The philosopher Heraclitus said you could never enter the same river twice. He observed that change is so prevalent in the world that even though we are crossing the same river, its properties are consistently changing, so it is never the same each time we cross it. The same could be true about the technology business and agile. The last three years have been a whirlwind of change. Many of us in the industry are grappling with these turbulent gusts and making sure our systems continue functioning regardless of which way the wind blows. The Scaled Agile network announced changes on March 14th to its certification process and frameworks. I sat through the demonstrations so that you do not have to, which is the topic this week on the blog.
The big news was the announcement of SAFe 6.0 from the scaled agile network. In a YouTube video announcement, the Scaled Agile network talked about the changes and how they would make SAFe better adapt to the business world and exploit technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Cloud Computing. Color me skeptical because these changes make sense but appear to be additional complexity to a system difficult to implement and achieve buy-in from technology professionals. I am more credible with technology workers when I talk about agile in SAFe environments rather than the particular teachings of SAFe.
What was also grating was the nature of the presentation about the new release. Instead of rolling out to an audience of supporters or press the way that Microsoft or Apple does with its products, Scaled Agile produced a perky infomercial with the glossy sheen of an infomercial promoting nutritional supplements or pressure washers. Was the leadership of Scaled Agile afraid of being heckled by its practitioners? What were they afraid of? I am not sure, but now I want to attend the Scaled Agile summit to get a less party-line response to these new improvements to SAFe.
According to Dean Leffingwell, one of Scaled Agile's founders, "The future deserves a better SAFe." I agree, and some of the improvements do look encouraging. First, there is an emphasis on getting business people to adapt to the needs of agility. Those in the trenches of software development have said this for years, but it is nice to see the acknowledgment. Next, the belief that a business should be a continuous learning culture is now a core value in 6.0. Business leaders will resist being graded like technology professionals, making implementation difficult. Technology people build things that work. Managers and Executives are judged by how likable and persuasive they are in the organization. As a result, business people are good at reducing costs and creating paradoxes, such as the two olive paradox, but could be better at providing customer value. The value delivery is much more complex and nuanced than reviewing an excel spreadsheet. Finally, Scaled Agile is putting together standards for objectives and key results for competency, flow, and business outcomes. The benefit of this initiative is that I can measure something instead of relying on hearsay to effect change.
I will upgrade my credentials to the new standard and adapt to a changing situation. It is easy to look at scaled Agile as the consulting version of a multi-level marketing scheme, but I will give the organization the benefit of the doubt. They still support SAFe 5.1, and their efforts to better train its members are reasonable faith efforts. SAFe does need to change, but it could have been a minor improvement instead of a splashy overhaul. It is the only agile thing to do.
Until next time.
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