Comment by f1shy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by f1shy | Hacker News Reader

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Where I suffer everyday, somebody had the idea of implementing SAFe: We have 10% more people to help with the "cermonies". That is, for every 30 people, there are 1 Scrum master, 1 Product manager, and 1 SAFe Programme Consultant (SPC) that help to implement the method (all external people costing 2x the normal employee cost) plus courses and certification for some internal employees.

Dailys take 1 Hs, where people try to show off. Retros take 3Hs and is all about finding "who is guilty". PI plannings take 2 day, and consistently in the first week after planning we realise the whole planning cannot be realised for whatever reason. Backlog is always 100+ entries, that we leave there "just in case". PO does not work in the team, he is just the BOSS. We goes every day behind you pushing that you fill in the status of the task in our Track-n-release. The track and release tool is there to supervise the work being done, so there are very specific guidelines on how to fill the comments and when. The "velocity" is used to evaluate the people.

Great place to work!!!

I swear someone created SAFe as a joke by just taking the strawman waterfall diagram and adding scrum words, and sprinkle in a few more useless people for good measure. It also ensures that anyone that needs to actually talk or work together is far to busy to achieve progress.

I think that's pretty close except for the joke part.

The early-days problem with the Agile movement was that it promised actual change by empowering the line workers to actually get things done for users by shipping early and often. That was an intolerable threat to industrial-age managerial power structures, to which waterfall is an ideal that justifies lots of management control.

But since then it's been gradually watered down and tamed. Scrum's certification scam was the start of that, and SAFe strikes me as the end result: lots of Agile jargon with the rigidity of waterfall, providing long-term safety to managers in large companies everywhere.

I wrote about this dynamic before SAFe existed, but it seems to fit right in with what I described: https://williampietri.com/writing/2011/agiles-second-chasm-a...

You hit the nail on the head and posted just before I would've. The only thing I can add to that directly here is this:

Just look at the acronym itself!

It tells those managers at Big Corp that it is finally safe to implement Agile!

You are exactly correct, except:

1) it was RUP, not waterfall (RUP is basically many waterfalls in parallel)

2) they were dead fucking serious.

Is "RUP" Rational Unified Process here?

Yes

Ugh, SAFe. My group has been trying to implement this methodology for well over a year. My observations:

* Program increment planning is absolutely painful. Three full days of meetings, and rarely do the stakeholders come with fully refined features. And, typically, what plan emerges is changed within two weeks because of emergencies or an executive seeing a shiny bauble we absolutely need to have.

* Two week sprints seem too short, at least for a group working in a highly regulated industry that requires a ton of manual testing and paperwork. I will also admit that we likely have trouble writing appropriately sized stories, but part of that circles back to the need for massive validation efforts.

* We suffer from lots of turnover in product management (and perhaps too many product managers). If a PM leaves, their features tend to die on the vine, even if some executive has decided they are important. That leaves us with a massive backlog.

> highly regulated industry that requires a ton of manual testing and paperwork

This describes every industry for a company I've seen SAFe at.

Or, in other words, SAFe is:

{how do we say we're doing Agile?} + {how do we avoid changing any of our regulatory compliance pipelines?} = {business as usual} + {a bunch of extra useless Agile theater}

You're not working for a big company in Atlanta are you?

No.

Yep. I'd explicitly never work at a place that implemented SAFE. Reading this article felt like someone describing the process at a previous employer. Just nailed it with all planning right at the intersection of useless, time consuming, and painful.

We do standups three times a week, and I will flat-out hang up Zoom once we hit 15 minutes. I find standups helpful, but not if they're longer than 15 minutes!

My previous workplace was only half as bad as you describe, and I left, very disillusioned and upset. When I read the article, most fit with what I went through in that company. By now the company is bankrupt. I'm very happy at my current workplace. My advice: asap search&find another employer.

It's at its worst when the company can't go bankrupt: e.g. because they're in the healthcare insurance space.

Do you guys also use scrum poker? I always found that one of the most hilarious exercises.

More like humiliating. And like most Scrum terms, absolutely zero to do with poker.

They should rename it "Scrum Auction", as all it ever devolves into is some morons overselling their capacity and shooting themselves in the foot regarding any chance at cleaning the codebase.

Create very small tasks, that way you all will be super productive.

What's a Hs?

Hours

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