The SAFe PMO: Two Experts Respond

April 15, 2021 | by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Two attendees to our Dec. 9, 2020 PMI Virtual Event that focused on the Agile PMO had specific questions about the use of the Scaled Agile Framework environment (SAFe®), so I pulled in two of our Agile SMEs for interviews. Here at last is an edited transcript of our conversation, held via Microsoft Teams in January 2021. First, let’s look at the questions:

1. Our organization has embraced SAFe®. It seems that PMO could still be compatible/helpful/valuable, but I've sensed that we are moving away from it. How can we better strengthen SAFe with PMO merits and also better leverage PMO in an organization embracing Scaled Agile Framework development?
2. According to your research findings (or further insights): Are organizations using SAFe® for Agile and Agile Scaling? And if yes, how are they implementing a PMO? Any different from a “classic” PMO?

I’ll confess that I was not that familiar with the SAFe®/PMO dilemma. And in looking into it, I became more perplexed. The SAFe principles do not seem to conflict with the mission of the PMO, on the surface of it.

SAFe Lean-Agile Principles

• Take an economic view
• Apply systems thinking
• Assume variability; preserve options
• Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
• Base milestones on an objective evaluation of working systems
• Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes and manage queue lengths
• Apply cadence, synchronize with cross-domain planning
• Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
• Decentralize decision-making

How would a PMO not be involved in delivering business-side benefits, seeing the big picture, tracking risk and opportunity, promoting an agile response and learnings, keeping a pulse on the whole “system”, manage, prioritize and balance project work in progress, synchronize cross-domain planning, inspire knowledge workers? … okay, maybe the decentralized decision making might be an issue for some enterprise PMOs. But ideally, the best PMO leaders drive decision-making down to the team level. So, I asked our SMEs, Gary Alvord and Sydni Neptune: Where’s the beef?

Gary Alvord, PMP, ACP has over thirty years of experience in program and project management, and information technology integration spanning a wide variety of business applications in financial, healthcare, manufacturing, and services companies.

Gary: That’s a perfectly good list for a PMO to work from, you have a point. Critics say it doesn’t roll up easily, and that it doesn’t jive well with an autonomous teams approach. Some of the terminology gets a little cute. But SAFe is a good choice for those who don’t want to go full Agile.

SAFe® is very structured (and can be dogmatic) and many PMO’s are very structured and dogmatic, too.  I think organizations adopting agile methodologies, especially very structured and branded ones, like SAFe, have a HUGE Change Management debt to resolve.  There is really no reason that SAFe and PMOs should be oil and water as long as those involved are pragmatic and realize the whole point of either is to First Bring Value, and Value People Over Processes.

A lot of Agile purists don’t like SAFe. It’s more for management structure that wants to promote agile techniques without really going there, all the way, and making the culture change commitment.

A company has to have a central strategy, but decision on how to get there should be up to the teams. Depending on where you are in the journey, you can just do simple SAFe, doing it at the team level, or it can be at the portfolio level.

When your attendee asks, How is a PMO relevant? Well, in the same way it is relevant in any environment: to provide guidance, coaching, commitment to objectives, budget, training, change management, leadership. To prepare the organization for Agile transformation by taking a low-risk approach. A PMO can foster that if the C-level is supportive.

If you can’t have dedicated teams you can still have small-a agile, in terms of promoting a mindset that values flexibility, teamwork, honesty. You can still hang a poster on the wall with the Agile Principles (or the SAFe principles, come to that).

Sydni Neptune PMP, CSM is a Managing Consultant for PM Solutions/PM College with more than 20 years of business and IT experience in project and portfolio management and organizational change transformation in both traditional and modern Agile environments.

Sydni: I’m not really an advocate for SAFe®… I’m more of an Agile purist. But as Gary said, the problem with the PMO is not the intersection with Agile. It’s a lack of vision, lack of training, lack of change management. Ideally a PMO director has a foot in both worlds and can implement training and cultural change with “intro to Agile principles” themes. There will always be issues: people are idealistic, but the reality is often difficult.

But if you don’t have a dedicated team, you’re broken rule 1 of Agile. And as in any organization that does agile, if you aren’t doing product management, the whole agile thing starts to come apart. So many companies practice SAFe but try to use traditional accounting, with siloed departments and, well, you just can’t really do Agile that way.

Having said that, probably more important than “the rules” are the higher-order questions, like “what’s my future vision? Where am I now?" These serve to carve out a path forward for the team or the organization. You have to ask big questions, and those are the kind that may drive uncomfortable changes. For example, why are you doing cross-domain planning if you have decentralized teams?

Agile is a complete transformation in your thinking, to do it right. Most organizations have a hard time with the wholistic aspects of it. They want to compartmentalize it into little projects, or into the planning function. But once you start “thinking Agile” you start seeing how it applies to everything. It becomes harder to just do things because they’ve always been done that way.

Gary: As far as the questioner who suggests their organization thinks there’s no room for the PMO in a SAFe environment, not true! Maybe the PMO’s role needs to be refined. For example, to become the center of guidance on change management. The PMO can promote agile techniques when and where they make sense, and presumably—one hopes—that the PMO is a repository of enough project management expertise that they are able to make those judgments. Of course, there are PMOs that are truly horrible. That must be admitted. Some of them are not even made up of project managers. In that case, it isn’t just that the PMO doesn’t work with the Agile environment. It just wasn’t working in the first place.

I think there is a role for consultants like us to show PMOs how to move gracefully into Agile. This is what we did with a financial services organization recently. And their transformation has been quite successful.

Half of organizations who adopt any framework or system, whether SAFe or maturity modeling, or a particular methodology, are just looking to provide a coherent answer to the question “Can you demonstrate that you brought value?” As it says in the Bible, we should be known by the fruits of our labors. But when you start trying to quantify performance, you run into “scoring resistance” … that resistance most people have to being labelled, or having their work efforts labelled.

Part of the attraction of SAFe, I think, is in the precept: “Bring value, don’t just fill out forms.” I’m helping a client to create a new PMO—though we don’t call it that, yet—and I was told that they were “open to Agile but just don’t call it by that name.”  So I’m moving them in that direction by introducing practices and principles. The new CEO actually called out that IT projects success had improved as a result. Bingo: Once you show value, then they can realize: Oh, this is Agile. It’s a gradual transformation.

The acronym SAFe® is pure genius. It implies, our jobs are safe; this is not revolutionary.

When the PMO seems to be at odds with a SAFe deployment, I think it’s more to do with how the PMO is set up, and has been operating, all along. With any corporate change, the bad behaviors of the worst PMOs get worse. A good PMO provides a more supportive environment for every approach.

Sydni: Agreed. To some degree, SAFe® replaces PMO methodology police with SAFe busywork. But the reality is, underlying that, there’s a mental change that has to occur. For this type of cultural and organizational shift, organizations may need external help in coaching their leaders and teams.

I read a good study about how Lean and Just-in-Time manufacturing (which has a likeness to project management) became ubiquitous. Lean was around, and talked about by practitioners, in the 1950s. But suddenly it became a big deal in the 1980s. That journey maps closely to the changes going on in project management with Agile. What happened was that, when people lifted their eyes from the process and procedure level of the discipline and “took the economic view” they realized that the principles Lean was based on could deliver results. Likewise, Agile was a kind of software developers’ club for a long time. Now, taking the economic view, we see it helps us deliver results. There’s no stopping that logic.

Gary: SAFe® is not a one-size-fits-all approach and may need to evolve into the organization.  PMOs should modernize by becoming a coaching function versus a Forms Police function.  Good change management and leadership (vs. hierarchy) development are key to the success of both, and a good PMO can be instrumental in adoption of Agile and SAFe.  Somebody has to sponsor the change, why not the PMO?

More questions for our SMEs? Put them in a comment, below and I’ll gather them for a future blog. Meanwhile, you can read Sydni’s responses to questions about Agile practices on PMI's blog, soon to be posted on projectmanagement.com, where she responded to questions asked by participants in our March 25 PMEXPO session in a "Presentation Recap." And, stay turned to this blog for more PMEXPO attendee questions, answered.

About the Author

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin is editor-in-chief for PM Solutions Research, and the author, co-author and editor of over twenty books on project management, including the 2007 PMI Literature Award winner, The AMA Handbook of Project Management, Second Edition.

View Posts by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Related Posts:

• Understanding PMaaS-Part 2
• When You Needed Results Yesterday: Understanding the Role of Project Management as a Service (PMaaS)
• PMaaS and Organizational Performance, Then and Now
• (More) Changing Approaches to Project Management
• What We Mean When We Say PM as a Service
• A Festively Decorated Big Box of …. What Now?!
• Jazzed Up About Project Management and AI
• Live from Atlanta ... People, Ideas and More, Part 2
• Live from Atlanta ... People, Ideas and More
• Value Delivery Skills Webinar Attendees Had Questions: Here Are Some Answers
• Webinar Alert: Project Management Skills for Value Delivery Research Overview
• Seven Actions for the Adaptive Organization
• PMO Staff vs PMO Leaders: Realism or Pessimism?
• High Performers Value These Skills
• PM Skills Benchmark Study: Your Second Chance to Participate
• New Research Launch: Project Management Skills for Value Delivery
• Managing Projects…Or Delivering Value? Eric Foss’s Challenge to Project Managers
• A Look Forward, With Hope and Confidence
• Some Thoughts About Governance, PMOs and the Thinking Project Manager
• PMO of the Year Finalist Ontario Power Generation
• The Future is Already Here for These PMOs
• State of the PMO Research Webinar – Your Questions, Answered: Part 2
• State of the PMO Research Webinar – Your Questions, Answered: Part 1
• Will A.I. Kill the PMO? Part 3 in Our A.I. in PM Series
• PMO Research Reveal: What You'll Learn in This Week's Webinar
• The Evolution of the Enterprise PMO: What Comes Next?
• Think Your Business Is Too Small for a PMO? Think Again.
• The Enterprise PMO Delivers
• PMOs: New Research Shows Benefits Outweigh Cost
• The PMO at 20: New Research Findings Released

1 Comment on Blog PMI series #3 The SAFe PMO: Two Experts Respond