Tuesday 13 August 2013

Business Process Architecture in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe Framework) and where is Six Sigma and Lean ?

I read one of the Guidance Articles on the Safe framework website yesterday that describes Seven Principals of Agile Architecture that have proven to be effective in re-legitimizing the role of architecture, and by implication the System and Enterprise Architect in Agile at scale: Principles of Agile Architecture

Following on from that, by chance I ended up having a coffee with a Six Sigma Expert from our BPI team and we talked around the subject.  Strangely we spent the first few minutes trying to find a common point of reference as whenever I mentioned Enterprise Architect he had visions of a Business Process Architect, and I meant and Enterprise Solution Architect.

Once we got over that hurdle we came to the conclusion that actually, the concepts of intentional architecture and emerging architecture in the business process space seem to be somewhat overlooked or underplayed in the SAFe framework (current version 2.5) and that ultimately the work of the business analysts in requirements capture and backlog creation seem somehow to be anticipated to fill this gap.  I am not convinced; and the more time I spend looking at Lean and Six Sigma I think there is a chapter yet to be written in the SAFe framework to cater for this.

I will try and get hold of Dean Leffingwell or his colleagues and see if there is some collaborative work that can be done in this space (unless of course its already in hand) as I think there is an opportunity here to really tie the Business Process Architecture to the Solution Architecture within the Framework.