How Lean can make SAFe and/or Scrum adoption faster, better, cheaper

I have decried calling Lean “faster, better, cheaper” because “faster” is not the goal as much as removing delays with the result being “quicker”. I also think the focus is on quality &being effective. But in SAFe &/or Scrum adoption, Lean provides a different perspective than the standard focus on certification &frameworks, &maybe “faster, better, cheaper” is the right moniker.

One of the central tenets of Lean is systems-thinking–looking at the system as a whole. When one considers a new Agile adoption, at any scale, there are several factors that must be considered. At the program/team level these are:

  • how to identify work to do and how to decompose it into small stories with clear scope &acceptance criteria. This needs to go well beyond “as a <user> I want <something> …” since that provides neither acceptance criteria nor a way to easily decompose to small stories
  • the environment & ceremonies to follow (essentially your framework)
  • how to write quality code
  • How these interact with each other is very important to a systems-thinker.  I believe initial training should focus on the actual work. The ceremonies then make more sense &won’t be resisted. Faster, better & cheaper adoption results.

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