Learnings from Snow in the Desert

Snow in the Desert started their Agile transformation journey with a textbook adoption of SAFe. At Snow in the Desert, behavior and culture were the most significant barriers to Agile delivery. As per SAFe, the system architect was positioned at the ART leadership level alongside product management and the release train engineer. Although architects are the best programmers, the behavior of individuals and memories of past organization developed friction between Agile architects and the rest of the development teams. This wall of distinction diminished collaboration, causing teams to operate with no shared responsibilities and no alignment with the solution vision.

To overcome this challenge, Snow in the Desert course-corrected their team constructs. The following diagram shows the next evolution of Snow in the Desert:

Figure 3.16 – Architect assignments at Snow in the Desert

As shown in the diagram, the system architects...