Beware SAFe, an Unholy Incarnation of Darkness An Article by Sean Dexter seandexter1.medium.com The Lean Portfolio Management function that controls funding, are given sole authority to approve which Portfolio Epics move into each stream. Epics are not explanations about a problem that needs to be solved. They are pre-formed ideas about how best to solve those problems. Right away we can see signs of the old-school mindset of viewing teams as a “delivery” function instead of a strategic one. The high level thinkers come up with ideas, and the low level doers execute on those ideas. Ignored is the possibility that those closest to the work might be best equipped to make decisions about it. Escaping from this misguided mindset is a core goal of Agile thinking that SAFe fails to remotely accomplish. SAFe is oriented around volume, not value Why Scrum is killing your productAgile Scrum is not workingThe management strategy that saved Apollo 11Design Systems, Agile, and Industrialization agile
A grossly obese set of requirements Who advocates in the requirements process for the product itself—its conceptual integrity, its efficiency, its economy, it’s robustness? Often, no one. As often, an architect or engineer who can offer only opinion based on taste and instinct, unbuttressed as yet by facts. For in a classical Waterfall Model product process, requirements are set before design is begun. The result, of course, is a grossly obese set of requirements, the union of many wish lists, assembled without constraints. Usually, the list is neither prioritized nor weighted. The social forces in the committee forbid the painful conflicts occasioned by even weighting, much less prioritizing. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Design of Design Requirements proliferationA Plea for Lean Software features