/puke
Thanks for letting me vent.
8 replies (most recent on top)
Folks - SAFe isn't agile. It's papering of waterfall with agile terms. My guess is that is the root of the agile transformation woes at Nike.
I cover Nike. Would love to hear more. mtownsend9@bloomberg.net or https://twitter.com/matt_townsend
Your quick side note is accurate. At least the bacon at the two day training was good.
Agile is being given a bad name by the SAFe deployment within Tech. How is planning out a quarter of work, across an entire org, representing multiple functions, Agile?
Quick side note: What complicates this is that many of those leading the charge are 'converted' PMs who have limited capacity to embrace the idea that you don't plan everything out but rather leave room for evolution, learning, direction change and, god forbid, failure.
We like to say 'fail fast' but the truth is that the corporate culture in Tech doesn't support the notion. There are few folks willing to put failure anywhere on their resume.
Back to it: SAFe is unnecessary. It’s only needed to replace the checks and balances mechanism between Tech and the Functions formerly provided by the PMOs, etc. Instead, Tech should be reduced to a core set of shared services and reference architecture teams. The functional delivery teams should be pulled back into the business functions where they are accountable directly to that function's leadership only.
The effort and cost put into ensuring that tech isn't wasting functional funds and working on functional priorities all goes away. Millions in cost savings…
2X Innovation, 2X Speed
Just Do It
Agile doesn't work on a rudderless ship (Product Owners). By the time you get there, it's not at all what you imagined and has to be thrown away. Agile only works when the Product Owners FULLY understand the business. Same goes for waterfall.
Agile works but we still got some dinosaurs that believe waterfall works right. Considering the business requirements change day to day. Running waterfall doesn’t make a lick of sense. However, if we don’t all adopt it, it will fail.
Waterfall to the rescue!
Triple double