In my quest to expand my growing Evil Empire (oh you call it a company? you can’t handle the truth…) I finally found the right tool for the job. How long haven’t I been searching for a tool to finally bash in the heads of our obnoxious Agile people? The same ignorant hamsters who never seem to understand their own good (me!). Well, I finally found it. It’s SAFe. The guy who invented that name is a genious!
Who doesn’t want to be safe? Don’t say the question, taste it. I can see myself asking “who doesn’t wan’t to be safe” rhetorically at our next management meeting. When silence spreads… (who would dare to object) …I know I’ve got them by the balls. From this point on – resistance will be futile. SAFe is good in so many ways. It’s has a nice little drawing with everything a company wants. All the answers. But the best part is the SAFe guys got the whole thing wrong! They don’t know it, but SAFe is not for big companies, it’s for small and mid sized!
It’s the perfect way to turn small and innocent companies into docile little zombies. Imagine your CEO dropping off his kids to school accidentally bumping into other parents. “Yeah we run Safe, we are a company of scale. What about you?” Who would ever admit they ran a small company with a tiny process? Under the hood, behind buzzwords like “Agile” and “Lean” lies a creepy truth only a master can see. It’s a tool of power!
Let those small rats riddle around in meaningless iterations and see panic spread as managers scurry for new roles and positions, while you quietly take control over the important decisions. And when the whole house comes down, who is going to be there to save them? Me. Muhaha.. I’ve got my outsourcing plan ready.
I’ve made my call. I’m not going to send one or two process junkies to the training – heck, I’m going to send the whole management team!
Welcome to the honey pot. Resistance – is futile.
Muahahahahahaaaaaa! Conquer the world!
I enjoy the humor of the article, but there is no substance here.
Have you tried SAFe ?
What are your issues with it?
How would you scale agile across a bigger company, across multiple locations?
What are the benefits you see from it?
Enjoy the blog, keep it up, but I feel cheated on this one 🙂
Think of SAFe as a framework, not a solution. It provides some building blocks that you can further adapt to your context. Every company is unique because of the combination of their background, industry and the culture that exists. So eventually you must build your own solution. SAFe gives a good starting point to start the experimentation and iterative journey towards that solution.
Fair points.
However provide an uneducated organisation with a large framework to tailor down as opposed to something more light weight to buildup based upon experiences, data and ultimately evolution you will see that organisational structures,cultures and wasteful elements remain unchallenged.
Disclaimer: For some organisations being a little more agile and lean then they are is enough, my comment is predicated on the fact that some really want to push for major gains.
Thanks Evil Coach. I’ll take 2. lol
It’s easy for people to implement SAFe and not quickly realise what they have got wrong.
SAFe provides tools, processes and structures to overcome problems that shouldn’t exist but if they do they should be taken seriously.
I’m not saying that it can’t be used to improve some organisations but it doesn’t adequately embrace or focus on the behaviours, empowerment or ownership, or on descaling work.
I agree with most of the points listed here. Just because you wanted to scale Agility you can’t be fancying a large picture and giving roles to everyone ( it totally depends). When everyone feels SAFE we are done with SAFe and Scaling !