From the SAFe site:
- With such a robust framework, the question becomes; how closely does an organization need to follow various SAFe practices to get the desired result?
- [Essential SAFe] provides a starting point for implementing SAFe and describes the most critical elements needed to realize the majority of the framework’s benefit.
SAFe is projecting the word ‘robust’ (which means strong) on itself instead of using the more appropriate ‘complicated.’ This is merely putting lipstick on a pig.
SAFe’s complexity makes it hard to implement as a whole. There are many essential concepts in the higher levels, however. The choice becomes insufficient or overly complicated.
Essential SAFe has Mid to small size organizations (especially those within larger companies) lose the opportunity to solve one of their biggest problems – prioritizing what to work on. Claiming that one should start at the bottom is reckless.
The bottom line is that SAFe is an overly complex framework requiring one to start with only a part of it. But this violates what SAFe claims to be built on – systems-thinking and Lean. It also loses the opportunity of getting the higher levels involved quickly.