So what is it with SAFe? A gentle opinion from outside of the train.
I have observed a small fight, that initiated Alexey Krivitsky by his a bit provocative message, and also the response written by Marshall Guillory in his blog. I just add my little opinion and thoughts without preference of either side.
Before I joined Agile movement, I was interested in management models and trying to understand how to improve organizational performance. As industrial production changes and shift from manufacturing to knowledge economy, and further to creative economy, it naturally brings needs for different managerial styles and work arrangements. However, organizations today are mostly constructed around model developed by Frederic Taylor and Henry Ford. While models for managing a manufacturing company are mostly appropriate, because process is fully predictable, for organizations involved in knowledge economy these models starts failing. It is visible through symptoms, where projects are delayed and over budget, technical quality is low, … and most importantly 80% of people are disengaged or actively disengaged with their work*. Traditional organizations are based around processes, and with rise of complexity these processes are becoming inadequate and obsolete quickly. People are unable to follow them or change them fast enough, control structures are slow and politically biased. It all results in frustrations, where nobody cares about the outcome.
Agile appeared to be an umbrella for set of techniques, which are supposed to address exactly this. It introduces approaches that goes against increasing complexity. Simplification of control structures, face to face communication, shortening communication paths, validating of added value activities and elimination the waste, ….
It does not matter which part of the organization triggered the change process, and which one of plethora of agile and managerial models or processes is being implemented — Semco Style Model, Agile Project Management, Scrum, Radical Management, Dynamic Management Strategy, Holacracy, Morning Star model, Spotify model, Kanban, Disciplined Agile Delivery, perhaps also Toyota Way, …. add your favorite one here — they all brings quite radical shift of paradigm. The goal is shifting from vertical bureaucracy, command and control, siloed structure, prescriptive fixed targets, and budgetary obsessed management style toward lightweight, focused on value delivery, flexible, trust based, collaborative, creative and experimental management style, which builds around environment where people are intrinsically motivated to do best they can. And such a shift demands delegation of power, collaboration across boundaries, personal accountability, floating organizational structures, decision-making as close to the place with information as possible, customer engagement etc. We call it change of mindset. Because with Agile we solve (regardless of method) people’s engagement.
How does SAFe deals with all this?
There is no any other technique, that would polarize Agile community as much as SAFe. As Marshall Guillory argue in his post, SAFe is most “popular” technique by researches done around Agile. As an example he quotes the one by VersionOne. Well, how these researches are conducted? Email/online campaign toward as many people as possible? Once such framework is implemented by large organizations, and such has many employees, it is natural that there will be many users. It is natural that SAFe method will win such poll. In spite of few implementations only. Who decides about which method will be implemented in such large organization? Usually handful of people with purchasing authority backed by strong vendor. It is definitely not implemented agility organically, with the search for the best approach in mind. I think, VersionOne’s method for research is wrong and biased toward SAFe.
SAFe is such heavy process, similar to Ford in manufacturing. If Taylor’s and Ford’s based management model, characterized by heavy processes, and implemented within predictable environment results in 80% of people disengaged with their work, then why somebody believes that replacing one heavy process for another one will solve the problem? For managers in large organizations such heavy process is sexy, in fact it promises with its “trains” false sense of control (because under the word train we imagine something punctual and reliable), it delays the change, it provides “confidence” to managers that hiring army of consultants will resolve the pain for them and later all will be similar as before. I do not see in SAFe anything to address company culture, collaboration, creativity and innovation, that would unlock potential of all involved. Moreover, try to find customer at the picture of SAFe model**.
One of the reasons for animosity in Agile community toward SAFe, as I see it, is because implementing SAFe is just concreting old model inside the organization and polishing it with label scaled AGILE framework. It creates illusion of something agile and flexible. It creates infantile hope, that large organizations can be managed the same way as it was always done, in spite of radically different external environment, which is even not static, but which seems to speed up its changes. Many consultants and agilists got burned, like Robert Galen writes in his confessions.
My comment is not about hate nor about support. I am even not arguing technocratically about particular technical details of the method. I just tried to put some opinion from agile management perspective.
* https://www.gallup.com/services/178517/state-global-workplace.aspx
**(Hint: small dot bottom right).
