Agile Middle East is starting 2021 with online meetups by organizing sessions from the lean and agile experts from all over the world. Let's welcome Sander Bosma who is an Agile Coach and was also honorable speaker at Lean Agile Middle East 2020 event where he presented success case study of startup in Abu Dhabi. In this meetup Sander will share experience and learning which will let us know some of the identified anti patterns which must be avoided to implement Scaled Agile Framework. About Sander Bosma: During my career as an Agile Coach and SAFe Program Consultant I have seen my share of misinterpretations of the Scaled Agile Framework, failed implementations, misused practices and believe it or not made some stupid mistakes myself along the way. In this talk I want to share five of these failures as a learning opportunity for all of you. Don’t expect any fancy solutions or well- thought-out strategies just plain simple experiences that will make you laugh and that you’ll remember to avoid in your own scaling journey.

1. Nice to meet you!
Agile Coach
LeSS Practitioner
SAFe Program Consultant
Trainer
Speaker
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

2. Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe
1. Take a bottom-up approach
2. Fall in love with the framework
3. Not accepting waterfalls
4. Just change the labels
5. Start without a solid foundation
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

3. 1. Take a bottom-up approach
CEO
Business IT
Design Development
BI Java/.Net Way4 Cobol
Test Project Mgt
OPS
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

4. This doesn’t work because…
• Unlike Scrum, SAFe ‘happens’ on the coordination level
• There are new roles that need to be filled in and old roles that are obsolete
• More people will be impacted, in fact, everybody will be impacted
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

5. But you can get management interested by…
• Visualizing the problems in the current way of working
• Sharing the practices from whatever framework to deal with these problems
• Running a pilot to experiment with a different approach
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

6. CEO
Business IT
Design Development
BI Java/.Net Way4 Cobol
Test Project Mgt
OPS
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

7. Things I did in this situation…
• Visualize inter-team dependencies on a time-line
• Calculate ‘touch-time’ as a percentage of ‘lead-time’
• Simulate the resource-allocation puzzle and address this waste of time
Team 4
Team 3
Team 1
Team 2
Team 4
Team 3
Team 1
Team 2
January April August
Feature 1
Feature 2
Feature 3
Team 4
Team 3
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
Others Team 4
Team 2
Team 1
Backlog
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

8. CEO
Business IT
Design Development
BI Java/.Net Way4 Cobol
Test Project Mgt
OPS
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

9. Things I did in this situation…
• Visualize inter-team dependencies on a time-line
• Calculate ‘touch-time’ as a percentage of ‘lead-time’
• Simulate the resource-allocation puzzle and address this waste of time
Touch time (in hrs) Lead time (in working days) Percentage
20 8 31 %
77 59 16 %
145 212 9%
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

10. Things I did in this situation…
• Visualize inter-team dependencies on a time-line
• Calculate ‘touch-time’ as a percentage of ‘lead-time’
• Simulate the resource-allocation puzzle and address this waste of time
Dept 1 Dept 2
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

11. Things I did in this situation…
• Visualize inter-team dependencies on a time-line
• Calculate ‘touch-time’ as a percentage of ‘lead-time’
• Simulate the resource-allocation puzzle and address this waste of time
Dept 1 Dept 2 Project 1 Project 2
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

12. CEO
Business IT
Design Development
BI Java/.Net Way4 Cobol
Test Project Mgt
OPS
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

13. 2. Fall in love with the framework
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

14. It’s just not a good idea because…
• The framework will never love you in return so you’ll get heart-broken
• A framework is a one-size-fits all solution that will never fit 100%
• You might want to use parts of other frameworks if they are a better fit
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

15. So leave your options open…
• Learn about all different scaling frameworks out there
• Understand the culture of your organization by observing behaviour
• Accept what you cannot change and change what you cannot accept
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

16. I have cheated on SAFe a few times…
• When PI Planning for 12 weeks was too hard, I’ve shortened the timebox
• When ‘Done’ was not ‘Done’ at all, I introduced an ‘Undone team’
• When the ART was no safe place yet, there was often safety in the team
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

17. 3. Not accepting waterfalls
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

18. Is SAFe a step back in the wrong direction?
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

19. Is SAFe a step back in the wrong direction?
Waterfall
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

20. Is SAFe a step back in the wrong direction?
Waterfall Scrum
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

21. Is SAFe a step back in the wrong direction?
Waterfall SAFe Scrum
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

22. Having ‘waterfall’ teams in your Agile Release Train
• Don’t give up, you can make it work
• Ask them to visualize their workflow and their work on a Kanban board
• Teach them about batch-sizes and small increments
• Let them experience the value of planning together
• Let them figure out how they best fit into the ART
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

23. Having ‘waterfall’ steps in your Agile Release Train
For example: Things are not integrated yet at the end of a PI and there are
still a lot of things to be done before going live
• Create a (temporary) ‘GO-Live’ team that will take care of these steps
• Work on handing over the tasks of this team to the other teams on the
train step by step. Try to automate as much as possible.
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

24. 4. Just change the labels
Department Agile Release Train
Manager Product Owner
Project Lead Scrum Master
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

25. Agile transformations consist of several layers
‘Progress’ board
Daily standup
Working together on a daily base
Openness
Products vs projectsHard but high impact
Easy but low impact
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

26. Just changing the labels is easy but won’t…
• Change the principles
• Change the values
• Change the mindset
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

27. Instead just changing the labels will…
• Keep the status quo
• Add to the confusion
• Sabotage your Agile transformation
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

28. From my personal experience I know…
• Not everybody wants to change
• Not everybody is able to change
• It’s not easy to make someone change
• Sometimes you just need other people
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

29. 5. Start without a solid foundation
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

30. Things I struggled with…
• Not having Agile teams on my Agile Release Train
• Inexperienced Product Owners and Scrum Masters
• Not having a clear vision on the product or service
• Organizations that didn’t make the tough decisions
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

31. A solid foundation in scaling consists of…
• ‘Mature’ Agile teams that take ownership
• A clear view and vision on the product
• C-level support
• A substantial amount of training so everybody speaks the same language
• Patience, opportunity to fail and determination to overcome obstacles
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

32. Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe
 Take a bottom-up approach
 Fall in love with the framework
 Not accepting waterfalls
 Just change the labels
 Start without a solid foundation
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe

33. Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe
 Take a bottom-up approach
 Fall in love with the framework
 Not accepting waterfalls
 Just change the labels
 Start without a solid foundation
Sander Bosma
Five Perfect Ways to Fail SAFe