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Scaling Agile

Uncertainty & the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe™)

What is the connection between Uncertainty and the Scaled Agile Framework?

Uncertainty is one of the core reasons we need to be agile. Different modes of Business/Requirements/Technology uncertainties impact our economic costs in product development – especially the potential impact of risk. The first principle of SAFe™ is “Take an economic view”. I frequently use my “uncertainty filter glasses” to take an alternative economic view. I find it helps Scaled Agile/SAFe™ practitioners/leaders understand both the need for Agility as well as examine various work system design considerations. In this article, I introduce the Stacey Matrix which is one of my favorite models for understanding the uncertainty landscape as well as the implications of uncertainty on various specific SAFe™ design decisions.

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Agile

Lean/Kanban approach to Teams

To Team or not to Team?

If you look at the definition of Kanban or Lean, you wouldn’t find teams anywhere there.

If you look at the Agile Manifesto, you can find “The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams”

Scrum is quite clear about the topic

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Scaled Agile Framework

Improving SAFe thru Professional Scrum

SAFe includes Scrum – so how come many Scrum practitioners and thought leaders consider it unsafe?
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe™) is one of the most popular approaches to applying agile at scale out there. SAFe’s perspective is that “Nothing beats an Agile Team” and it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or even innovate too much when it comes to the Team level. It takes advantage of established frameworks and techniques that work well – Scrum being the first and foremost of those.

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Agile

Risk-aware Product Development (a.k.a. Agile)

“There’s no predictability/commitment in Agile”

Over the years I’ve heard my share of these kinds of statements from various levels of executives:

“When my guys run a product development release I really want to know what I will get at the end so I can make business plans accordingly”

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Agile

Agile Israel 2018

Keynotes Agile Israel 2018 Impact mapping with innovation games By Gojko Adzic @ Gojko.net More Talks Agile Israel 2018 ATT Israel Journey to Built In

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Agile

The Product Manager / Product Owner AS A Scientist

We’ve all heard it before – “Talented technology team builds amazing product!” That… doesn’t create the impact that they wanted, not enough customers end up buying or the users aren’t happy with it or …

This is an especially common problem with companies that have a “brilliant” idea or technology that someone goes developing in their garage (if startup) / innovation product development group (if enterprise). This could be a new product or just a new feature of an existing product. Typically, the Product Owner or Product Manager in the organization specifies what to build. If they’re somewhat Agile, they even work closely with the organization to build it incrementally and hopefully deliver it continuously. But still, even then, too often the product or features don’t provide the expected impact/benefits. Overcoming this challenge is a common theme that is discussed by attendees at our SAFe POPM Course.

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Business Agility

The difference between Planned vs Actual vs Actual Actual Business Value when it comes to SAFe PI Objectives

Actual is a relative term when it comes to business value delivered by a SAFe PI Objective. We had a discussion about this a couple of weeks ago in an Implementing SAFe class and I promised a blog post about this. Here it goes.

Planned Business Value – Making sure Business Owners and the Agile Team are on the same page

Let’s start from the basics though. PI (Program Increment) Objectives are used as a “back briefing” mechanism by Agile Teams on an Agile Release Train to share their plan for the PI and validate that they are indeed focusing on the highest priorities and are planning to deliver objectives that will be valuable for the business.

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Agile

SAFe is a Scaled Agile Framework, Not a Scaled Agile Methodology

when it comes to how to practice SAFe as well as how to implement it, we prefer to consider it a very useful but flexible/incomplete structure that requires well-trained and experienced practitioners to successfully apply, and that’s a key design principle for our Implementing SAFe workshops where we train future SPCs

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Scaling Agile

Building Great Release Train Engineers – a talk with Mattias & Yuval

In the scaled Agile framework, one key role is the Release Train Engineer (RTE). But who should I look for to fill this role? What are the first few process improvements experienced RTEs typically do? Yuval Yeret (AgileSparks) and Mattias Skarin (Crisp) took the time to discuss the traits of a good RTE.

What are the traits of a good RTE?

Yuval: The easy answer to this question is that you are looking for a Scrum master for a team of teams. Going beyond that, when it comes to specific traits, you are looking for someone who cares about process and improvements, someone who has the ability to orchestrate things. But at the same time, someone who also knows when to step back and let the teams organize themselves. A good RTE is a great communicator and can see and understand what is happening.

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