Don't use frameworks (like SAFe) out of the box

Is there a "template" for life?

Can you directly implement the advice your mother and father gave you? Or was the advice intended as abstract, requiring you to incorporate it into your thinking, so that you can integrate it with other advice and other knowledge and apply it to each of life's unique situations?

Applying a framework like SAFe exactly as defined is like applying your parents' advice exactly as articulated: it won't work.

SAFe - and the countless other frameworks that have come from IT thought leaders and organizations - is an excellent model, but a model is food for thought. Models always leave out details. Models are a basis for discussion, for analysis, and for design: a basis for design - not a design.

To apply SAFe, you have to think about it, and customize it to your organization. In the next post I will discuss one particular aspect of SAFe in order to illustrate the point.