Play It, SAFe
We follow the scaled agile framework – or SAFe® – as our development program within the organization where I work. Wikipedia will tell you that SAFe is one of a growing number of frameworks that seek to address the problems encountered when scaling beyond a single team. We’ve been applying SAFe for more than three years. Ironically, for a framework that is supposed to make us Agile, it’s actually made us “play it safe.” Here’s why.
For two days every quarter, we assemble as an Agile release train (ART) – all the teams working on a common product – and decide what we’ll do for the next three months, a program increment. Each team – or car on the train – converts the “asks” of our product line management team into objectives. The market owner circulates through the train and assigns business value, from 10 (most important) to 1 (least important) to the objectives from each car. Each car votes on the confidence of their objectives and then all members of the ART vote on the confidence of the train as a whole. Anything less than a vote of three by anyone means that we replan.
As the PI proceeds, we have regular checkpoints of progress. The market owner approves business value as we complete objectives. As a train, we strive to meet at least 80% of our combined objectives by the end of the PI. Anything less is a reflection on poor planning: either an acceptance of too much risk or more work than we were capable of completing.
The confidence vote, assignment of business value, and the commitment to objectives for a three-month period work in tandem to make us “play it safe.” We are less productive and less effective with SAFe than we were when we followed a more waterfall-like development model. There is no reward for overextending oneself. We are reluctant to change our plan if we realize that we can do something more effectively after we finish PI planning. And the machinations we go through to justify earning the assigned business value means that we spend an inordinate amount of time explaining what we did and why we deserve the 1-to-10 points.
We take fewer risks, make fewer releases, and break fewer conventions with our scaled agile framework. SAFe is just that: safe. And that makes us … insipid.
