Food for Agile Thought #148: Unagile SAFe®, Making Self-Organization Work, PMO Strikes Back

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #148—shared with 17,986 peers—focuses on unagile SAFe ®, how the PMO strikes back, and whether ‘agile’ makes sense at all.

We learn from Marty Cagan that most large organization do not (yet) understand the different concepts of project-orientation vs. product-orientation. Which is a good reason to also dive into the particularities of enterprise product management.

However, there is hope: K2K managed to turn more than 70 organizations into self-organizing flourishing entities. Learn how this happened.

Have a great week!

Food for Agile Thought #148: Unagile SAFe ®, Making Self-Organization Work, PMO Strikes Back

🏆 The Essential Read

Lisa Gill (via Medium): 10 Components that Successfully Abolished Hierarchy (in 70+ companies)

Lisa Gill describes the lessons learned by K2K from transforming 70 traditional organiztions to self-managing organizations.

Unagile SAFe ® & Scrum

John Cutler (via Hackernoon): Agile Makes No Sense

John Cutler reasons about the many issues, problems, challenges, and other anti-patterns in the wake of a transition of an organization to agile practices.

Renee Troughton: Why SAFe® is not the scaled Agile approach you need

After years, Renee Troughton is still looking for a SAFe® project that is considered an outstanding success by the senior management.

Bob Galen: Is Agile in Late Adoption Stage?

Bob Galen challenges the idea that ‘agile’ is already in a late state of adoption.

⁉️ Survey—Join 215 Peers: What Are You Doing the Whole Day as a Scrum Master of One Team?

In other words: What are your regular chores as a scrum master supporting a single team?

Rumor has it that a great scrum master supports one team at a time. If that is true, how do you spend your time with the team members helping them to become self-organizing? Let’s gather some data and answer the question! (This survey is anonymous.)

Survey: What Are You Doing the Whole Day as a Scrum Master of One Team?

Join 215 peers and participate in the survey now: What Are You Doing the Whole Day?

Product & Lean

Marty Cagan: Revenge of the PMO

Marty Cagan on the PMO empire striking back in the form of unagile SAFe ®.

Rich Mironov: Understanding Enterprise Product Companies

Rich Mironov points at the differences between B2B and B2C product companies.

Lillian Ayla (via uxdesign.cc): Why Design Thinking is failing and what we should be doing differently

Lillian Ayla believes that design thinking overburdens the creative folks due to the inevitable distraction by layman stakeholders.

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🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #147: Business Agility by Scaling Agile, Beyond Budgeting, How to Say No.

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