Can you be safe with SAFe? - Agile Day Chicago · • Executive/Transformation Coach, Trainer • THE Ohio State University/Johns Hopkins grad • Current President/CEO of the Anne

Can you be safe with SAFe?

Agile Day ChicagoKen France

October, 2018

Obligatory Dilbert Opening

Who’s this Ken guy?

• Former Co-Founder/CEO of Blue Agility

• Acquired by cPrime in August, 2017

• 25+ Years industry experience

• IBM/Loral/Lockheed: Air Traffic Control Developer/Lead• Rational Software: Consultant• Number Six Software: VP Field Operations

• Executive/Transformation Coach, Trainer

• THE Ohio State University/Johns Hopkins grad

• Current President/CEO of the Anne Steiner Fan Club

• Except for that “Badger” thing

SELECT

CLIENTS

• Prudential

• Blue Cross BlueShield of NC

• T. Rowe Price

• Travelers

• Cigna

• Bed, Bath, and Beyond

Ken France, VP Scaled Agile Practice

cPrime SAFe SPCT/Fellow

Agenda

1. What are people saying?

2. What is SAFe?

3. Ok, so how do you make it safe?

4. Parting thoughts

5. Q&A

WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING?

Notable Quotes/Articles

“The boys from RUP (Rational Unified Process) are back.”

Ken Schwaber, “UnSAFe at any speed”, 2013

“Kanban: the anti-SAFe for almost a decade already”

David Anderson, 2013

“I do not like it. It’s fast food. You can do better.”

Ron Jefferies, “SAFe – Good But Not Good Enough”, 2014

“It’s too big”

“It’s too prescriptive”

“It’s too complicated”

“In our culture, people will try to follow this step by step without deviation. That concerns me.”

Head of PMO, recent cPrime client

“It’s all essential, what would you take away?”

- Anonymous

WHAT IS SAFE?

SAFe is a knowledge base of proven,

integrated principles and practices for

Lean, Agile, and DevOps.

SAFe is the world’s leading framework for enterprise agility

scaledagileframework.com

Enough Marketing Ken, what is SAFe REALLY?

But First … Principles before Practices

House of Lean

LEADERSHIP

Respect

people

ulture

Innovation

ntless

Value in the shortest

sustainable lead time

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

Agile Manifesto

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

1. Built-In Quality

2. Program execution

3. Alignment

4. Transparency

Core Values

#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

SAFe Lean-Agile Principles

But you need Practices too ….

5-9/team

50-125+/ART

500-1000+/ST

2000-5000+/Port

One size does NOT fit all …Essential SAFe Portfolio SAFe

Large Solution SAFe

OK, SO HOW DO YOU MAKE IT SAFE?

Let’s talk about Why?

1. Establish a sense of urgency

2. Create a powerful guiding coalition

3. Develop the vision and strategy

4. Communicate the vision

5. Empower employees for broad-based action

6. Generate short-term wins

7. Consolidate gains and produce more wins

8. Anchor new approaches in the culture

Creating the Climate for the

Change

Engage/EnableThe Org

Implement &Sustain the

Change

Don’t forget the “F”

1. It’s a ”F”..ramework

• Blind adherence will leave you, well …. you know

2. Context is everything

• Understand the challenges, people, technology,

culture, tolerance for change, political landscape,

3. Outcomes, not output

• What Business results are outlined in your Vision?

• Perfect adherence to practices don’t necessarily get

you your outcomes

CheckAdjust

Don’t Believe Everything You See

• The Big Picture is a domain model, not a process flow

• Understand the mechanism, use (or don’t use) where needed (or not needed)

• Roles, not necessarily people

EXAMPLE: FINANCIAL SERVICES LAUNCH

Context

1. Client: Large Financial Services firm

2. Goals:

• Modernize Retirement Services Systems

• New Platform, New Applications, New Methodology

3. Approach:

1. Evaluate/select technologies for platform

2. Incrementally build upon platform

3. Aggressive timeline to meet business need

4. Selected SAFe as the framework to support large team

required to meet the goals. Selected base on:

1. Architecture was a first class citizen

2. Big picture provided clarity, allowed Leadership to say

Tailored SAFe Approach: Bring Cars onto the Train

Car 1:- Form a single

Architecture team

- Architect was PO- Taught SAFe for

Teams but launched in SCRUM w/Epic, Feature, Story hierarchy

- 3-4 sprints

Car 2:- New Feature

team started building on platform to validate

- Business was PO- Same launch

approach- 1-2 sprints- Car 1 kept

building more platform out

Cars 3/4:- New Feature teams

continued building on platform

- Business was PO- Same launch approach- 1-2 sprints- 1 SM acted as “RTE”- 1 PO acted as “Product

Manager”- Car 1 kept building more

platform out

Cars 5-8:- New Feature

teams trained- Turned into an full

ART- Held PI Planning- Dedicated RTE,

Product Manager- Car 1 became a

Feature team w/Business PO

- Former PO became System Architect

Other Ways to be safe in SAFe

1. Keep the focus

• Don’t ignore PI plan right after PI planning; use the Program

Board in the SoS

2. Fill in gaps

• Leverage other techniques in conjunction with SAFe as

needed (e.g. DevJam Product Agility techniques, Spotify

concepts, etc.)

• Leverage/build a more detailed playbook to capture your

implementation of SAFe (e.g. cPrime BlueKit)

3. Look for ways to optimize over time

• Consider a Program Level Kanban system (e.g. Feature vs.

Story flow) as the ART matures

PARTING THOUGHTS

Keepin’ it Real

1. A Fool with a Tool is still a Fool

1. Be Pragmatic

2. Be Realistic

3. Be Authentic

2. Don’t believe everything you hear/read

1. All approaches/frameworks experience failures

2. The Facts are Friendly

3. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/case-studies/

3. Can’t we all just get along?

1. Methodology Wars are not productive

2. Delivering is … let’s do that instead ☺

ken.france@cprime.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kenfrance/

Can you be safe with SAFe? - Agile Day Chicago · • Executive/Transformation Coach, Trainer • THE Ohio State University/Johns Hopkins grad • Current President/CEO of the Anne

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