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SAFe® (Scaled Agile Framework) shows how you can work on one product with more than 80 people. What do we learn from this for our projects?
Door: Remi-Armand Collaris op June 27, 2018.
Read in: 3 minutes.

Do you recognize problems in project environments?

  • It is difficult to get the right people together and get them going at the start of a project.
  • Your project employees are constantly being pulled from outside your project;
  • It takes a lot of time to arrange a budget. The estimates that form the basis for this are never correct;
  • Due to a fixed project scope, new insights (however relevant) are difficult to include;
  • With large projects you get more management attention. That attention helps, but the complexity of large projects reduces the chance of success.

This is just a small selection of what you encounter in projects. Feel free to provide better examples.

Projects as a solution for everything

Overarching in the list above is the theme projects. A project is an activity, limited in time and resources, to create something. It is distinguished by its one-off character. With a limited amount of money, a number of people are brought together for a limited time to achieve something that the standing organization (line) is not designed for. The "joke" is that the project-based nature is the cause of all the problems that I have listed above. I'm not going to explain this (boring) but leave it to your own imagination.

SAFe® is Scrum with more than 80 people

Agile and Scrum working in a team is being applied more and more widely. Teams organize themselves and are increasingly able to adapt flexibly to the wishes of the organization and the environment. But what if you are in an organization in which development initiatives of 8 people or more on one product are no exception. What if there is a clear need for coordination between multiple teams. What if prioritizing within your portfolio is difficult. Then SAFe® (Scaled Agile Framework®) offers tools that help with this.

Successful application of SAFe®

Looking at SAFe®, we see organizations that have introduced 80% of SAFe® and have hardly become more effective, but also organizations that apply perhaps 20% of SAFe® and have made leaps and bounds. Successfully applying a method comes down to breaking through obstructing patterns in the organization. What is that one behavioral change that ensures that a whole series of problems is solved at once. If you can enter one practice from the method with a snap of your finger, which one will it be? It is useful to know what exactly the problem is that you would like to solve. 

Lessons from SAFe®

If you would teach me that cut, in order to drastically reduce the amount of hassle in organizations, then I would know ... Stop product development projects, they are not so temporary and unique that you necessarily need a project for this. This is also the advice of SAFe®: “Stop funding based on projects!”. Stop bringing people to work, but bring the work to existing long-lived (Scrum) teams. Budget goes to Agile Release Trains (ARTs) in SAFe®. An ART is a long-lived team of Agile teams that delivers incremental solutions, tailored to a common business or technical mission. With this you make change capacity available instead of budget. This is the challenge for the business to create as much value as possible with this. SAFe® calls this concept Lean Budgets. Follow the link for more information.

Remi-Armand: I see it as my mission to allow the talents of people to flourish more in an organizational context. To this end, I am fully committed to everything that helps to land the concepts of Team Learning and the Learning Organization. I make use of Agile, Scrum, Lean, change management and coaching techniques. Our practical approach to this can be found in the book “Practical on the way to Team result”. See this website for more information or join a free evening session from us “Team Learning Platform".

I am always available for a good conversation. Feel free to contact us to discuss SAFe® or Agile transitions.

Do you recognize problems in project environments?

  • It is difficult to get the right people together and get them going at the start of a project.
  • Your project employees are constantly being pulled from outside your project;
  • It takes a lot of time to arrange a budget. The estimates that form the basis for this are never correct;
  • Due to a fixed project scope, new insights (however relevant) are difficult to include;
  • With large projects you get more management attention. That attention helps, but the complexity of large projects reduces the chance of success.

This is just a small selection of what you encounter in projects. Feel free to provide better examples.

Projects as a solution for everything

Overarching in the list above is the theme projects. A project is an activity, limited in time and resources, to create something. It is distinguished by its one-off character. With a limited amount of money, a number of people are brought together for a limited time to achieve something that the standing organization (line) is not designed for. The "joke" is that the project-based nature is the cause of all the problems that I have listed above. I'm not going to explain this (boring) but leave it to your own imagination.

SAFe® is Scrum with more than 80 people

Agile and Scrum working in a team is being applied more and more widely. Teams organize themselves and are increasingly able to adapt flexibly to the wishes of the organization and the environment. But what if you are in an organization in which development initiatives of 8 people or more on one product are no exception. What if there is a clear need for coordination between multiple teams. What if prioritizing within your portfolio is difficult. Then SAFe® (Scaled Agile Framework®) offers tools that help with this.

Successful application of SAFe®

Looking at SAFe®, we see organizations that have introduced 80% of SAFe® and have hardly become more effective, but also organizations that apply perhaps 20% of SAFe® and have made leaps and bounds. Successfully applying a method comes down to breaking through obstructing patterns in the organization. What is that one behavioral change that ensures that a whole series of problems is solved at once. If you can enter one practice from the method with a snap of your finger, which one will it be? It is useful to know what exactly the problem is that you would like to solve. 

Lessons from SAFe®

If you would teach me that cut, in order to drastically reduce the amount of hassle in organizations, then I would know ... Stop product development projects, they are not so temporary and unique that you necessarily need a project for this. This is also the advice of SAFe®: “Stop funding based on projects!”. Stop bringing people to work, but bring the work to existing long-lived (Scrum) teams. Budget goes to Agile Release Trains (ARTs) in SAFe®. An ART is a long-lived team of Agile teams that delivers incremental solutions, tailored to a common business or technical mission. With this you make change capacity available instead of budget. This is the challenge for the business to create as much value as possible with this. SAFe® calls this concept Lean Budgets. Follow the link for more information.

Remi-Armand: I see it as my mission to allow the talents of people to flourish more in an organizational context. To this end, I am fully committed to everything that helps to land the concepts of Team Learning and the Learning Organization. I make use of Agile, Scrum, Lean, change management and coaching techniques. Our practical approach to this can be found in the book “Practical on the way to Team result”. See this website for more information or join a free evening session from us “Team Learning Platform".

I am always available for a good conversation. Feel free to contact us to discuss SAFe® or Agile transitions.

By Remi-Armand Collaris

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