Talk:Scaled agile framework

Challenges section

Hello again. While editors are considering updates for the framework section above, I wonder if you'd consider moving the "Challenges of scaling agile principles and practices" section below the "SAFe framework" section? Diving straight into challenges, before even providing readers with background information and an understanding of the framework, does not seem appropriate. Some of the sources used in the "challenges" section appear to be blogs, and possibly inappropriate for Wikipedia. Might you be willing to take a look at this sourcing, as well as the blog source used at the end of the introduction ("it also receives criticism for being too top-down and inflexible")? Thank you. JB at Scaled Agile (talk) 21:21, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Until the framework section is cleaned-up through reliable, third-party sources, I don't think rearranging the article will actually make this any clearer. Once it is expanded in a neutral way, the two sections should probably be combined into a single summary, per WP:CSECTION. It's better to explain the different strengths and weaknesses organically, rather than present them as opposing sides.

Context matters, so while normally the blog would need to be attributed as an expert opinion, in this case it's merely supporting content which is explained and sourced later in the article. An article's lede should be a summary of the body, and since these criticisms are supported in the body, the source doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Also, I'm just now noticing that "knowledge base" in the first sentence is a WP:BUZZWORD, as it sounds impressive but explains very little. It's obviously derived from promotional materials (SAFe® is an online freely revealed knowledge base of proven, integrated patterns for implementing Lean-Agile development.")[1] but this buzzword salad is extremely poor writing for an encyclopedia. If the goal is clarity the lede should be a priority. We don't care about how Scaled Agile describes this, we are interested in how we can neutrally explain this to readers. Grayfell (talk) 22:28, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

@Grayfell: I agree, the article needs improved sourcing and reworking throughout. I've made some suggestions and provided sources above. If you're looking for secondary coverage of the principles, see page 88 of Enterprise Agility For Dummies (same as seen here). I hope this helps. Do you have any specific questions or requests for moving forward? JB at Scaled Agile (talk) 20:21, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

@Grayfell: I have a few other thoughts regarding the usage of a blog post to source "it also receives criticism for being too top-down and inflexible" in the introduction. 1) If the information is covered in the article, does it need to be sourced in the introduction? 2) The use of this blog post as a source seems problematic because it's a personal blog and represents one person's opinion, and it isn't actually that clear that it says the framework is "too top-down and inflexible". The post's overall point seems to be that processes and tools in general, with SAFe as an example, are not ideal for agile practitioners. The author's point seems to be more focused on the need for individualized approaches. 3) It feels like there's a lack of equity and therefore surely an impact on neutrality if blog posts from experts are used to include details that are critical of SAFe but not for neutral or positive information about the framework; wouldn't it be best to focus overall on limiting to secondary sourcing? Thanks, JB at Scaled Agile (talk) 19:48, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Request edit on 31 March 2019

I suggest to replace "(45% of respondents chose SAFe as their framework of choice for scaling agile.)[15][16]"

at least with "(45% of respondents to a survey, of a Training company only training SAFe as a agile scaling framework, chose SAFe as their framework of choice for scaling agile.)[15][16]

as the reference article link to "According to a report created by cPrime, Scaling Agile Report 2017, 45 percent of respondents chose SAFe as their framework of choice for scaling agile." and cPrime focusing on SAFe training. This does not look like an independent source.

Even better would be to delete this sentence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raumplanung (talk • contribs) 17:08, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

The source offers the information that anyone actually curious about the content will need. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:15, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

To be honest, the quoting is missleading and the source is not independent. This reflects also the source of the sentence before where is stated that "While SAFe has been recognised as the most common approach to scaling agile practices" with e.g. a source https://www.brainguide.de/upload/publication/b0/2c3xg/c51b33fd2c6a9d032a7387f3273b9c62_1402133130.pdf where in the source itself the only part about SAFe is "The “scaled agile framework”(SAFe)has showed a strong growth in usage in the last year andis seen as a good basis for the future enhancement of agile principles in thedownstream innovation process. (Scaledagileframework, 2014)" referencing ultimately the advertising page of SAFe. I really question the independence of the section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raumplanung (talk • contribs) 17:32, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

The {{request edit}} template is for editors who have identified having a conflict of interest with respect to editing an article. No such disclosure has been made by the requesting editor, thus, the question of the appropriateness of this claim or its source is one which may be handled outside the purview of the template. The requesting editor is asked to continue discussing the article's proposed changes here on the talk page — and if no conflict of interest exists — to make these changes themself if they see fit to do so, preferably in accordance with the consensus of local editors. Regards,  Spintendo  17:11, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Not freely available?

I cannot find any substantiation of the claim that SAFe is made 'freely available'. The FAQ states that community access is granted only after taking a course, and I haven't found a free course offering. In addition, you can lose access. You must have attended a course recently, have an active certification, or purchase a membership. That doesn't meet any definition of 'freely available' that I'm aware of. I propose changing 'made freely available' to 'made available to to people who take courses, pay for membership, or maintain certifications through Scaled Agile Inc.' I'd also propose using the FAQ references I've used here. Or, an explanation (with references) of what is freely available and what isn't. --IntermediateValue (talk) 16:24, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

References

Criticism

@Cs02rm0: ignored my comments about not having criticism sections as laid-out in WP:NOCRIT and my claim that the sources should be reliable (not blogs) by reverting me and claiming it's "expert opinion". So Renee Troughton, author of the Agile Forest blog is an expert? She's trying to self-publish a book and can't get funding for it but she is a podcaster, and not everyone can do that. And Sean Dexter is a Product/UX Designer. I'm not sure that makes Sean an expert either. Please use only reliable sources and incorporate the criticism into the article. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:39, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and I will consider taking the sources to WP:RSN for an official position if no one enters the discussion here. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:40, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

I see that Andy Dingley, who has been stalking my edits, has decided that these sources and the section are valid. Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:33, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

I opened two discussions about the reliability of the sources and as I expected, neither were found to be reliable.

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 287#Is a blogger an expert in Agile development?

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 287#Is a member of "Agile Forest" an expert in the subject?

Based on that, the lack of discussion here, and the guidelines laid out above, I'm removing the content again. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:32, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't seem completely neutral

SAFe definitely isn't without criticism [2][3], but this article hardly reflects that, limiting any mention of criticism to half a sentence in the introduction, while also asserting as fact that SAFe promotes alignment, collaboration, and delivery across large numbers of agile teams and generally reading as promotional. I'm thinking of taking this article on, but I'd like to solicit thoughts and opinions before I start making edits. – ClockworkSoul 17:01, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with you. I think part of the problem is that although large parts of the Agile community have a negative opinion of SAFe it is hard to find decent quality secondary sources covering this, a lot of the discussion is on blogs or social media.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EdkoKpURZREBOmArg4aopWTzOhvEPfCgTD-aLNMSTgg/edit# is a Google doc that's been doing the rounds recently, it's got a decent appendix of sources, I've not had a chance to go through them in detail to see which ones meet WP:RS but hopefully there's something of use there. JaggedHamster (talk) 18:47, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it's true: quality secondary sources are often a challenge. Are we sure we're applying WP:RS to the promotional (or at least curiously positively-leaning) statements? That's a genuine question: I haven't looked closely at the references. – ClockworkSoul 19:57, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

That's a good question. I had a look through them, here's some observations, I'd welcome a second opinion on them:

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/why-continuous-delivery-is-key-to-speeding-up-software-development-1282498 - Probably counts as a reliable secondary source per Wikipedia:Interviews but I'm not sure why we're using it at all, SAFe is only mentioned in passing and isn't the focus of the interview, there's surely a better source than this.

https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/01/disciplined-agile-delivery/ - Actually quite critical of SAFe, which we don't reflect where we use it in the article, but we should likely be treating it as a primary source. It's an interview with the creator of DAD and the mentions of SAFe are largely him advocating for why DAD is better.

"van Haaster, K (2014). Agile in-the-large: Getting from Paradox to Paradigm. Unpublished paper from Charles Sturt University." - We shouldn't be using an unpublished source, per WP:OR

"King, Michael (2017). "Serving Federal Customers with SAFe Concepts" - link is dead but https://web.archive.org/web/20171003030023/http://cmmiinstitute.com/sites/default/files/resource_asset/Serving%20Federal%20Customers%20Using%20Agile%2C%20SAFe%2C%20And%20CMMI%20Principles.pdf has it. It's a slide deck from a conference and largely repeats material from SAFe docs, it doesn't seem a great source to me.

https://www.drdobbs.com/tools/real-agile-means-everybody-is-agile/240159622 - article doesn't load for me but https://web.archive.org/web/20130811130539/https://www.drdobbs.com/tools/real-agile-means-everybody-is-agile/240159622 has it. This appears to be churnalism from a press release, see https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/versionone-extends-agile-collaboration-to-include-all-software-stakeholders-218489731.html. Per WP:PRSOURCE "Press releases cannot be used to support claims of notability and should be used cautiously for other assertions."

https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/08/death-by-planning-agile/ - the only mention of SAFe I can see at that link is in a comment. The interview itself doesn't seem to support the content it's being used as a citation for.

Leffingwell, Dean (2007). Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises. - this is being used to support "...then first formally described in a 2007 book". Ideally we should be using a secondary source to support that this book was where it was first formally described, not just citing the book itself.

"Eklund, U; Olsson, H; Strøm, N (2014). Industrial challenges of scaling agile in mass-produced embedded systems. Agile Methods. Large-Scale Development, Refactoring, Testing, and Estimation" This is being used to support "Development teams typically refine their backlog up to two to three iterations ahead, but in larger organizations the product marketing team needs to plan further ahead for their commitments to market and discussions with customers." The paper doesn't support this as a general statement and shouldn't be being used as a source for it. It's specifically about the difficulties of adopting agile practices when developing firmware/hardware. Interestingly Section 4.2 in it does discuss SAFe and DAD but says "existing large-scale agile methodology frameworks such as these do not address the challenges particular to the embedded domain (identified by e.g. [27]), and especially not all system engineering challenges regarding large-scale manufacturing".

"Does DAD Know Best, Is it Better to do LeSS or Just be SAFe?" - is being used to support the statement "On large-scale developments, the organization wants a view across multiple team backlogs, such as provided by a product manager.". It's a reasonably nuanced article and doesn't support this as a general statement.

http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/answer/Scaling-Agile-development-calls-for-defined-practices-consultant-says - link redirects to some generic article now but is available via archive.org. It is being used to support "SAFe acknowledges that, at the scale of many tens or hundreds of development teams, it becomes increasingly chaotic for teams to fully self-organize". The relevant quote from the interview is "The challenge really comes in when you try to scale that up to a large organization, which requires a more prescriptive approach. When trying to get several hundred people working together and delivering value every two weeks, you have to put aside some small-Agile practices. It takes too long to set up, train and manage a large self-organizing team, for example. That process would entail so much churn and time that, somewhere along the line, the organization will lose faith in your ability do it.", I don't think our current summary of that is accurate. Also, the interview as a whole seems a primary source giving the interviewee's opinions, which is fine but we shouldn't be stating points from it as if they're neutral facts. JaggedHamster (talk) 11:22, 1 November 2022 (UTC)