The Aha Moment: Seeing SAFe Through a Different Lens
- Bill Holmes
- Nov 6
- 2 min read
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Peter Drucker
“Nothing fails like success when you rely on the formula that worked yesterday.” Tom Peters
I’ve delivered software at scale, led Agile Release Trains, and worked with teams that understood their roles and delivery cycles. I thought I had a solid grasp of SAFe.
Then I earned my SAFe® Practice Consultant (SPC) certification. That’s when I began to see how much of the framework I’d been treating as process rather than system. I understood what the events were, but not how the decisions, roles, and feedback loops reinforced one another. The certification gave me structure, but it also made me realize how much more there was beneath the surface.
A few months later, a client asked me to get enabled to teach the SAFe Scrum Master and Product Owner/Product Manager courses.
Enablement is the step that separates instructors from participants. Scaled Agile doesn’t just want you to understand the slides, it expects you to be able to explain the logic behind every concept and connect it to practical situations. You must know what happens when theory meets a live organization.
That’s when I began to appreciate SAFe differently. The framework isn’t the hard part. The hard part is applying it to organizations that already have habits, politics, and priorities built into their DNA. SAFe exposes those realities in a way few other frameworks can. It doesn’t make work complicated; it makes the complications visible.
The deeper I went, the more I saw how SAFe aligns leadership, systems thinking, and team-level execution in one structure that’s workable. When people commit to it. It’s also where the distinction between doing Agile and being Agile becomes clear. You can follow every ceremony and still miss the point if the mindset hasn’t changed. SAFe, done right, makes that visible too.
The framework works, but only when people do.
It reminded me of my progression through PMI certifications. I thought I understood project management when I earned my PMP. But as I pursued PgMP, PMI-ACP, and PMI-RMP, I started to understand how governance, agility, and risk management interact in real environments.
Each certification refined how I thought about scale and decision-making.
Now that I’ve completed my SAFe Scrum Master Enablement, I’m seeing how much of the framework’s value comes from transparency. It provides a common language for leaders, teams, and programs to talk about delivery without translation errors. When used properly, it replaces ambiguity with intent, and that’s where real progress starts.
If you’d like to talk about how SAFe can improve delivery feel free to reach out. I enjoy comparing what’s written in the book with what works in practice.
Coda
One of my daughters was just downsized, and it was done in the worst way possible. She just received a pay raise and the owner of the company told her she was a valuable part of the team. The owner hired a new person to supervise her department, and told her he would coach and mentor her. Without ever having a conversation with her, she was let go. I am going to explore just how bad that culture must be. Pathetic.