> This is how things like SAFe are born, that try to make "agile safe for the corporation" and of course they're nothing more than corporate BS under an agile name
SAFe was truly one of the worst things I encountered with consulting clients. Planning days were an unbelievable exercise in futility. Waterfall masquerading as agile, the absolute worst of both worlds.
> SAFe was truly one of the worst things I encountered with consulting clients.
we've been using SAFe for a few years, I despise every minute of the planning process. Feel like a mix between using a crystal ball and forcing square pegs in round holes... Of course the additional disfunctionality at my company between sales, PO/PM/BO and engineering doesn't help, though it seems that I've avoided the worst SAFe train of the company.
My last job was SAFe. When I started I was given Staff level title and had dreams of maybe moving into lead or management at some level. Once I saw the process I became completely unmotivated to go in that direction.
For them I understood some of the motivation. Hardware & equipment manufacturer, which involves scheduling complicated industrial processes for months/years out. So you need some semi-coherent vision of where things will be, so having a multiquarter waterfall-esque plan was going to be needed.
I agree that some of the outputs of the SAFe process aren't useless, like expressing dependencies between teams and discussing objectives, but the process is way too costly for what it achieves. Maybe if the name was changed to something like SCRUM and Waterfall evil child...
SAFe was truly one of the worst things I encountered with consulting clients. Planning days were an unbelievable exercise in futility. Waterfall masquerading as agile, the absolute worst of both worlds.