Safe - corruption, copout or corporate kaizen

Mark Richards

Partner, Context Matters @MarkAtScale

www.agilenotanarchy.com

mark@contextmatters.com.au

SAFe Corruption, Cop-out or

Corporate Kaizen?

Agile Australia

June 2014

“Kanban – the anti-SAFe for almost a decade”July 31, 2013

DAVID ANDERSON

“unSAFe at any speed”August 6, 2013

KEN SCHWABER

“Don’t call SAFe ‘Agile at Scale’, it’s not”August 21, 2013

JOHANNA ROTHMANN

“SAFe – Good but not good enough”February 27, 2014

RON JEFFRIES

“SAFe: The infantilism of management”March 25, 2014

DAVID SNOWDEN

“This effort has aligned our business focus and our development focus”

20-25% increase in customer satisfaction

SEI

“We are creating an environment where engaged people thrive”

76% decrease in time to deliver on a customer request

MITCHELL

“Conversations are fundamentally changing at the Sr. executive team level focusing less on tactical implementation and more on strategic

growth initiatives”

VALPAK

DOES DEAN LEFFINGWELL EAT BABIES?

THE “E” IN SAFE STANDS FOR “ENTERPRISE”

THE DREADED WORDS – “THAT’S NOT AGILE!”

AGILE IN THE ENTERPRISE – TECHNICAL VIEW

AGILE WEB

SAPSIEBEL

EAIAMDOCS

PEOPLESOFT

AGILE IN THE ENTERPRISE – ORGANISATIONAL VIEW

AGILE TEAM

ITILRELEASECALENDAR

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

CAPITAL PLANNING

ENTERPRISEARCHITECTURE

PROCUREMENT

SECURITY

PREVIEW ONLY

WHAT MANY FEAR

PORTFOLIO

PROGRAM

TEAM

“The structure and teaching of SAFe are relentlessly top down.All the important stuff is figured out up in the portfolio. All theFeatures are figured out in the Program. Now you guys build andTest that!?”

Ron Jeffries

CENTRALISE STRATEGY, LOCALISE EXECUTIONPORTFOLIO

PROGRAMLOCAL PROGRAM CONTENT

DECISION-MAKING BYPRODUCT MANAGEMENT

BASED ON DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE,CUSTOMER AND TEAM FEEDBACK

INVESTMENT THEMESFUND STRATEGY

IMPLEMENTATION

EPICS CARRYCENTRALISEDINITIATIVES

The Release Train

A long-lived, self organising team of teams aligned around a value stream employing Lean/Agile principles and practices to optimise the flow of value.

THE PROGRAM INCREMENT

• A routine and continuous planning cycle

• An aggregation of iterations value into larger piles of newsworthy value

• A quantum unit of thinking, roadmapping, implementing and measuring

PLAN TO CREATE ALIGNMENT, NOT FORCE CONFORMANCE

“Safe – central planning with Scrum below”Arlo Belshee

IS SAFE TOO PRESCRIPTIVE?

“What SAFe prescribes is thoughtful and well-intentioned. It just takes it a bit too far and defines everything .. almost too much .. but I can see why this is a great selling idea”

Peter Saddington

OR JUST STRUCTURED ENOUGH?

“This is the essence of control by release. Control by turning loose within well-understood parameters. Control by trusting the process. This doesn’t mean anything goes.”

Rob Austin & Lee Devin – Artful Making

WHAT ABOUT LEADERSHIP?

“SAFe is not only a betrayal of the promise provided by AGILE but is a massive retrograde step giving the managerial class an excuse to avoid any significant change”

David Snowden

• Take a Systems View

• Embrace the Agile Manifesto

• Implement Product Development Flow

• Unlock the Intrinsic Motivation of Knowledge Workers

SAFe Principles of Lean|Agile Leadership

SAFE IS A FRAMEWORK

As scaling unfolds, sometimes it is necessary to inject a big dose of complexity to get through certain phases – and then cart it away when it is no longer needed

Bob Sutton(Scaling Excellence)

SAFE IS NOT A DESTINATION, IT’S A LAUNCHPAD

When big organisations scale well, they focus on “moving a thousand people a foot at a time, rather than moving one person forward by a thousand feet”

Bob Sutton(Scaling Excellence)

Mark Richards

Partner, Context Matters @MarkAtScale

www.agilenotanarchy.com

mark@contextmatters.com.au

“The value of any practice depends on its context”

“There are good practices in context, but there are no best practices”

Cem Kaner, James Bach