A(nother) Response to SAFe Criticisms: Part 3

Full Disclosure: I am a certified Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Program Consultant (SPC).

In the first part of this series, I explained my intent behind answering some of the criticism for SAFe and asked for concerns that you would like to see addressed. I haven’t received any direct feedback, but the offer still stands. In the meantime, I’m going to dive into some of the more common criticisms I’ve seen already published. I’ll try to focus on one concern or small group of related concerns per blog post.

HIP Sprints

One criticism that’s prevalent among SAFe’s detractors is the inclusion of the HIP Sprint on the Big Picture. This is another case of SAFe trying to accommodate reality for organizations new to Agile. HIP, by the way, stands for “Hardening | Innovation | Planning”. It definitely gives the vibe of “Waterfalling the Sprints” and deserves our attention.

Hardening

Hardening should, in my honest opinion, be done away with as soon as humanly possible. However, if you’re brand new to Agile and have not yet built up your technical practices and hardware, releasing to Production without a hardening period is a bad idea.

SAFe does a good job of outlining what may be appropriate hardening activities versus those that could/should be done sooner. This is a good resource for new teams to get rid of hardening. Teams should focus first on getting activities that should definitely be done before hardening included in their Sprint Definition of Done. Then they move on to those that could be done sooner out of hardening. Eventually, they should aim to have their Release Definition of Done match their Sprint Definition of Done. At this point they could, potentially, go to Production with the completion of each User Story, which is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from a continuous delivery team.

Innovation

I know, I know, having an “Innovation Sprint” is like having a “Kaizen event”. And yet, we hold Retrospectives as an opportunity to focus on improvement that should, in theory, be continuous. If your company does not support a culture of innovation then no framework will magically change that. However, if you have a team that has managed to eliminate hardening activities, they should be rewarded with a Sprint of unfettered innovation. Give them a couple of weeks to do what they want and they will surprise you with how much they accomplish! Heck, it may even help to transform the company’s culture to one that embraces innovation.

Planning

This aspect of “HIP” tends to have the least resistance as Planning is well-recognized as a fundamental component of successful Agile organizations. The final Sprint of the PSI should include the planning activities that will prepare the Agile Release Train for the upcoming PSI. These include the Solution Demo (PSI Review), Inspect & Adapt Workshop (PSI Retrospective), and PSI Planning (PSI Planning).

Most ARTs will get these activities done in the last 2-3 days of the PSI. The timing and duration are flexible, but the activities are essential, especially for new Agile teams. This may not make sense for continuous delivery teams, but neither do any of the other time-boxed meetings that provide the structure for time-based commitment approaches (a la Scrum).

Thoughts?
Given my experience with new Agile teams, the HIP Sprint is a powerful tool. Without it, making the transition to Agile would be near-impossible. Is it a mature Agile practice? No, of course not. But is it better than continuing with Waterfall until the teams magically reach a state where they can do Agile without a HIP Sprint? Most definitely. That’s what I think, anyway.

Titles

I work for a company that is predominantly (for the time being, anyhow) NOT Agile. As a person who is passionate about Agile and leads one of three areas in his Division that are all-Agile, this wreaks havoc on my job title. Technically, my job title is "Systems Analyst". But I'm not that. That doesn't describe what I do at all, really. Maybe if you use "System" to refer to a team of people, as in Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd's teachings. However, that's not what the title is meant to refer to internally. So I'm stuck with the dilemma of how I describe who I am and what I do for the company.

Okay, I know I started this post out on a somewhat pessimistic note, but I have to be honest: coming up with my own job title has been fun. It's rather liberating to just make something cool-sounding up when you are asked what you do. One example of this is my LinkedIn profile, where I brand myself as a "SAFe RTE, Agile Evangelist, and Scrum Ninja". What does that mean? Exactly what it sounds like. I've also referred to myself as a Defender of the Agile Brand; Agile Enthusiast; Head of the Walmart Agile User Group (which isn't so much silly, as I really did found and lead the Walmart Agile User Group); and Über Scrum Master (I really like that one because the Ü looks like a ridiculously happy face). I also have a whole slough of non-Agile titles that describe me outside of my professional life, such as Dad, Brother, Son, Captain Obvious, and Snarky McSarcasticson.

Titles are a funny thing because they define so much of who we are, whether we want them to or not. In some cases, such as my "Systems Analyst" title, that can be a bad thing (read more about the cons of titles here). Yet I wouldn't refer to myself as anti-titles. I consider myself a proponent of creative, descriptive, and self-appointed titles. Your title should be part of your brand. If you don't live up to your title then it quickly becomes apparent and does you more harm than good, so it's in your best interest not to pick something entirely inappropriate.

What do you think? Are you a fan of titles? If so, what titles do you hold? If not, how do you describe yourself succinctly when asked what you do?

Conversation

Many Scrum practitioners don't realize that Scrum did not invent the idea of User Stories - XP (eXtreme Programming) did. They are, however, often familiar with Ron Jeffries' "3 C's of a User Story", namely Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. The more I train teams on User Stories, the more convinced I am that the Conversation aspect is the most important of the three, and it is applicable to all things Agile, not just User Stories.

I recently facilitated PSI Planning for my area's Agile Release Train (Potentially Shippable Increment). I’ve noticed that, with each new PSI, the teams become more concerned with extensive pre-planning. They try to get more out of the meeting by doing as much of the actual planning before arriving at the meeting. Unfortunately, they do not understand that the primary reason for PSI Planning is not to generate a plan as much as it is to have conversations. Teams must communicate and align with each other and their customers. They must examine their work to determine what dependencies and risks are inherent in the work so that they can communicate, manage, and mitigate them as much as possible. This process happens to produce a better plan, which is why we do it. However, those who come to the event with pre-determined plans often find they must be reworked or scrapped altogether.

Rework manifests itself as delay, and delay indicates waste. Agilists hate waste. In fact, an Agilist’s views on waste and rework can be found in the 10^th principle that accompanies the Agile Manifesto: “Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.” How do conversations help prevent rework? If we talk before acting then we get a better sense of the truth, established in an environment of shared context. Conversations mean multiple perspectives, which bring difficult questions and challenge our assumptions. They force us to produce something as a group that is better than could ever be produced in a silo. They reinforce the paradigm of “just enough, just in time” instead of “big up-front”.

Once I realized that conversations are integral to Agile, I began to review the tools and practices within Agile, specifically Scrum, for conversations. All of the prescribed ceremonies – Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, and Sprint Planning – center on team conversations. Pair Programming and Test-Driven Development are XP practices that rely heavily on communication, both within the development team as well as between the developers, testers, and customers. A good Scrum Master helps the team most by facilitating conversations, and the Product Owner’s backlog is meaningless if they don’t ensure the team understands the work. There are conversations baked into literally every aspect of Scrum!

Conversations are often overlooked because people do not view simply having the conversation as an objective in most cases. They focus on the stated outputs: plans; acceptance criteria; status updates; confirmation of stories completed; etc. Consequently, it is not uncommon for teams to find alternative means to deliver these results without the “overhead” of the conversations. They rely heavily on tools and individual efforts to maximize their time without hindering the team with human interaction. They may, at first, feel an increase in productivity as the perceived burden is lifted. Yet, inevitably, they find themselves struggling to deliver quality quickly and do not understand how Agile could betray them so. Hopefully they have a good Scrum Master or Agile Coach watching them adapt in the wrong direction that can have them take a step back so they can see the error of their ways. If not, it becomes easy to blame their frustration on Agile and revert back to their comfort zone of more “traditional” methodologies.

As a safeguard, I recommend teams, and especially Scrum Masters, go back to their roots frequently to make sure they’re staying true to the founding principles that make Agile methodologies so great. Remember that “business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project,” and that “the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” Don’t just blindly follow a framework or practice; instead, try to understand why you are asked to do things a certain way. If the purpose that you perceive is not aligned with the Agile manifesto and its accompanying principles, you’re probably wrong. Acknowledge your failure, “Fail Fast”, and change your approach so that it fits the Agile paradigm. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but it will pay off in the long run.