Classical painting of a black bloody-mouthed devil holding two children. Animated to shake violently.

Beware SAFe (the Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprise), an Unholy Incarnation of Darkness

Sean Dexter
14 min readJan 1, 2020

“And, in the next place, since evil is specially characterized by its diffusion, and attains its greatest height when it simulates the appearance of the good, for that reason are signs, and marvels, and lying miracles found to accompany evil, through the cooperation of its father the devil.”

— The Theologian Origen (185–254) on recognizing the Antichrist

If you’ve never heard of it before, the Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprise is a collection of principles and practices assembled with the goal of offering a way to “scale up” an Agile working model for large companies.

If you need it, I have a refresher on what Agile is and isn’t here.

Since its inception in 2011, SAFe has experienced enormous growth. Almost half a million people worldwide have become certified SAFe practitioners. If you expect to work in product, design, or engineering at a large company — or even a growing startup — there’s a chance you’ll encounter SAFe at some point in your career.

A graph that shows a trend that increases upwards almost linearly.
Google search term interest for “SAFe agile” since 2011

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Sean Dexter

Staff Product Designer @ Walmart Data Ventures. Prev: Meta, HubSpot & Cigna. I write about UX, agile, & product. linkedin.com/in/seandexter1/