SAFe landing of Agile methodology

Disclaimer – This blog is NOT for you if you are not a stakeholder in any program to build the World’s Most Important Systems.

I am a SAFe® 4 Certified Agilist now. After rigorous training for 2 days(no laptop = Rigorous), I got the certification, approximately twenty hours of study/practice, followed by a 90-minute test.  It was a challenging endeavor, considering my crazy travel schedules and client commitments. One needs to score 76% to get certified, and I scored 96%. This was quite satisfying considering the effort and something to show off to my kids(how to prepare and score ..blah..blah…Huh!).

Why is this important at all? We are in a fast-moving tech industry, and it is critical for me and all the stakeholders in the software development community to read and understand the changing marketplace. SAFe(Scaled Agile Framework) is the hot and new variant of Agile methodology. It’s becoming a habit for me to read something hot and fresh,  and SAFe got my attention! Before I wrote the blog, I had to understand the nuances and be convinced of its utility for my readers. 

SAFe is an open framework and is available to everyone for free. However, you need skilled coaches to train and implement properly. There are enough failed experimentations of Agile and Hybrid Agile in the industry.

In the real world, there is Agile or No Agile. Accept it! Iteratively doing waterfall projects need not be termed as hybrid agile. Using the terminology of “sprint,” “stand up,” et al. does not make the project Agile.

SAFe is a derivative of Agile methodology. While Agile was relevant for smaller projects, it needed to scale to manage large transformation programs at the enterprise level. A lot of broken “Agile” promises resulted from this.

Read more on SAFe at https://www.scaledagileframework.com/

Who is this Blog for?

I want to share my learning with the three key stakeholders – Practitioner,  Client Organization Leader, and Service Provider.

A practitioner with no/little exposure to Agile, Distributed Agile, or the So-Called Hybrid Agile: 

It appears that the performance of the task provides its own intrinsic reward…this drive…may be as basic as the others —Daniel Pink, Drive

SAFe Principle #8 is about unlocking the value of Knowledge Workers and Principle #9 is about Decentralize decision making. The framework provides more power to the individuals and teams. As Spiderman says, “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”. The individual practitioners need to prepare and stand up to the expectation and will play a significant role in the success of the program. [Note: SAFe has 9 Lean-Agile core Principles]

In the new world of SAFe, the practitioner

• needs to sharpen the DevOps and Test Automation skills in addition to the required technical skills for the program or client.
• needs to attend the SAFe training, certification, etc, to know the process/framework. Processes are easy to learn, but the success of the future technical person will be measured by these additional skills as there will no longer be a large program constructed with the developer, tester, BA, Release Manager, and other roles. A scrum team will consist of a Product Owner, a Scrum Master, and a set of developers.

Clients looking for a magic bullet to solve the issues with large transformational programs:  

It is not enough that top management commits themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to – that is, what they must do. These obligations cannot be delegated. Support is not enough; action is required. – Deming

The SAFe way of achieving success starts with the top leadership embracing the change and helping in changing the culture.

Top Ideas:

• Align the Governance, CFO Organization(Budgeting), and Procurement – Change the culture rather than create a churn. Thinking of a new way of budgeting, sourcing services, and measuring the value is essential.
• There is no benefit to creating a SAFe facade while working in the same old-fashioned way – Change management is difficult and painful. SAFe stretches the limits of technical staff – they need to learn additional tools and techniques. Plan for the investment in training and mentoring. Everyone would like to learn new and stay relevant in the marketplace.  Caution: Do not try to create a large shared services team for Performance testing, System Testing, and other pools to accommodate the old staff.  I think it’s a huge anti-pattern and will lead to half-baked implementation and less ownership.
• Sourcing Strategy – Working with the internal and external service provider (with distributed sites) poses a potential challenge in the SAFe journey. There are several options to achieve the objectives. Keeping the full scrum team for a story at one location is always a good idea. The cost-benefit of having a full scrum team at the low-cost center will prove beneficial in the long term. Typically, Product Owner or Scrum Master skills are the key gaps at offsite locations. It may be strategic to send some of these skilled resources offsite for a shorter duration until the offsite team is self-sufficient.

Service Providers dealing with the marketplace pushing for more Fixed Price, Outcome-based managed services:

“Agile software development and traditional cost accounting does not match” – Rami Sirkia and Maarit Laanti

This is the second biggest cultural change in the SAFe journey.  The traditional annual financial planning and project-based budgeting will align poorly with the Lean-Agile budgeting. This impacts how you plan, engage resources, track progress, and do contract with external vendors.

The key differences are – 1) Funding a Value Stream compared to funding a project, 2) Empowered teams to make course corrections within the available budget(real life) compared to complying to inherently uncertain work agreed with minimal information, 3) Continuous evaluation and fast feedback on progress  through solution/system Demo with key stakeholders(SaFe Principle#5) compared to milestones 4) Fiscal Governance through dynamic budgeting compared to “Who do we blame” when things change(which is natural)

The original white paper by Rami Sirkia and Maarit Laanti is worth a read to grasp the challenge and make the understanding clear to move in the right direction. Please read the white paper here.

In this context, the external service provider needs to align as well. The key to success will depend on – 1) Flexibility to provide the skills dynamically, 2) Applying the same metrics for team evaluation, and 3) keeping the contract simple to align with the EPIC or Portfolio level objectives and budgeting. 4) How do you show the metrics and value achievement over the course? Going beyond the KANBAN board and completion of stories. The desired outcome of the sprint or each iteration is the team's common goal, and the service provider is measured against similar metrics like everyone else in the team.

Time to wrap up.

Do you want to learn a new, exciting accounting and measurement method to help the SAFe agile journey? Innovation Accounting can help the cause. It was imagined by Lou Gerstner when he took over as the CEO of IBM. He felt the need for a different accounting method to promote the Emerging Business Opportunity group to bring an additional Billion $$ for IBM from the new technologies. Innovation Accounting evaluates progress when all the metrics typically used in an established company (revenue, customers, ROI, market share) are effectively zero. is a way of evaluating progress when all the metrics typically used in an established company (revenue, customers, ROI, market share) are zero.