Exploring the controversy around SAFe’s approach to Product Ownership

By |2023-05-08T18:22:55-04:00May 8, 2023|Agile Theater, Blog, Product Ownership, SAFe, Scrum|

Exploring SAFe’s Approach to Product Ownership What is SAFe’s perspective on the Product Owner role? How does it differ from the Scrum Guide? Why is Product Ownership split to Product Owner and Product Manager in SAFe? SAFe’s approach to Product Ownership draws quite a bit of criticism. As a Professional Scrum Trainer who’s also a SAFe Fellow/SPCT, here’s my perspective…   Product Ownership is a crucial element in improving Outcomes SAFe and Scrum both consider product ownership crucial to maximizing [...]

The Future of Agile Roles != The Future of Agility

By |2023-01-26T09:28:31-05:00January 26, 2023|Agile, Current Events, SAFe, Scrum|

The story of Capital One laying off hundreds of people in Agile roles is making the rounds. I have no direct connection to Capital One, so I can't comment about what's going on there.  What I can share is for years now, I've been coaching companies and leaders to see the Scrum Master and similar roles like the SAFe RTE as accountabilities relevant leaders take on (it can be formal managers/leaders or natural leaders from within teams that are passionate [...]

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Working towards Sustainable Pace in Scrum, SAFe and Kanban

By |2022-12-02T13:07:05-05:00December 6, 2021|kanban, SAFe, Scrum|

Aiming towards Sustainable Pace“Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.” — The Agile Manifesto Principle“programmers or software developers should not work more than 40 hour weeks, and if there is overtime one week, that the next week should not include more overtime.” — Extreme ProgrammingAn unsustainable pace is unhealthy. It contributes to burnout, quality issues, and unpredictable results.If you are an agile leader — do you know whether your teams are currently operating at [...]

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Connecting OKRs, KPIs, OVSs, and DVSs in SAFe® — Scaled Agile

By |2022-12-02T13:06:55-05:00December 1, 2021|OKRs, SAFe|

The title of my post may read like acronym soup but all of these concepts play a critical role in SAFe, and understanding how they’re connected is important to success. After exploring some connections, I will suggest some actions you can take while designing, evaluating, or accelerating your implementation.KPIs and OKRsThe SAFe Value Stream KPIs article describes Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as “the quantifiable measures used to evaluate how a value stream is performing against its forecasted business outcomes. “That includes:Health [...]

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Iterating faster with SAFe

By |2022-12-14T17:19:33-05:00November 30, 2021|Agility, SAFe, Scaled Agile|

Here’s a frequently asked question in the SAFe community: I wanted to understand what SAFe says about someone who wants to go faster than 2 weeks of iteration? I mean the whole PI concept is based on 5 iterations worth of planning. What if a team/organization wants to develop and synchronize faster than 2 weeks? Is speed going to be compromised by following the standards of PI cadence?Here’s my take:Adjusting Cadence Length in SAFe — Can you? Should you?SAFe considers the 2-week iteration [...]

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INVEST in effective SAFe PI Objectives

By |2022-12-14T17:19:40-05:00November 29, 2021|SAFe|

INVEST in effective SAFe PI ObjectivesCould the INVEST criteria Bill Wake came up with for evaluating User Stories help us come up with effective PI Objectives in SAFe as well?I think a good PI Objective should be:– Independent — meaning ideally it could be delivered and evaluated on its own without any dependency on other PI Objectives. And if a team is able to own a PI Objective and delivery it on their own — it’s a sign that it’s a cross-functional autonomous team.– [...]

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How Vendors Can Apply Customer Centricity When Organizing Around Value

By |2022-12-03T17:10:36-05:00November 29, 2021|SAFe, Scaled Agile|

A lot of our clients are technology vendors that struggle to use the SAFe Operational Value Streams “out of the box”. Here, I explore how such a B2B vendor should organize around value when building products that are used to support its customer’s business operations.This article was originally posted in the Scaled Agile blog.Organizing Around ValueLots of organizations are organized around functional silos — such as business, system engineering, hardware, software, testing/QA, and operations. These structures exist because they support specialization and allow [...]

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Handling scope change during a SAFe Program Increment (PI)

By |2022-12-14T17:20:10-05:00May 4, 2021|Agile, SAFe|

How do we handle Scope Changes in a SAFe Program Increment?A question about handling scope changes in SAFe was posed recently on a forum I’m participating in (The SAFe Community Forum). This is a question posed regularly in training and on ARTs I’m coaching so I thought I’d provide my thoughts here.How do you handle a scope change in a program increment? Specifically when it comes to switching one feature for another? And what’s the impact on PI Objectives and [...]

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SAFe Program Dependency Board Retrospective

By |2022-12-14T17:20:43-05:00September 17, 2020|SAFe|

Learning from the SAFe Program Dependency BoardThe SAFe Program Board or Program Dependency Board is a key artifact used in PI Planning and Execution. The ART Teams and Stakeholders used it to align, anticipate risks, and adapt the plan accordingly.This “inspection and adaptation” of the plan based on insights from the Program Dependency Board is “first loop learning” — making changes in the plan based on what we see.Deeper Learning from the Program Dependency BoardWhat we rarely see, though, is deeper learning [...]

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Please don’t come to our Implementing SAFe SPC4 workshops

By |2022-12-14T17:22:05-05:00January 9, 2019|SAFe, Scaled Agile|

Seriously, please don’t come.Don’t come if you’re looking at it as a formality since you already know everything about agile and just need the SPC (SAFe Program Consultant) Certificate.Don’t come if you’re looking for the cheapest way to get your SPC so that you can add it to your resume.Don’t come if you don’t know anything about agile and believe the SPC is your silver bullet to becoming an agile coach at the enterprise level.Don’t come if you’re looking for the [...]

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