Scaled Agile Framework, Heavy on Training, Light on Details

The Scaled Agile Framework or SAFe seems to have become the dominant or defacto approach to ‘Scaling’ Agile across an organization. Interestingly I’ve been involved with organizations trying to implement SAFe who range from over 1,000 teams to around 8 and everything else in-between. So not sure there is a clear understanding of what we mean by Scale, but that is another topic to talk about later.

The SAFe Implementation Roadmap features heavy amounts of SAFe training and though foundational training is certainly important in any change management effort, there is I think a belief that the SAFe training is all you need to change your organization to Agile.

Look at the level of training SAFe provides and which lead to certifications from SAFe:

In all of this training, there is a key area where they provide no training support which involves the areas that are the most complex when trying to make your organization Agile. These include the Identify Value Streams and ART’s segment of the roadmap as well as the general Create the Implementation Plan segment.

What you need to be aware of is that these are the areas that require the most work and which SAFe training provides little knowledge regarding how to do them.

Start a conversation in your organization about what a Value Stream is and see what happens next. You are often opening a pandora’s box of long-held personal and organizational beliefs about what their Value Stream is or even if they have any ideas as to what that means.

SAFe tells you that you need to deliver these outcomes, yet provides you little practical knowledge on how to facilitate the conversations that will lead to the agreement on Value Streams. Creating Agile Release Trains has a whole host of assumptions that you will not receive training on related to how to define Product teams. Starting conversations about what a Product is in the organization can open up yet another pandora’s box of pain and suffering.

Are you starting to see why Agile transformations are complicated and often fail? It’s because the organization must face its current reality before it can change to a new one.

People have something called ‘Belief Preservance’, which keeps them rooted in the present and keep them from engaging in and working towards a new belief structure.

SAFe provides a training heavy framework that doesn’t give you the necessary knowledge to manage the hard work of identifying your Value Streams, defining your Business and Product Capabilities that will support the outcomes SAFe seeks, which is aligned delivery cadences across groups of cross-functional teams that aligned to clear value stream outcomes.

Yes, Agile coaches are typically hired to provide support for these efforts. However, if your only training as a coach is SAFe then you are rooted in what SAFe says and that, unfortunately, is not enough to arm you with the knowledge and skill necessary to manage the change management conversations that you need to drive. I have unfortunately heard in many a conversation with a SAFe coach say, ‘SAFe says you must follow the Implementation Plan’.

If you are a leader thinking that SAFe is the ‘thing’ you need to implement to make your organization ‘Agile’ then you may be disappointed.

I believe that SAFe has an implicit assumption in place and that is that you have some level of team maturity at a minimum, which means you have your Product Capabilities figured out as well, which supports the definition of stable teams. I was told by one SAFe person that this is called an immature SAFe approach and that SAFe says you must start with the training first, then move to create the Value Streams and then…….following the Implementation Roadmap completely.

IF in fact, SAFe is a Framework (it’s in the name so I’ll assume it is) then frameworks by definition are:

(from Merriam-Webster) — ‘a basic conceptional structure (as of ideas)’

This means that SAFe should be open for interpretation regarding how it’s implemented or how we leverage its concepts while keeping its intent in focus.

What I’ve seen practically is an extremely dogmatic approach to SAFe from certified proponents which have bordered on hostility or at a minimum a high level of dismissiveness when I indicate a differing opinion on the approach we might take to deliver value with SAFe. There is value that SAFe can offer surrounding larger scale planning and delivery, however, it is not a singular thing you do to move your organization to Agile.

That effort has a much deeper change management effort that challenges everyone in the organization to think differently. SAFe might get you talking differently but it doesn’t often in my experience, lead to the foundational changes necessary for real Agility to take hold.