Beware SAFe, an Unholy Incarnation of Darkness

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.

  1. ​SAFe is oriented around volume, not value​
  1. ​Why Scrum is killing your product​
  2. ​Agile Scrum is not working​
  3. ​The management strategy that saved Apollo 11​
  4. ​Design Systems, Agile, and Industrialization​
  1. SAFe is oriented around volume, not value

    In all this focus on volume metrics, estimation, and churning work through the pipeline, the concept of what’s actually valuable or successful is easily lost. It’s often assumed that more work shipped out the door must be “value”, even if the experience of the product is actually suffering and users are not benefiting from the additional features.