Why this exists
About
So that the decision has an opposing view on the record before it is made. Who curates the guide, how it is assembled, and how this site relates to it.
A decision taken without a dissenting view on the record is a weaker decision, however comfortable it feels at the time. Framework adoptions are typically decided on vendor material, vendor case studies and vendor economics, with no organised account of what happened to the organisations that went first.
This site exists so that account is available, in one place, before the decision rather than after it.
It serves one document: Information for decision-makers considering the SAFe framework. The guide is the work. Everything here is a summary of it and a way in.
topThe guide
A collective effort assembled mainly by members of the Agile community, curated by Luca Minudel and Yves Hanoulle, with contributions from Thomas J. Owens, Chris Combe, Luis Azcona Latasa, Stefan Sonnenberg-Carstens, Martin Hinshelwood, Ove Holmberg, Steve Bement and many others.
It gathers case studies, expert assessments and practitioner accounts, with every source listed so any claim can be checked against its origin.
topHow it is assembled
The case studies were selected on a stated standard: verified against multiple sources, or drawn from sources unlikely to hold a vested interest. That is why several widely-circulated adoption stories do not appear, and why three that do appear are ones the framework’s own vendor published or showcased.
The guide is explicit about the limits of its own argument. No single case study, expert opinion or practitioner account settles anything on its own; the weight is in how consistently they agree. It is equally explicit that its argument is with the framework rather than with the people who teach it.
The premises → · How success is defined →
topContributing and discussion
All discussion happens in the Agile Informed Decision Making group . Corrections, additions, questions and disagreement all go there — there is no separate contact address. New members are asked to introduce themselves and say what brought them.
Two things the group software enforces silently, so they are worth knowing before you post:
- Post through the web interface, or email the group from the address you subscribed with. A message sent from any other address is lost without a bounce.
- Attachments are discarded. Google Groups does not allow them and does not warn you. Paste the text or link to it.
The group also covers the companion documents on large consultancy firms’ Agile offerings and investing in Agile .
For the guide’s own rules on contributing, see the contribution guidelines . Site issues can be raised in the repository .
If you believe you have been misquoted, or you want to respond to any part of the guide, there is a standing right of reply .
topThis site
The pages here — the summary of what it cost, the guidance on getting out, the answers to common objections — are produced by this site, not by the guide’s curators. They compress and point; they do not add evidence. Where a page and the guide differ, the guide is correct.
The guide is a versioned, edition-stamped document. These pages summarise the 2024.8 edition.
topLicence
Information for decision-makers considering the SAFe framework is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence . The pages on this site that summarise it are derivative works and carry the same licence, with attribution to the curators and contributors named above.