Editorial note: Transcribed and lightly diarized from video captions for readability.
Introduction and Background
Ryan Ripley: Welcome! It’s called Breaking the SAFe. Before you panic, it’s not a SAFe bashing show. We want to explore SAFe: the myths, the complaints, the criticisms, the pros, the cons, the good, the bad, all of those things. In order to do that well, we’ve brought in a good friend and expert, Yuval Yeret, who’s also a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org.
So hopefully our perspectives match up well on that end and we can start closing some of the loops and gaps on SAFe.
Yuval, how are you doing?
Yuval Yeret: Good. How are you, Ryan?
Ryan Ripley: Doing great. So, some of your background: you’re an SPCT, you teach the SAFe courses, and I think you’re actually a SAFe Fellow, which means you’re very much involved in the evolution of SAFe and what’s in and what’s out in a lot of those discussions. Maybe you can talk about what it means to be a SAFe Fellow, some of your background with SAFe, your background as a trainer (especially as a PST), and just the angles that you’re coming from as we seek to break SAFe down, take a look at it from a holistic viewpoint, and see what’s good, what’s bad, and what we can work on.
Yuval Yeret: Sure. Yeah, so I started working with Agile in product development as a practitioner in the trenches back in 2006 or so. Like many other people, once I saw that it worked nicely at the team level, I started to feel the need to figure out how to improve agility for teams of teams working on bigger products and bigger solutions, trying to work together across multiple functions.
I played around with multiple things trying to bring in Scrum, Kanban, some mashups, looking at Feature-Driven Development and other approaches, and just did that in the trenches for a couple of years. I became aware of Dean’s work on agile requirements at scale and the things that eventually became SAFe right around that time because that had interesting inspiration.
Finally, I went and learned SAFe from Dean back in I think 2013 or so. The things I really liked in what I saw was the realization and the assumption that Agile cannot just happen by working with teams; it really needs leadership support and leadership engagement, and reliance on modern change management practices as part of it - moving from pigs and chickens to actually involving leadership as part of your Agile journey.
A big reason why I think SAFe has a lot of potential and why it is really succeeding out there is because it tackled the change management challenge the right way. There are a lot of problems with SAFe. I kid sometimes that maybe I’m an SPCT and SAFe Fellow because I’m willing to challenge SAFe, or maybe it’s despite the fact that I’m willing to challenge SAFe and bring fresh perspectives.
But you asked what it means to be a SAFe Fellow. SAFe Fellow is basically a designation that Scaled Agile provides to people who are leading thought leadership and challenging the status quo around what SAFe is, contributing to the framework and to the thinking about how to help organizations succeed with SAFe.
So it’s very relevant for us Fellows to play the perfection game with SAFe, so to speak: what’s working well, what do we need to do differently as a community, provide advice to Scaled Agile on where to take SAFe, and help the community understand what SAFe is about and what SAFe is not about. So it’s an interesting place to be, especially if you combine it with the fact that I’m also very involved with other communities like this.
The Origins and Purpose of SAFe
Ryan Ripley: Yeah, and that’s why I think having you guide us through this discussion… Full disclosure, I’ve sat through your SPC 5 course. So I did the four-day training, and I actually enjoyed a lot of it, right?
There are some really good things in there. There are some things that made me go, “Ugh,” you know? Some of it you look at and you’re just like, “Ugh,” but that’s my Professional Scrum Trainer stance - the Scrum.org stance coming out on the Scrum-specific things.
I have a very similar experience to yours. I started working on Agile as a developer doing these types of things. I was more on the developer side, so XP, test-driven, all of that stuff back in like 2000, 2001, 2002. The team stuff, I think you’re right, is very well done at a Scrum, Kanban - pick your flavor - and XP level.
The team stuff is sorted.
When you start talking about portfolio organization and those types of things, there wasn’t a lot there, right? So you’re trying to figure out, well, do I do a Kanban board for the portfolio, and then what do I do at the org level, and how do we tie all this back together?
I think the genius behind what Dean - so when we say Dean, we’re talking about Dean Leffingwell - initially wrote… He wrote a few books. I actually went to a conference talk of his right when that first book came out that he did. I got a free copy of it, he signed it, and he gave a great talk about the gap that he was filling in the portfolio space and agility at all levels of the organization.
It sounded great. It’s like, wow, the team stuff is working, and I can elevate up.
So of course, everybody takes a look at it. Some organizations see it and say, “Cool, that fills a gap.” Other organizations say, “Nah, I love my XP” or “I love my Scrum, I’m going to stick with it.” But I think initially the idea was actually sold very well: it’s filling a need, it’s plugging a hole, it’s dealing with a gap.
Now, what it’s turned into and spawned into from 2000 or 2003 to today, or whenever Dean conceptualized this, I think that’s a good discussion point because it is different.
What to Expect from “Breaking the SAFe”
Ryan Ripley: What we’d like to do with this series of shows - and we’ll do these for as long as there’s Yuval’s interest and viewer questions - is really talk about the top myths, misperceptions, misconceptions, truths, good, bad, different about SAFe, right?
What’s the good, what’s the bad, what’s the ugly, what’s a myth, what’s a fact, and really break that down.
But we also want it to be community-driven. Yuval and I will… I’m going to pull up the subway chart and I’m going to say, “All right buddy, make this make sense,” you know? So we’ll talk through that, and I think Yuval does a really nice job of talking through it, which will help everyone out there.
But we also want your questions - your serious questions. Now, if you send us a “It sucks, why are you talking about this?”, well, we’re going to discard that one. That’s not really helpful to the conversation. It’s like, glad you have an opinion, but we’re going to keep moving on.
We want your serious questions: Why did they decide to do this? Why did they change the nature of the Scrum Master to more of a manager instead of a servant leader? I think those are really good discussion points, and we want those.
So we want you to leave your comments below. Of course, like and subscribe so you know when Yuval and I post a new video, but leave your comments below about your biggest SAFe questions. Now, our community members, if you’ve got that little badge if you’ve signed up, you’re going to get priority - your questions are going to make it to the top - but we’re going to try to get to everyone involved.
Leave your questions, leave your ideas, and we’ll try to work through those as much as we can.
I think we’re also going to do some live streams where we’ll take some of those questions, take some new questions, and really try to work through a lot of these ideas that come up on Twitter and LinkedIn about, “Oh, SAFe is the worst because of this,” or “No, SAFe is the best because of that.” Let’s just have those conversations, and as those develop, hopefully that generates new ideas, new comments, and we’re able to work through those.
How’s that sound, Yuval?
Yuval Yeret: Sounds good. I just want to reinforce the mindset or the stances that we talked about applying here on this series. We’re not going to be Pollyanna about SAFe.
Ryan Ripley: Nope. Nope.
Yuval Yeret: We’re also not going to be Negative Nelly about SAFe. We’re both big skeptics about SAFe and about things in general, and I think that’s the right way to be. Don’t accept anything blindly, be empirical about it, challenge misconceptions.
We’re aware of stuff that’s being said about SAFe out there, and if people are not going to write about it in the comments - which I’m sure they will - we’re going to bring those things in. We’re going to talk about questions like: Why aren’t Silicon Valley companies or big tech FAANG companies using SAFe?
On the same token, we’re going to talk about what’s similar and different between the business movement around SAFe and the business movement around Scrum, because I think there are a lot of similarities between the journeys that these business movements have gone through over the years. Nothing sacred, we’re going to have fun talking about everything.
Upcoming Topics and Wrap-Up
Ryan Ripley: I think in the next episode - and I’m just firing this from the hip, so let me know what you think - I think we ought to pull up Ken Schwaber’s “UnSAFE at Any Speed” blog post and let’s start there. Yuval and I are PSTs with Scrum.org. I mean, I owe my career to Ken Schwaber, I’m a huge fan of his, and I know Yuval is too.
But Ken’s got a blog post out there that is a pretty serious condemnation of SAFe. Maybe we start there, see what some thoughts from Ken are, work through that, and proceed from there.
In the meantime, we’re going to collect your ideas and collect your comments. Let us know what you think, let us know what your questions are, let us know what your criticisms and your praises are - all of those things. We’ve got one of the SAFe Fellows here in Yuval who has a lot of great knowledge about this, plus he’s a PST, plus he works a lot on ProKanban as well.
Is that right?
Yuval Yeret: I’ve been involved with ProKanban, yeah.
Ryan Ripley: I mean, we have a great practitioner here who’s not only in the higher levels of SAFe, but also is a respected community member across many different organizations. We’re just going to peel these layers back and see what’s what.
So we hope you all join us on this journey. I appreciate you all signing up for this and joining us as well. Keep your eyes open; we’re going to be doing some live streams and videos driven by your questions, comments, and feedback. So get cracking, leave us some comments, and the videos will follow.
Anything else there, Yuval?
Yuval Yeret: No, just looking forward to it, and it’s going to be fun to have that conversation.
Ryan Ripley: Yeah! So be sure to like and subscribe so you don’t miss the videos that we do. We’re also going to be very active on social media. Be sure to follow Yuval and me: it’s @AgileForHumans, @RyanRipley… Yuval, your Twitter handle?
Yuval Yeret: @YuvalYeret.
Ryan Ripley: Perfect, perfect. We kept it easy. Keep an eye on the Twitter feeds and LinkedIn so that you know when new videos pop up. With that, like and subscribe is the easiest way to do it. Leave us your questions and comments, and we will see you very soon. Thanks, Yuval!
Yuval Yeret: Thanks, Ryan.