The SAFe Delusion on SAFe Delusion

Getting out

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If you are running SAFe and it is not delivering what you were promised, the most common explanation offered is that you have not implemented it well enough. More training. A better Release Train Engineer. The next version.

What it cost

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Six organisations adopted the Scaled Agile Framework. This is what happened next, in the terms a board measures.

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ANZ Banking Group

Rolled out from 2016 and expanded across the Australian division from 2017, under a mandate to deliver faster and underpin the bank’s mortgage business.

But what about…?

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

These are the five responses you are most likely to meet. Each answer points back to the guide, which carries the full account.

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“It’s a stepping stone — you have to start somewhere.”

The framework does not hand back a route onward, and organisations that adopt it do not, in the cases observed, arrive anywhere.

Right of reply

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The guide invites Scaled Agile Inc. to engage with the community and to act on whatever part of the feedback is useful. That invitation stands, and this page makes it public.

About

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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.

Information for decision-makers considering SAFe

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

We are uncovering better ways of working by doing it and helping others do it.

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Premises

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Introduction

Now that Agile has passed the early adopter stage, many companies are interested in adopting it, and many novice practitioners are interested in learning it. Yet those companies and practitioners without extensive Agile experience have a hard time evaluating what will bring them value and what will not. They look at the marketing from SAFe, and they don’t know if they can trust it or not. In this document members of the Agile community are collecting available information, including on these marketing stories. Some practitioners have been there and know the difference between marketing and real stories, others know not only how things started but also how things are going now.

History

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This guide emerged as a response to the growing adoption of SAFe by organisations lacking deep Agile experience. As Agile moved into the mainstream, decision-makers increasingly relied on vendor marketing and polished case studies, often without access to independent analysis or lessons learned from failed implementations.

Translations

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