisition for decades. In the early phases there are often (but not always) multiple R&D efforts which are evaluated later (in the aircraft world think about the various X aircraft that compete to become the next fighter). But once it's selected, it's very waterfall-esque from within the context of the program office which encourages (but does not mandate) a waterfall approach from whoever is doing the work as well. They do periodic check-ins, but they're basically waiting for the entire thing to be produced before it can be evaluated properly. The checkins are just smaller milestones, again not necessarily increments which could standalone if the project were to stop there. And yes, US DoD does big bang testing at the end. They have test organizations which receive software/hardware systems (cyber-physical systems is a common phrasing for them) and evaluate them at the end of the development process. Ideally, of course, the development team is also doing testing. But even then, in software, they tend to do scattershot testing during development with one big bang test run at the end.

caymanjim 6y ago

SAFe is the opposite of agile. It's what companies practicing waterfall (or any other heavyweight, non-agile process) turn to when they don't understand the problem, lack the will to solve it, but are compelled by external forces to make a change. When the board issues an edict to "adopt agile" because someone told them it was good, SAFe is what they turn to. It's anti-agile. Not only does it not solve the problem, it adds even more overhead. There's a whole industry built around the lie.

Jtsummers 6y ago

> The client is not allowed to see incremental versions until the entire thing is completely finalized, maybe 2 years later. The initial design is not allowed to be altered. Testing can't start until the entire application is done, etc. TBF, in the defense and defense contracting world that is not an unusual situation. It's a terrible situation, but it's not unusual. I've seen multimillion and multibillion dollar mistakes caused by this repeatedly. It's improving, but SAFe is not the answer. If it were, the F-35 may not have been such a clusterfuck. SAFe is overly prescriptive and inflexible, it's a way to make managers happy but does little to actually improve the situation.

datavirtue 6y ago

It's a compelling simple story for the decision makers that only requires them to spend other people's money and avoid changing themselves or their organization. Irresistible.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

You just have to look at the SAFe diagram to see that it’s complete insanity. Basically the pipe dream of managers who want a fully automated, predictable process. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ https://www.scaledagileframework.com/

Izkata 6y ago
I like how, outside of the central diagram, there's random buzzwords not connected to anything.