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I really want to say this: SAFe is an awful process and a trend that will hopefully go the way of Unified Process/RUP. I won't go into it, but it's largely crea

I really want to say this: SAFe is an awful process and a trend that will hopefully go the way of Unified Process/RUP. I won't go into it, but it's largely created and popularized by a vendor to sell their software. It is poison and exists to keep its practitioners employed. It attracts the highest-ego PMs like moths. I find it interesting that they author references Skype circa 2012. It sounds like classic "uppercase A" agile: they reframe success as shipping and hitting other invented agile milestones, while masking shipping lousy and incomplete product that is not succeeding in the market. That was right around the time Skype started being bad. It may succeed on some metrics because MSFT started bundling it, but anyone that actively used it at that time should know what I mean. The idea of an "agile enterprise" is intrinsically absurd. Teams are agile, not companies, and teams and products should be loosely coupled. That's why the big tech companies in this link have converged to similar answers to this problem (they are not "agile enterprises" but give teams some latitude to solve their own problems, and rather focus on results). Kanban is better in most ways for most teams. Also, Tuckman is a silly model that is only popular because it rhymes. PS: Strawberry-Jam-O-Meter and a Wrong-Order-O-Meter and their descriptions could hardly be more cringe inducing. Skype should be a part of the curriculum looking at less than ideal acquisitions and post-acquisition execution. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/skype-coronavirus-pandemic https://www.wired.co.uk/article/skype-coronavirus-pandemic has is a reasonable overview if you're not familiar. They lost the consumer market and failed at enterprise (see Teams) and Teams in turn essentially failed in the general market- where most places that were free to do so went with Slack.

rusk 5y ago
> The idea an "agile enterprise" is intrinsically absurd. Teams are agile not companies I’m really not sure what you are basing this on. Agile, as I’m familiar with it is framed in terms of lean management which is a well established approach to running business, exemplified by Toyota. Now you can debate the suitabilities of this and the effectiveness til the cows come home, just as you can with agile and scrum etc but it isn’t accurate to say that there aren’t a lot of businesses that aspire to the lean approach.
- kragen 5y ago
  I don't think it's fair to say that http://agilemanifesto.org/ http://agilemanifesto.org/ is "framed in terms of lean management", or indeed management at all. While there's nothing making it impossible to organize a company along those lines, you may be interested in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28677886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28677886 where I explain why the Agile Manifesto values are deeply opposed to many established company value systems.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
arcbyte 5y ago
As a Dev, I loved SAFE. It changed everything about how our program operated to the point our delivery became extremely predictable and we still had every 9th and 10th week to tinker on new ideas or do refactoring and cleanup where we wanted. That program purred like nothing else I've ever been a part of. Senior leaders sat with devs, started talking to everyone about their priorities - people we had never seen before we started doing PI events. Antagonism dropped. We went from not being trusted to deploy during an annual heavy use period to being totally trusted to deploy and given additional contracts for maintenance. And this was with the exact same people who had been there. We just weren't working very well before we got into SAFe. I think one of the keys to this was the buyin everyone had. It wasn't totally consistent at the beginning, but over time everyone got on board, we did trainings, actually incorporated feedback consistently. I hear SAFe hate all the time, and when I ask how things went, inevitably it turns out they never actually did SAFe. Somebody made them email a 10 week plan and used the acronym and that was it. If you're gonna do SAFe, do SAFe.
- pc86 5y ago
  Why is it that every criticism of agile/scrum/safe is met with "well you just weren't really doing it?"
  - mLuby 5y ago
    A general goes to the commander of a group of soldiers and says "In 3 months, I want them to be able to demo the "march in formation" feature in front of the big-wigs who decide whether to give us more funding." So the commander says "Yes General, we'll do Drills™ to make it happen." And then the commander writes down "Do drills" on a TODO list, gives presentations to the soldiers about the importance of drills, and maybe even hires a certified Drill Sergeant. But the commander and soldiers never actually do drills. They clean their rifles, practice shooting, and do other soldiery things, but no drilling. 3 months later, surprise surprise, the soldiers walk all over themselves at the big parade, the general is angry, and the commander is confused why simply talking about drilling didn't work.
    - 5y ago

rusk 5y ago

> The idea an "agile enterprise" is intrinsically absurd. Teams are agile not companies I’m really not sure what you are basing this on. Agile, as I’m familiar with it is framed in terms of lean management which is a well established approach to running business, exemplified by Toyota. Now you can debate the suitabilities of this and the effectiveness til the cows come home, just as you can with agile and scrum etc but it isn’t accurate to say that there aren’t a lot of businesses that aspire to the lean approach.

kragen 5y ago
I don't think it's fair to say that http://agilemanifesto.org/ http://agilemanifesto.org/ is "framed in terms of lean management", or indeed management at all. While there's nothing making it impossible to organize a company along those lines, you may be interested in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28677886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28677886 where I explain why the Agile Manifesto values are deeply opposed to many established company value systems.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

arcbyte 5y ago

As a Dev, I loved SAFE. It changed everything about how our program operated to the point our delivery became extremely predictable and we still had every 9th and 10th week to tinker on new ideas or do refactoring and cleanup where we wanted. That program purred like nothing else I've ever been a part of. Senior leaders sat with devs, started talking to everyone about their priorities - people we had never seen before we started doing PI events. Antagonism dropped. We went from not being trusted to deploy during an annual heavy use period to being totally trusted to deploy and given additional contracts for maintenance. And this was with the exact same people who had been there. We just weren't working very well before we got into SAFe. I think one of the keys to this was the buyin everyone had. It wasn't totally consistent at the beginning, but over time everyone got on board, we did trainings, actually incorporated feedback consistently. I hear SAFe hate all the time, and when I ask how things went, inevitably it turns out they never actually did SAFe. Somebody made them email a 10 week plan and used the acronym and that was it. If you're gonna do SAFe, do SAFe.

pc86 5y ago
Why is it that every criticism of agile/scrum/safe is met with "well you just weren't really doing it?"
- mLuby 5y ago
  A general goes to the commander of a group of soldiers and says "In 3 months, I want them to be able to demo the "march in formation" feature in front of the big-wigs who decide whether to give us more funding." So the commander says "Yes General, we'll do Drills™ to make it happen." And then the commander writes down "Do drills" on a TODO list, gives presentations to the soldiers about the importance of drills, and maybe even hires a certified Drill Sergeant. But the commander and soldiers never actually do drills. They clean their rifles, practice shooting, and do other soldiery things, but no drilling. 3 months later, surprise surprise, the soldiers walk all over themselves at the big parade, the general is angry, and the commander is confused why simply talking about drilling didn't work.
  - 5y ago