If so, who did you use and would you recommend them?

And for the entertainment of others, bask in unicorn ringfencing:

Leading SAFe

Back in 2015 with Agil8. Pretty good course, nothing earth shattering, all pretty obvious but nice to have a framework to reference when tailoring to your own business. I imagine its moved on a bit since then and adopted the latest buzzwords. I should have a little look to see if PROSCI is being incorporated somewhere as that seems to be the latest flavour in the change world

Can’t remember the name of the trainer I’m afraid.

I did the Certified SAFe® Agilist and Certified SAFe® Product Owner/Product Manager badges earlier this year, with a pal of mine who is a SAFe Program Consultant, based in Glasgow – happy to PM details if that’s any use?

yeah, I am qualified through work however the devil really is in the implementation of it and the buy in of all participants.

It also massively helps if your teams are located in timezones that don’t have too larger spread between them.

Also, is SAFe really what you need? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M

Thanks chaps

oldtennisshoes – I’ve PM’d you

is SAFe really what you need?

It’s the current way of the world, so CV-wise it can’t hurt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M

what a sh1t presentation – gave up on it – aimed at self-congratulating geeks.

My company has adopted the unSAFE agile methodology, it’s the one where they tell everyone IT has adopted agile and then dictate what teams will be working on what, when their milestones are and when the project will be completed.

It’s basically the way we used to work but now with buzzwords…

…I cry into my coffee.

The project I am on at the moment is agile-free, and we are getting SO MUCH done!

I’d practically forgotten what it feels like to be allowed to just sit and get on with my job, instead of trying to get on with agile.

Not trying to troll or hijack your thread. Am just thinking out loud in our friendly and safe STW space.

In particular, the last ‘agile at scale’ project I was involved with was a total disaster, not only in what it cost in £££x10x compared to what it achieved, but in what it cost in human terms.

This is the aspect of agile I’d love to research in more depth and detail.

Anecdotally, I know a lot of experts from different areas of professional practice who have been made very unhappy, disillusioned, stressed and ill as a direct result of working within agile.

Do the various agile training and accreditation courses consider this?

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am entirely unconvinced by the adoption of SAFe/Agile as a panacea for all project delivery ills. The organisation I’m currently at has ‘adopted’ it, and the time spent on talking about what we’re doing now, what we’re doing next and how we’re going to do what we’re doing next vs. time spent actually effing doing it is ridiculous.

the time spent on talking about what we’re doing now, what we’re doing next and how we’re going to do what we’re doing next vs. time spent actually effing doing it is ridiculous.

Yep.

We have been going agile.

Basically it means we’re just as rubbish as before but we have an expensive consultant who talks absolute bollocks at us three days a week, occasionally cocking up things I’ve spent months working on.

Perhaps we just got a dud though.

Perhaps we just got a dud though.

Nope, that’s standard.

Emperor’s New Clothes, anyone?

we have an expensive consultant who talks absolute bollocks at us three days a week

Which is why I want to get some training, there’s money in them tharrr hills 😉

You jump on the treadmill with training, and jump off it for therapy.

Our place (a square hole) have been trying to sledgehammer Agile (a round peg) for the last 18 months.

The daily stand-ups tend to be a good 15 minute moan about it which is quite amusing 😉

If you accept that agile is aimed primarily at programming, and it is basically XP without the pair programming, then it is completely appropriate and any failings are people trying to apply too much process to it.

make a list of everything that is suppossed to be in the product with estimated costs.

prioritise the list to the things that people want to see first

pick items from the list to attempt to get done in the two week release cycle

people collaborate to ensure the best design and testing is identified

ensure everyting is covered by automated testing so there is not a huge testing effort at the end and therefore unknown levels of work resulting from problems found

merge work in to the release often so as not to encounter issues at the end of the release cycle when unknown levels of work could result

regularly meet briefly to check everything is on track and how to resolve any issues that have arisen

release

review what and how much was done to improve estimates of the amount of work that can be done in the next release cycle

review the released product to ensure everything is going the right way

review the priority of items on the outstanding list, allowing new items for amendment of the released product if required with the acceptance by the business of the costs involved

finally deliver a product that exactly meets what the business requires

Seems to make sense and the ideas are all based on a pragmatic review of past project failures and what works.

It realises that requirements change along he way as people get to see and play with what they thought they wanted.

It’s a JFDI type of process, any extra process and formalisation added is the result of ‘consultants’ trying to make money off of it.

A grade people will make the process work and deliver, B grade people will just sit back and moan about it…

If you accept that agile is aimed primarily at programming

You see, that there is the main issue, ignorance of which leads to many, many examples of

Our place (a square hole) have been trying to sledgehammer Agile (a round peg) for the last 18 months.

A grade people will make the process work and deliver,

A-grade people will deliver no matter what and probably don’t need a ‘consultant’ with no experience in anything in particular telling them how to do it.

If you accept that agile is aimed primarily at programming

Please can you tell someone that design isn’t the same as programming? 🙂

A grade people will make the process work and deliver, B grade people will just sit back and moan about it…

It’s also problematic when B-grade agile consultants mistake themselves for A+ grade and overreach their expertise.

Emperor’s New Clothes, anyone?

This phrase has been used. But I think we did get a dud, in terms of massive overconfidence, industrial scale BS capability combined with a limited eye for detail and scant people skills.

Not that I’m bitter, obvs.

A grade people will make the process work and deliver,

A-grade people were probably delivering perfectly well anyway.

Poor project/programme management is poor project/programme management. Doing it on a white board with Post-It notes doesn’t magically make it better.

on a white board with Post-It notes

We don’t work in the same office do we?

A-grade people were probably delivering perfectly well anyway.

but if you are supplied a complete specification to deliver in one piece, with no access tot he business and no feedback loop, then you have a real danger of delivering exactly what the spec says, but that not being exactly what the business wants.

Anybody that thinks you can get the spec completely right at the start is deluded.

Same with software design, the end product is rarely what what was envisaged in the first place, especially when refactoring is employed along the way to keep entropy of the design/code base to a minimum.

It’s also problematic when B-grade agile consultants mistake themselves for A+ grade and overreach their expertise.

it is such a simple process that any company that feels that they need to employ consultants must be B grade as well.