Mark Richards Partner, Context Matters @MarkAtScale www.agilenotanarchy.com [email protected] SAFe Corruption, Cop-out or Corporate Kaizen? Agile Australia June 2014
May 10, 2015
Mark Richards
Partner, Context Matters @MarkAtScale
www.agilenotanarchy.com
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
“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