“Blog post as a comic strip”

If you’re going to get angry, at least know who you’re angry with. SAFe and Jira aren’t the bad guys.

They’re dumb tools.

That they get misused by dumb humans is hardly their fault.

And even those dumb humans are mostly so from your point of view: “Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.” Levels of experience and development lead to different expectations and interpretations. Ask yourself why people are acting in a “dumb” way. Usually you’ll find they are fulfilling the expectations of the company – they’ve been shaped by the company culture to behave this way.

If you want to be angry with something, then why are orange KPI-driven companies still around? Why aren’t we surrounded by a sea of green companies? Why is agile so fragile? Because SAFe isn’t the problem. Neither is Jira. Attacking them is missing the point.