Can you be Safe with SAFe?

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Can you be Safe with SAFe?
Ken France
ken.France@cprime.com
November 27, 2018

Who’s this Ken guy?
• Co-Founder and former CEO of Blue Agility
• Acquired by cPrime in August, 2017
• 25+ Years industry experience
• IBM/Loral/Lockheed: Air Traffic Control Developer/Lead
• Rational Software: Consultant
• Number Six Software: VP Field Operations
• Executive/Transformation Coach, Trainer
• THE Ohio State University/Johns Hopkins grad
SELECT
CLIENTS
• Prudential
• Blue Cross Blue
Shield of NC
• T. Rowe Price
• Travelers
• Cigna
• Bed, Bath, and
Beyond
Ken France, VP Scaled Agile Practice
cPrime
SAFe SPCT/Fellow

Obligatory Dilbert Opening

Agenda
1. What are people saying?
2. What is SAFe?
3. Ok, so how do you make it safe?
4. Parting thoughts
5. Q&A

WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING?

Notable Quotes/Articles
“The boys from RUP (Rational Unified Process)
are back.”
Ken Schwaber, “UnSAFe at any speed”, 2013
“Kanban: the anti-SAFe for almost a decade
already”
David Anderson, 2013
“I do not like it. It’s fast food. You can do
better.”
Ron Jefferies, “SAFe – Good But Not Good
Enough”, 2014
“It’s too big”
“It’s too prescriptive”
“It’s too complicated”
“In our culture, people will try to
follow this step by step without
deviation. That concerns me.”
Head of PMO, recent cPrime client
“It’s all essential, what
would you take away?”
- Anonymous

WHAT IS SAFE?

1.9© Scaled Agile, Inc.
SAFe is a knowledge base of proven,
integrated principles and practices for
Lean, Agile, and DevOps.
SAFe is the world’s
leading framework for enterprise agility
scaledagileframework.com

Enough Marketing Ken, what is SAFe REALLY?
But First … Principles before Practices
House of Lean
LEADERSHIP
Respectfor
peopleandculture
Flow
Innovation
Relentless
improvement
VALUE
Value in the shortest
sustainable lead time
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Agile Manifesto
That is, while there is value in the items on the
right, we value the items on the left more.
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and
helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
1. Built-In Quality
2. Program execution
3. Alignment
4. Transparency
Core Values
#1 - Take an economic view
#2 - Apply systems thinking
#3 - Assume variability; preserve options
#4 - Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
#5 - Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
#6 - Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
#7 - Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning
#8 - Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
#9 - Decentralize decision-making
SAFe Lean-Agile Principles
© Scaled Agile, Inc.

But you need Practices too ….
5-9/team
50-125+/ART
500-1000+/ST
2000-5000+/Port

One size does NOT fit all …
Essential SAFe Portfolio SAFe
Large
Solution SAFe

OK, SO HOW DO YOU MAKE IT SAFE?

Let’s talk about Why?
1. Establish a sense of urgency
2. Create a powerful guiding coalition
3. Develop the vision and strategy
4. Communicate the vision
5. Empower employees for broad-based action
6. Generate short-term wins
7. Consolidate gains and produce more wins
8. Anchor new approaches in the culture
Creating the
Climate for the
Change
Engage/Enable
The Org
Implement &
Sustain the
Change

Don’t “F”ool Yourself
1. It’s only a ”F”ramework after all
• Blind adherence might make a “F”ool out of you
2. Context is everything
• Understand the challenges, people, technology,
culture, tolerance for change, political landscape,
etc.
3. Outcomes not output
• What Business results are outlined in your Vision?
• Perfect adherence to practices don’t necessarily get
you desired outcomes
PDCA
Do
CheckAdjust
Plan
PDCA

Don’t Believe Everything You See
• The Big Picture is a domain model, not a process flow
• Understand the mechanism, use (or don’t use) where needed (or not needed)
• Roles not necessarily people

EXAMPLE: FINANCIAL SERVICES LAUNCH

Context
1. Client: Large Financial Services firm
2. Goals:
• Modernize Retirement Services Systems
• New Platform, New Applications, New Methodology
3. Approach:
1. Evaluate/select technologies for platform
2. Incrementally build upon platform
3. Aggressive timeline to meet business need
4. Selected SAFe as the framework to support large team
required to meet the goals. Selected base on:
1. Architecture was a first class citizen
2. Big picture provided clarity, allowed Leadership to say
yes

Tailored SAFe Approach: Bring Cars onto the Train
Car 1:
- Form a single
Architecture
team
- Architect was PO
- Taught SAFe for
Teams but
launched in
SCRUM w/Epic,
Feature, Story
hierarchy
- 3-4 sprints
Car 2:
- New Feature
team started
building on
platform to
validate
- Business was PO
- Same launch
approach
- 1-2 sprints
- Car 1 kept
building more
platform out
Cars 3/4:
- New Feature teams
continued building on
platform
- Business was PO
- Same launch approach
- 1-2 sprints
- 1 SM acted as “RTE”
- 1 PO acted as “Product
Manager”
- Car 1 kept building more
platform out
Cars 5-8:
- New Feature
teams trained
- Turned into an full
ART
- Held PI Planning
- Dedicated RTE,
Product Manager
- Car 1 became a
Feature team
w/Business PO
- Former PO
became System
Architect

Other Ways to be Safe in SAFe
1. Keep the focus
• Don’t ignore PI plan right after PI planning, use the Program
Board in the SoS
2. Fill in gaps
• Leverage other techniques in conjunction with SAFe as
needed (e.g. DevJam Product Agility techniques, Spotify
concepts, etc.)
• Leverage/build a more detailed playbook to capture your
implementation of SAFe (e.g. cPrime BlueKit)
3. Look for ways to optimize over time
• Consider a Program Level Kanban system (e.g. Feature vs.
Story flow) as the ART matures

PARTING THOUGHTS

Keepin’ it Real
1. A Fool with a Tool is still a Fool
1. Be Pragmatic
2. Be Realistic
3. Be Authentic
2. Don’t believe everything you hear/read
1. All approaches/frameworks experience failures
2. The Facts are Friendly
3. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/case-studies/
3. Can’t we all just get along?
1. Methodology Wars are not productive
2. Delivering is … let’s do that instead ☺

Q&A

ken.france@cprime.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenfrance/

Can you be Safe with SAFe?

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