Again in December 2024, Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast featured Melissa Perri in a dialog about the downsides of enormous, heavy frameworks like SAFe. Whereas their dialogue largely targeted on SAFe’s failures inside conventional agile, they didn’t but consider the a number of disruptive forces reshaping enterprise product improvement:
- New, leaner methodologies like Form Up and steady discovery are gaining traction.
- Automation is changing guide overhead in testing, deployment, and supply, making conventional Agile/Scrum constructions pointless.
- Enterprise cost-cutting is forcing a reckoning—as seen in the mass layoffs of Agile coaches, Scrum Masters, and different process-heavy roles.
- AI is accelerating product improvement, however it’s simply certainly one of a number of disruptors shaking up enterprise software program.
Clay Christensen was proper—huge corporations are doubling down on the mistaken issues. They’re including course of at a time when they need to be stripping it down. In the event that they don’t rethink how they construct software program, they’ll be outpaced by leaner, quicker challengers—and left behind in the way forward for enterprise product improvement.
SAFe is Increasing Whereas Product Improvement is Shrinking
“Your framework has doubled in measurement. Your launch cycles haven’t.”
- SAFe has grown from 4.5 to six, including complexity as an alternative of agility.
- In the meantime, leaner, extra adaptive fashions like Form Up and steady discovery permit smaller groups to iterate quicker.
- Executives are pissed off with SAFe’s bloat, sluggish supply, and excessive overhead—however many nonetheless don’t know what to switch it with.
Enterprises are Reducing Agile Overhead—Forcing a Shift Away from Course of-Heavy Work
“The layoffs of Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches are a sign—not a facet impact.”
- Many enterprises have decreased or eradicated Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and SAFe Program Consultants.
- This isn’t simply cost-cutting—it’s a response to Agile’s failure to ship quicker outcomes.
- Groups should shift to fashions that empower them to self-organize and work lean, not depend on Agile overhead.
Automated Testing and Deployment Have Eliminated the Want for Giant Agile Groups
“Should you can automate testing, deploy in small slices, and get real-time suggestions—why do you want a heavy launch prepare?”
- Trendy CI/CD and automatic testing instruments imply groups can launch small, validated modifications constantly fairly than batch massive releases.
- Danger and compliance are simpler to handle in micro-releases than in large waterfall-like SAFe releases.
- The outdated “huge prepare” launch mannequin is dying. Firms have to shift to smaller, steady worth supply.
- AI is Reshaping Groups—However So is the Shift Towards Smaller, Autonomous Teams
“Your 15-person workforce is competing in opposition to a 3-person workforce utilizing higher instruments.”
- AI is eliminating routine backlog grooming, analysis, and take a look at case writing.
- However even with out AI, smaller groups utilizing higher workflows (like Form Up) are outperforming SAFe-heavy groups.
- The profitable mannequin: small, outcome-focused groups that function with out extreme layers of administration.
SaaS Subscriptions Are Dying—Consequence-Primarily based Pricing is the Future
“Why cost for entry when automation permits you to cost for outcomes?”
- AI allows performance-based pricing fashions, however so does automated telemetry and real-time utilization monitoring.
- Enterprises clinging to static subscription fashions will wrestle to compete with extra adaptive, outcome-based pricing fashions.
- Prospects more and more anticipate to pay primarily based on actual worth delivered—not only for software program entry.
Vertical Slices Beat Sluggish-Transferring Cargo Practice Releases
“Regulatory danger is decreased whenever you ship much less, no more.”
- Releasing in small, tightly scoped increments makes it simpler to monitor, take a look at, and validate modifications.
- Regulated industries (finance, healthcare, manufacturing) truly achieve extra management by transferring quicker in small items fairly than ready for bloated SAFe-driven releases.
- The actual danger isn’t transferring too quick—it’s delaying releases till they’re too massive to handle successfully.
The Return of Skunkworks: Enterprises Should Carve Out AI & Automation Innovation Groups
“Large corporations used to have secret labs. Now they’ve governance boards.”
- Most massive corporations have killed their potential to innovate by eliminating protected carve-outs.
- AI-native startups are operating small, light-weight Skunkworks groups to experiment with new applied sciences.
- Enterprises should restore protected innovation groups—not as facet initiatives, however as core strategic bets.
Carving out house for innovation is not a luxurious—it’s a survival tactic in trendy enterprise product improvement.
Enterprises Should Reinvent Their Playbook—Earlier than It’s Too Late
- SAFe, because it stands, is failing to ship outcomes quick sufficient. Firms should undertake leaner, extra adaptive frameworks like Form Up, steady supply, and vertical slicing.
- The outdated playbook of huge groups, sluggish releases, and SaaS subscriptions is collapsing. The longer term is automation, AI-augmentation, and outcome-based pricing.
- Regulation and danger aversion aren’t excuses to maneuver slowly. Actually, leaner, quicker releases provide higher management and compliance than massive, rare ones.
- Should you’re nonetheless counting on Agile the way in which it was practiced in 2015, you’re already behind. The businesses that rethink their method now will dominate the subsequent decade.
Rethinking the Enterprise Product Improvement Begins Right here
Large frameworks are holding groups again. From vertical slicing to lean AI innovation groups, the subsequent technology of enterprise product improvement gained’t be constructed on bloated course of.
If this publish hit near residence, right here’s the place to go subsequent:
The shift is already taking place. The one query is whether or not your workforce is main it—or reacting to it. What’s your take? Bounce into the dialog and share your ideas with us on LinkedIn.
