Why SAFe 5.0 Falls Short

SAFe 5.0 introduces us to Business Agility – or in other words: How to make our whole company flexible and reactive to market needs at a finger’s snap, in short: agile! However, while SAFe 5.0 establishes some basic structures it’s also quite sparse on the details. So, if you were always wondering whether this is complete in terms of Business Agility – this article is exactly about that!

Make my company agile!

Hello and welcome to this part of our series “The Digital World”! Today we want to dive into the newer aspects of SAFe, the Business Agility idea. As you may know – you don’t have to, mind! – SAFe especially concentrates on how to organize single teams into programs which produce products. We also talk about Solution Trains, CoPs, Shared Services and a lot of other stuff. However, at least up to SAFe 5.0 teams, programs and products are the basic focus.

Now, SAFe 5.0 aims specifically to expand the Portfolio level (which already existed but not as a main focus). The idea, just in a few words, is how to tie company strategy to execution in the programs. But how do we do that? The central idea is a Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) that breaks down leadership goals into strategy and a portfolio backlog that is then handed over to the programs for implementation. It also tries to integrate HR, Legal, and other departments. In short: we aim to integrate the entire company to achieve so-called Business Agility.

That sounds great! But does SAFe 5.0 really do that? Or more specially, how does it do that?

Where it doesn’t match!

Now, if we look at the details, SAFe 5.0 adds a completely new section for Business Agility, including from “Team and Technical Agility” to “Lean Portfolio Management” to “Lean-Agile Leadership” (check out the “Overview” section on https://www.scaledagileframework.com). However, if we dig into the newer parts, we find that things become kind of … fuzzy round the edges? SAFe 5.0 talks a lot about mindsets (e.g., for integration of HR or Legal) and we suddenly have a lot of responsible people when it comes to actually breaking strategy down. And this is where it doesn’t match!

Here is the point: SAFe – in its basic idea of teams, programs and products – relies on 3 specializations or roles on every level: a business part, a technical part, and an organizational (or Agile Management) part. Let’s have a look it:

Illustration 1: 3 specializations or roles on every level

So, some roles look specifically at the business (meaning, the business model), some at the technical aspects, and some care about bringing everything to work. These 3 specializations or roles on every level – and between levels! – act like cogwheels of an engine (if we like a picture) turning the basic work of implementation into a massive, efficient machinery. In fact, they are so essential that I like to call them dimensions. And here it is: These 3 dimensions – which make SAFe so successful! – are no longer in effect when we look at the Portfolio level.

Check it out on the official site (https://www.scaledagileframework.com/lean-portfolio-management, Figure 2). Yes, it is somehow there – but at the same time everything is re-arranged and split into partial responsibilities or sub-roles.

And when it comes to leadership etc. it doesn’t follow this idea at all. In other words, our most efficient machinery remains isolated in the IT parts of our company. It does not transfer its momentum. And our company is not streamlined for digital production.

Digital equals Business?

There is another aspect: SAFe 5.0 talks about Business Agility – as a term! If you’ve read my series on the Digital Industry from last year (if you haven’t done so, it doesn’t matter, I just like to point out where we tie in here …) you might be familiar with this thought: Business is a very central part of what companies do; however,

• Business does not create innovations like Cloud. Or Big Data. Or IoT. It uses the ideas once they are there. But it doesn’t make them.
• Business does not create innovations like an Agile Manifesto. Or Scrum. Or LeSS. Or SAFe.
• And business is not integral to the ever-shortening cycles of digital technology (which again is more than often driven by agile methodology).

Think about it! Instead of establishing these 3 dimensions - again: Business, Tech, and Organization (aka Agile Management) – on every level of our organization, SAFe 5.0 brings in a kind of “transformation layer” that seems to suggest that our companies do not need to re-think, do not need to re-structure if we want to address the challenges of digitalization.

Here’s my point of view: Companies should not just want business to be agile. We want to be first in market with every aspect of digital: business, tech and organizational. Remember “all companies will be software companies” by Marc Andreessen? Only minding all aspects of digital will keep us in market lead position in the years to come.

This is why SAFe 5.0 falls short.

What do you think?

The above is – as always – entirely my opinion :-)

What do you think? Maybe I got it all wrong and “first in market” is Business Agility? Maybe Business Owners are supposed to represent the three dimensions or roles? Maybe my opinion makes sense as a vision - but we need to proceed step by step?

Of course, the open question is: If we could, how would we fix it? What can be done to improve the concept? And that, an idea at least, is the topic of the next session!

“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).