Reflecting on first few steps of SAFe's "implementation roadmap"
I have been looking at SAFe's "Implementation Roadmap" (http://www.scaledagileframework.com/implementation-roadmap/) and reflecting on my own experiences standing up Scrum teams in large organizations. I am wondering if anyone has seen the pattern of somewhat forced middle management engagement as seen in the first few steps of the roadmap work in practice? By first few steps I am referring to everything prior to the "create implementation plan" step.
My gut tells me most of the managers will predictably distort the intent even with the forced engagement unless there is enough executive pressure, executive insight, and transparency mechanisms to avoid it. With enough executive buy-in it would seem leveraging a Scrum Studio with a much flatter reporting structure would be just as politically tractable and avoid so many of the problems SAFe doesn't address.
Perhaps I am trying to understand what nuggets of useful advice can be gleaned from how SAFe approaches the change management problem, given that I am loath to blindly trust any of it which doesn't resonate with my own experience.
I am not asking a SAFe vs. Nexus question. I suspect most everyone on this forum recognizes the myriad of challenges with SAFe.
Presumed discussion baseline:
* Craig's Larman's laws of organizational behavior. (https://less.works/less/structure/index.html)
* Charles Bradley's nice list of SAFe critiques:
http://www.scrumcrazy.com/Is+SAFe(tm)+Bad%3F++Is+it+unsafe%3F++Is+it+Ag…
The "pattern of somewhat forced middle management engagement" you refer to is fairly well known and is sometimes referred to as the "frozen middle" or the "organizational permafrost".
Different question maybe.
We also had started down the road of using SAFe, mostly I think because it seem to include the idea of some enterprise portfolio management approach, which would not be a big change to the before agile process. Familiar to folks. When I look at Nexus, is it's focus more at a product level on down? Or some assumption that somehow the decision had been made to spend money? I've been trying to figure out how you might want to try and sell why one might want to use Nexus vs SAFe, what are the main differences, what problems does one approach address versus the other.
SAFe provides a big picture upon which organizations can try to map their existing practices and dysfunctions. Nexus puts an emphasis on integrated product delivery, which is more likely to require deep organizational change.
Hi Ian. I think SAfe also asks for organizational change, even if you just limited it to mapping roles and responsibilities and didn't try to change approach.
Is “mapping roles”, while avoiding matters of approach, likely to cause enough change for an organization to become agile?