Why SAFe 5.0 Falls Short – Part 2: How to fix it!

Streamlining our company

A word of warning: The following is a model! Maybe you don’t agree with it and that’s fine! I’d like provide an idea: Something to hate, as they say :-) In any case, let’s pick up from part 1 first, in one paragraph: We have two problems with SAFe 5.x:

1. Unclear responsibilities at Portfolio level for our 3 standard roles in Agile: Business, Tech, and Agile Management
2. Everything builds on Business Agility, yet Business by itself does not recognize all aspects of Digital, like Cloud (Tech) or the Agile Manifesto (Agile Management) to name just two of a load of topics.

So, how do we solve that? This is new and this is the model: 3 simple steps!

1. Make the roles in Portfolio explicit

Step 1 is nothing complicated! The idea is to break up that “unclear responsibility” problem. Let’s have a bit of background: Why do we need that?

Imagine going to a program management and asking them for the Top 10 business topics. The PM can tell you. Same with the Top 10 tech topics (System Architect) and the next steps with implementation of SAFe (RTE). In principle, Portfolio should be able to do likewise, however, it gets a bit tricky who exactly does it. From my point of view, it’s brilliantly simple: Let’s make this explicit! Have an LPM Manager, an LPM Architect, an LPM Engineer.

Illustration 1: Make the 3 roles explicit on Portfolio level!

The real difficulty? These positions (especially in politicized company environments) come easily under heavy fire. Idea: Let’s start these as reporting-only roles! These guys are messengers, don’t shoot them. It isn’t the final solution, but it is a step – and that is great!

2. Extend to Leadership Level

Again, before we extend to leadership level: Why is it necessary? I want to be very clear on this.

• First, this will bolster the LPM Manager, Architect and Engineer roles above.
• Second, this solves our issue that leadership is not fully aware of essential aspects of digital – especially in the light of its innovation speed!

Illustration 2: Include Leadership level!

Having said that, there is a long-term reason for that:

• Maybe this idea of “all companies will be software companies” is beyond our horizon of imagination. However, this step here isn’t. We can imagine it, right? Let’s go there, it’s the right direction!

So, let’s have a Leadership Manager, Architect, and Engineer. Imagine the LPM Manager reporting directly to the CEO (as Leadership Manager), the LPM Architect reporting to the CDO (as Leadership Architect) - this would get things pretty straight, right? Just as an idea, we can imagine other implementation as well.

3. Tie in Legal, HR, IT Security, etc.

Now, tying in other departments should in theory not be a big thing. Legal is part of Business, right? IT Security is part of Technology. And HR is part of … Agile Management / Organization? I strongly believe this to be much more straightforward than a lot of people think.

Illustration 3: Integrate other stakeholders

Let’s discuss shortly: I sometimes hear the idea that data privacy could be a Tech issue. Actually, I don’t think so. Let’s see: If you are working in a highly regulated environment, like Financial Services, authorities do usually not address IT. They might for some isolated topics, like a process for bringing software into production. But mainly, they go to Business. Business has to be legal. So let’s tie it to Business.

I am aware, that this is probably the part of my suggestion that is most to hate. Again, it’s a proposal. It solves issues that SAFe 5.x does not answer. Let’s discuss!

Reasonable timeline!

Above is not a call for revolution, mind!

As said, “all companies will be software companies will be software companies” (as described by Marc Andreesen) will not be here in a day. And we don’t have to realize this in an instant! If Agility gets one thing right, it’s this: Take one step at a time. Allow time to learn. Improve in learning cycles. Maybe above model – or similar – is subject to the next 5 years? The next 10? It doesn’t matter as much. If we know the goal we can steer our ship towards it. This is why I criticize SAFE 5.x. Mind, I’m a fan of SAFe – but here it fails to get its goals straight. 5, 7 or 10 years is not of the essence. But saying where we want to go, is.

Above aims to streamline our company into thinking digital – because digital will not simply be over in a few years. It’s the future. So we should integrate all aspects: Business, Tech and Agile Management!

So, what do you think? Feel free to like or to add to the comments below.

In any case, thanks so much for reading!

“Why Safe 5.0 Falls Short” is part of an open-end op-ed series called “The Digital World” reflecting on (at least some of) the ideas and concepts for companies confronted with the Digital Age.

Icons used in the illustrations by Material Design (https://material.io/) under Apache license version 2.0 (see https://material.io/resources/icons for details).