Flavors of Agile - SAFe

 

A bit of advice.  If you're preparing butter chicken and want to soften your ghee in the microwave, make sure the foil from the safety/freshness seal has been completely removed from the rim of the container.  Unless you want to watch a fireworks show in your microwave.  I have to admit, it is a little bit exciting, but I don't recommend it.

Microwaves are ubiquitous enough that most people should know, by now, that you should not microwave metal.  Have you ever started a project and skipped a little step or detail, only to have it come back and bite you, later?  That's all this bit of foil was on the top of the ghee container.  A tiny detail.  It would have taken less than a moment (measure that!) to scrape it off with the back of the knife I was going to use to remove the ghee from the container, if I had bothered to check for it.  Fortunately, nothing was ruined.  The ghee did not catch fire.  The microwave did not blow up.  If you've never heard me say this before, I'll say it now; exciting can be overrated.

I bring this up because of this week's flavor of Agile - SAFe, or the Scaled Agile Framework.  Is there something about SAFe that makes it safer than other flavors of Agile, or is it just a catchy acronym?

Even though there is a set of general Agile principles, authors of the many flavors of Agile seem to feel compelled to add their own principles, or variations of the originals.  SAFe is no different.  SAFe has nine Lean and Agile principles:

1. Take an economic view
2. Apply systems thinking
3. Assume variability; preserve options
4. Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
5. Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
6. Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
7. Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning
8. Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
9. Decentralize decision-making

…and four core values:

1. Alignment
2. Built-in quality
3. Transparency
4. Program execution

Don't misunderstand me. These values and principles do not replace the agile manifesto and twelve general principles behind it.  They attempt to add additional meaning and structure to them, while discussing how to apply them to your business as you use SAFe.  For example, the following statement is made on the values page; I completely agree with it.

"While empowered Agile Teams are good (even great), the responsibility for strategy and alignment cannot rest with the accumulated opinions of the teams, no matter how good they are."

SAFe provides a tool for determining where decision-making should lie, for each type of decision that needs to be made.  Some decisions should be de-centralized, while others need to remain centralized.  Understanding the difference and empowering the right people to make the decisions that they should be making is part of the main principles behind SAFe.

I'm hoping that someone who uses SAFe can reply to the following statement, and let me know if I am on or off the mark.  SAFe can almost be called Lean Scrum+.  It's Lean, and it's Scrum, plus organizational considerations and practices that Scrum does not address.  It even includes guidelines for implementing SAFe, which not all flavors do.  It also discusses SAFe at the enterprise level.  I recommend reviewing these guidelines regardless of which flavor of Agile you are going to implement; much of the information applies regardless of which flavor you are implementing.

Check out this video for a five minute overview of how SAFe works.  You'll see similarities to and differences from other flavors of Agile.

So, is SAFe safe?  As you take agile practices combined with best practices for implementation and enterprise considerations that most executives are familiar with, it certainly feels safe.  It's a few years old, but I found a blog post where Ken Schwaber was not shy about his feelings for SAFe - decidedly not safe.  I know people hate this answer, but it depends.  Companies have failed implementing Scrum; can you say that Scrum is always safe?

Sometimes, implementing something that fits your organizational culture is the best way to go.  Sometimes, you need to shake things up and go counter to your culture to achieve success.  It's harder, but disruptive change is not always a bad thing.

I feel like I've just solved a riddle.  You can be SAFe and disruptive at the same time!