Comment by jksmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jksmith | Hacker News Reader

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"Principles of Product Development Flow" This is an academic standard for queuing theory and flow of value by Don Reinertsen. Tough read btw.

"The Fifth Discipline" by Peter Senge. This is a classic text that also covers the mental model side of the shift from managing people to managing flow.

"Team Topologies" by Skelton and Pais. Another classic on team structure as it relates to flow of value.

And well, have to mention my little book, "Agile V2 Coach's Field Manual" available on Amazon. Hardcover only. I need to write a rev, but still holds up regarding the concept of codifying behaviors into a delivery system, thus cutting down on politics, finger-pointing, unethical decision-making, and other crap that represents the legacy people-management model. Quick read.

Lot more books available. This is a very rich area of study that's been around since people have been trying to figure out how to get out of each other's way for better outcomes.

I’ve not come across that term before. Agile, yes, but it’s been distorted / hijacked by consultancies, eg SAFe.

Thanks for those reading suggestions.

Sure thing, fascinating stuff.

I teach all 12 SAFe certifications, so I'm familiar with the framework. The issue that SAFe identified, is the very issue I'm bringing up here. In the case of this framework, it gives managers the chance to keep managing people, but with an out of box framework that keeps them from the burden of understanding systems engineering fundamentals that emphasize flow. That's the problem in a nutshell with SAFe - layer 1 process and team fundamentals are sacrificed in favor of a layer 2 framework. And managers get to lead meetings and report-outs.

Otherwise, SAFe is ok. It just puts some structure around managing an increment of increments - another chance to inspect and adapt, pivot, whatever is needed for minimum viable product, plus managers feel like they (managers) are useful by guiding PI planning, whatever.

The reality? High performing teams tend to snicker at SAFe. They think things like confidence vote events are silly because they expect product owners to be bringing them nothing but work-items that already meet their confidence standards. Otherwise their time is being wasted with this event. Additionally, high performing teams will refuse to plan out multiple iterations worth of work (as done in PI planning), when they expect to have a healthy backlog to work that already meets their readiness standards for multiple iterations. All they'll say is prioritize that work and they'll knock it out. But once again, planning out multiple iterations helps managers reinforce telling people what to do in a micro fashion.

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