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SAFe Experts' Opinions

A small significant sample of former SAFe experts, some instrumental in shaping SAFe.

1 - Al Shalloway

Al Shalloway has been one of the three initial SAFe Principal Contributors for six years, the first SAFe program consultant trainer (SPCT) outside Scaled Agile Inc, and with his company, he has been a SAFe Gold partner.

In 2018 he broke off his relationship with Scaled Agile Inc and SAFe, citing among the reasons that SAFe has grown considerably more complex than it needs to be, and that he was told had to prove he had done a few “by the book” SAFe adoptions to renew his SPCT certification.

In 2020 he further commented that he thinks it’s more appropriate to call SAFe an improved Waterfall than it is to call it a poor Agile. That creating ARTs (Release Trains) merely accommodates dependencies and is a poor value creation structure. And that a 3-month PI (Product Increments planning) is better than annual but is not Agile.

Al Shalloway has also made some positive comments about some elements of SAFe. He said that SAFe can provide a good start for organizations that can’t deliver quickly or are even stuck, and that it provides:

  • a holistic view
  • an introduction to first principles
  • a cost-effective method of training teams
  • a way of providing alignment across the organization.

He added that the challenge for most organizations is that SAFe provides just enough to get started, not enough to finish the job of continually being able to improve. Most SAFe adoptions start with Essential SAFe and never move to the higher levels because of SAFe’s complexity. Many others stagnate after 2-3 program increments because they revert to a push system.

References:

2 - Alex Yakyma

Alex Yakyma has been SAFe first Associate Methodologist. Between 2012 and 2016 he worked for Scaled Agile Inc and SAFe Fellow. Since 2017 when he distanced himself from SAFe and Scaled Agile inc.

After that he focused completely on the human aspects of work, focusing on the Agile mindset, organisational culture and learning. And commented: “The solution to the problem is not in practices, methods or tools. They are helpful but only when the mindset is evolving too. The real solution lies in educating the industry in the new ways of thinking and making it applicable in the organisational context.”

References:

3 - Bob Galen

Bob Galen became SAFe SPC certified around 2013. He tried to understand, support, and apply it, but then he struggled with it for a long time to the point that he just couldn’t be associated with it any longer.

In his farewell to SAFe he mentioned several reasons, here are a few: It’s too big; It creates far too many roles, layers, flows, etc; It’s too focused on certifications and training; It’s created lazy organisations who think the framework does the heavy lifting for them; It’s created a community of SPC’s and other consultants who look at every problem and thinks SAFe is the solution.

References:

4 - Conclusions

This is a small sample of a growing group of SAFe experts that are distancing themselves from SAFe with motivations that are congruent with the problems observed in the case studies and by other experts and practitioners.