I think that's pretty close except for the joke part. The early-days problem with the Agile movement was that it promised actual change by empowering the line

I think that's pretty close except for the joke part. The early-days problem with the Agile movement was that it promised actual change by empowering the line workers to actually get things done for users by shipping early and often. That was an intolerable threat to industrial-age managerial power structures, to which waterfall is an ideal that justifies lots of management control. But since then it's been gradually watered down and tamed. Scrum's certification scam was the start of that, and SAFe strikes me as the end result: lots of Agile jargon with the rigidity of waterfall, providing long-term safety to managers in large companies everywhere. I wrote about this dynamic before SAFe existed, but it seems to fit right in with what I described: https://williampietri.com/writing/2011/agiles-second-chasm-and-how-we-fell-in/ https://williampietri.com/writing/2011/agiles-second-chasm-a...