Hey,
in a recent setup we observed that there’s a tendency to manage dependencies instead of resolving or reducing them. It’s a monolithic environment with a lot of component-based teams.
Are there any strategies out there where you set up SAFe so that reducing dependencies is a core strategy?
Thanks for helping me.
Hi!
Maybe not the most helpful answer:
But in a previous SAFe project we “reserved” capacity in all teams for reducing technical debt and solving dependencies. In many cases these activities are not actively been planned and therefore teams don’t start actively working on it because of too less available capacity.
The “capacity management” for these topics should be transparent for all teams on train level. Eg. on a board during and after the PI planning. If teams didn’t “reserve” the capacity for these topics during PI planning, the stakeholders and the other teams didn’t provide a convincing feedback during the confidence vote which one time resulted in an additional (3rd) planning day for PI planning.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast 
Culture eats strategy for breakfast
Yeah I guess that’s the universal answer 
And of course 42
This seems to be a common strategy.
From my point of view, things like reducing technical debt should be a product backlog item, too. Maybe it has a label so that one can visualize if you care enough for reducing technical debt. Add XP paradigm “refactor when you’re on the code” and you’re good to go.
But, what we also see is that stakeholders favour features (esp. the visible ones) over reducing technical debt. This is independant of the SAFe framework and a underlying impediment when companies want to use / be Agile.
I fully agree Björn!