How can an Agile Product Operating Model (APOM) enhance how organizations use SAFe? I had several conversations with product leaders this week where this question came up. Organizations that are struggling with SAFe Theater and want to see much more empowerment, outcome orientation, and evidence-driven decision making and steering. They realize SAFe has helped them evolve from charos towards a stable “Feature Factory”, and they are now setting their aim for becoming a “Product Lab”. If this sounds like your reality you might find my recent conversation with Scrum.org CEO Dave West interesting. Check it out: In related news, Scaled Agile released an Executive Briefing about the Product Operating Model At Scale, which is worthwhile reading as well. Let me know if you’d like me to facilitate a live Q&A discussing this briefing. ![]() Read This Week In Scaled Agile Framework and the Product Operating Model On Your Browser Yours, |
Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.
What’s the future of Agile? Agility? Agile as a career choice? Yesterday, I joined Jonathan Stark on his podcast Ditching Hourly to discuss the current state of Agile as a platform, how it has evolved over the years, and what practitioners should consider as the platform matures. Jonathan primarily focuses on advice for freelancers/consultants on ditching hourly billing through positioning, productized services, and pricing advice. If, like me, you’re a freelancer/solopreneur agile...
Alice wants her product organization to adopt a product operating model because she believes it’s the future of working. She’s been an early adopter of agile and lean startup methods and is constantly looking for better ways to work. Bob wants their product organization to adopt a product operating model because they have an expensive problem—they were brought in to help scale a product organization. With 12 product teams working on a line/portfolio of products, there’s little consistency,...
Engineers excited about LLMs, Agentic AI, RAGs, spending time going to the vendors, playing around like kids with new toys. Without a real problem in mind. Without the ability to deploy any of it in the organization (the engineers don’t talk to the legal folks much…) Can you think of where so much time and energy is spent on a technical innovation without connecting it to a real problem? Of course you can… Mobile, Cloud, Big Data, just to think of a couple of recent examples. To be honest, I...