Scrum is a simple and flexible way to achieve Agile, ideal for small teams. SAFe is an enterprise-wide Agile framework designed to help bring Agile across teams and into the enterprise as a whole. To sum it up in a few sentences, Scrum is a way of working using Agile, and SAFE is a way to make your entire business end-to-end – including non-functional and non-functional employees.
Why are there two different ways? Why can’t you extend Scrum?
To answer these questions, we need to look at Agile as a whole and how each method fits into the picture. Is Security or Scrum right for me?
How do you choose between two important methods in Agile, and the future of your business at risk if you change? Let’s break it down.
Scrum pros
Scrum is an excellent method for small agile businesses, especially startups with only one or two employees. Because Scrum focuses on the independence and autonomy of the user, it leads to a significant increase in job satisfaction. The manager (Scrum Master) becomes an enabler instead of a dictator. Scrum keeps teams closer to their customers, making things go faster and benefiting everyone.
Scrum cons
Scrum is difficult to implement on a large scale, especially if multiple teams are working on the same product. Scrum relies heavily on the experience and contribution of each member of the Scrum team. A weak link can cause the entire project to fail. It doesn’t work well for responding to non-operational business processes.
SAFe pros
SAFe helps large organizations work together more effectively by productively aligning Scrum teams. If you have a large, temporary company, it may be easier to deploy with SAFE than a pure large-scale Scrum implementation.
SAFe apply Agile to all companies, not just one team at a time.
SAFe cons
Adding middle managers can compromise the freedom of the Scrum team to be creative and independent. If you implement it incorrectly, SAFe can be just as problematic as an old-fashioned waterproofing system. SAFe’s product vision has not changed. Those closest to the problem no longer make decisions. More than one Agile administrator thinks that SAFe doesn’t count as an Agile method at all, because it doesn’t fully follow the principles of the Agile Manifesto.