Lessons from a year in SAFe: Don’t fixate on roles, look at teams’ maturity

In my last assignment I got the chance to work hands-on in an organization that has adapted SAFe and over 1,5 years I learned a lot. I’ve taken the time to summarize some of my thoughts and over the next few weeks I’ll post them here on our website. SAFe is often a criticized framework but in my opinion, simply implementing SAFe is not a problem in itself but having the wrong mindset is. And that’s applicable regardless of whether you’re working in SAFe or any other framework.

Lesson #1: Don’t fixate on roles, look at teams’ maturity

Photo by Shannon Potter on Unsplash

Given that SAFe defines the PO and Scrum Master/Team Coach roles as critical, it’s easy to assume that they are always needed. I think that’s a misconception and instead I think you should take a look at each team’s maturity. Let’s look at a two examples:

Team 1

Characteristics: Haven’t worked together very long, are pretty new to agile methodologies, aren’t able to deliver on a continuous basis and have a hard time working with retrospectives and finding small improvements to experiment with over time.

Team 2

Characteristics: Solid core with team members who are skilled and comfortable in an agile setting, perform user research continuously, work with small and continuous deliveries, find ways to improve and each team member takes responsibility in improving both individually and as a group.

Looking at Team 1 you would probably find great value in a hands-on Scrum Master who facilitates team ceremonies, administrates the board and tickets in whatever tool you’re using and handles stakeholders. On the other hand Team 2 would probably not need a Scrum Master at all since their team maturity is sky high in comparison. The same goes for the Product Owner in this scenario. You’ll see them create plenty of value for Team 1 with their ability to create clarity through clear prioritization, a well-managed backlog and tight stakeholder management. 

For Team 2, you could argue that they are autonomous enough to manage without a PO. Especially in a company where you’ve adopted SAFe and have other roles, such as the Product Manager, who can create clarity through an inspirational vision and overall direction. You may also have access to agile and product coaches who can assist the teams without being a formal team member.

If the overall goal with using the SAFe framework is to become more lean and agile, I feel it’s important to remain flexible in how you organize your teams. Some of the companies that have ditched SAFe have done so because they felt it became too inefficient and costly to populate their teams with the exact same roles. Look at each team’s specific needs and try to adapt as they evolve instead of trying to be as compliant as possible to the framework.