Kevin Bendeler after working several years with SAFe comments on 7 flaws he noticed in the framework’s adoption:
- In SAFe extensive front-loaded planning encourages ineffective larger batch size work
- Technical debt tends to increase in SAFe organisations
- SAFe Program Increment (PI) cycle time is unfit for teams that need to be responsive
- SAFe roles and structure may discourage teams collaboration that’s an Agile value
- SAFe approaches to estimation is more predictive than empirical as in Agile
- SAFe focus more on output and volume than the value created and delivered
- SAFe doesn’t have enough focus on the feedback loop and related learnings. He concludes by saying he thinks that trying to scale Agile up by applying heavyweight, top-down methodologies is antithetical and counterproductive.
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