Leading SAFe

Since sharing personal impressions about SAFe trainings has become almost a norm in the field, I also want to stick my spoon in the soup.

I participated in a Leading SAFe training given by Maarit Laanti from Nitor Delta. After reading many rather critical blog posts about these trainings (actually they have mostly been about SPC trainings), I was very curious to get some first hand experience. Probably the quality of the class depends on many things: the trainer, the participants and the chemistry between the actors.

I was very positively surprised! We were given opportunity to ask questions and share our expectations at the beginning of the course. Some were more interested about the Portfolio level, some about the Program and the Agile Release Trains. Contents of the course were customized according to the participants' interests. I think all the questions were answered in a credible way and the shared real life experiences were the bread and butter. Maarit also demonstrated a very healthy criticism towards some of the contents. I don't give big credit to people who just preach without understanding what they are really talking about. I think our trainer displayed profound understanding of the topics she taught us about.

And (good) videos are always nice. I was already familiar with some of them like the Daniel Pink's video about motivation

and Henrik Kniberg's excellent animation about Product Ownership,

but for example the video about Deming's willing workers and the effect of the system was a new acquaintance to me. Served as a good eye opener.

In the end, Leading SAFe course (and the Scaled Agile Framework) includes topics about Scrum, Lean and Systems Thinking. The highest Portfolio level doesn't seem to be that mature yet, but I see that and some of the more prescriptive parts mainly as extra tools. If you set those aside, the rest is something that not many Agile gurus (= people who manage to stay successful in ever-changing environments) could have anything against.

Sami Lilja has criticized that scaling in itself is solving the wrong problem. But I don't think people and organizations always have a choice. Decreasing the size of the system or splitting it into smaller pieces could be the ultimate goal, but personally I think having this toolbox at least helps to cope with the current situation in many organizations. Every path starts with taking the first step.