Why SAFe is the safest choice to fail with Agile
Why SAFe is the safest choice to fail with Agile
The undercover waterfall agent will lead you to endless frustrations
Warning: adverse opinion ahead. Continue if you’re up for provocative thoughts.
SAFe is an insult to agile. Companies opting to use this framework to become agile will fail before starting.
I understand that SAFe practitioners will disagree with me. That’s fine. But let me tell you why SAFe is anything but Agile.
Unlike some of you, I’m not bashing SAFe only because I dislike the framework, which I do. I’m doing that because I’ve worked with SAFe long enough to understand how unempowering it is.
I genuinely wish nobody would face what I faced with SAFe. I used to be an empowered Product Owner. My days weren’t easy, but they were motivating. When SAFe was deployed, everything slowed down. I felt unempowered, and everything took twice or three times longer than it used to.
The reason was simple, we were too busy dealing with processes and had no energy to do what had to be done.
A vital part of Agile is collaboration. As the Agile Manifesto stated:
“Individuals and interaction over processes and tools.”
Look at SAFe. Can you convince yourself that this principle is applied at all?
When I look at SAFe, I find myself in a maze where I don’t know where to start or finish. It gives me headaches to think about it.
SAFe masters the art of copying techniques and making them horrible. Design Thinking, Scrum, Kanban, and User Stories are just a few things that SAFe spoiled.
Why SAFe leads to more or less the same
Companies trying to become Agile generally don’t need more processes. They need a different mindset. Yet, they think they need more visibility and speed.
SAFe promises to help organizations scale up and benefit from Agile practices. In my experience, this leads to anything but Agile practices.
To make my point clear, I’d like to give you an example of a person striving to become healthy. Imagine someone who loves junky food and doesn’t exercise. This person has cultivated this lifestyle for three decades but has now decided to become healthy. You’ve probably observed someone going down this road already. What’s the common result?
People will fall back to their usual behavior whenever possible.
If you present an unhealthy person with several healthy diets, this person may try out things but will soon start going back to the previous eating behavior. Why does that happen?
To change your lifestyle, you need first to change your mindset. Processes and tools won’t help you with a misfitting mindset.
Companies tend to be highly process driven and often bureaucratic. Then SAFe gives them exactly what companies want but don’t need—several processes, roles, and rules. Guess what the result of that will be?
SAFe leads to more or less the same in different ways because it doesn’t force companies to adapt their mindset.
With a fixed mindset, it doesn’t matter the framework you use. Everything will go wrong. But SAFe gives the illusion companies are in control and will remain. Well, that’s not agile at all. Sorry to break it to you.
On top of that, SAFe, by design, is anything but Agile.
SAFe is an undercover waterfall agent
Jim Highsmith, the co-author of the Agile Manifesto, recently said:
“The problem with SAFe is that it is safe. Safe doesn’t get us innovation.”
This thought resonated a lot with me because SAFe tries to give an answer to everything, and that’s the problem. It isn’t about predictability and risk avoidance. Agile is about embracing the unknown to uncover what we don’t know and stand out.
Agile is about freedom. SAFe is about control.
When Jim Highsmith made the above statement, he got challenged by a SAFe practitioner and elaborated on why SAFe isn’t agile at all.
The issue with Monumental Methodologies, from RUP to the CMM (Capability Maturity Model from the 1990s) to SAFe is their tendency to drive organizations into order, because managers and executives are still trying to order an inherently disorderly world. SAFe appeals to them.
What we need to figure out is how to innovate, to balance order and messiness, at scale.
Jim isn’t the only thought leader perceiving SAFe this way. Martin Fowler, also Co-Author of the Agile Manifesto, said, “SAFe stands for Shitty Agile for Enterprises”
Martin and Jim aren’t alone. You can find "SAFe: A collection of comments from leading experts" (https://www.smharter.com/blog/safe-a-collection-of-comments-from-leading-experts/) gathering opinions from many other signers of the manifesto and leading experts. Or you can watch a conversation between Allen Holub and Dave Farley.
The list goes on. Unfortunately, many companies still opt for SAFe. In reality, they’re opting not to be Agile.
Let me give you some clear examples of why SAFe is detrimental to Agile.
The Ticket Owner
The SAFe Product Owner is a Ticket Owner. Your job is to keep your backlog full and keep the delivery machine shipping features customers couldn’t care less about it.
This misinterpretation of the Product Owner leads to feature factories. Another aspect is the lack of responsibility end to end because the Product Manager becomes the boss of Product Owners. That’s nonsense.
You may say the same happens with Scrum or other frameworks. You’re right. But those are anti-patterns, while SAFe is like this by design.
Extreme Waterscrumfall
Scrum XP at SAFe is a bad joke which doesn’t deserve comments, but I will share some thoughts.
Scrum has its beauty in the mindset, inspecting and adapting to continuously evolve to create value faster. SAFe drops that and transforms Scrum into a tedious process.
Imagine a person without a soul. That’s Scrum at SAFe.
The Scrum mutation software engineers hate is a misconception of the framework itself. It’s a mechanical set of events that don’t help get the job done. Yet, that’s the design at SAFe, not an anti-pattern for them.
Customer Distance
If a developer wants to talk to customers, you may need to climb an ultra high-hierarchy.
It’s more or less like this: Business Owner -> Product Manager -> Product Owner -> Developer.
I thought the closer you’re to the product, the more you should interact with customers. Well, not at SAFe.
SAFe has too many roles and limits responsibilities. It reminds me of the industrial era instead of the one we’re now. People don’t expect to be told what to do. People need to know what to achieve and be empowered to do that.
Final Thoughts
SAFe isn’t agile. It’s a marketing framework.
Companies opting to use SAFe are opting to have control over everything instead of empowering teams. That’s not Agile, at least not to me.
If you want to fail with agile, SAFe is your safest choice to reach mediocrity.
Sorry SAFe practitioners, you may hate me, but I’m too agile to keep my mouth shut.
Thank you David! I really enjoyed your article and I would subscribe to everything in it.
SAFe drops from agile, what I enjoy. Yet they are still quoting the original sources and books as if they would still be in the framework. For me this is more like an obituary. Here went Scrum to die, here lies Lean UX, here are rotting some good Product Management practices, here we buried Innovation...
Yet - this should be obvious to every agile practitioner in seconds when looking at the process/framework. I read that making fun of companies employing SAFe is the same as laughing at the tourist with red sunburn because he didn't want to put on sunscreen.
This is hilarious and sadly, I have to agree!