SAFe and Scrum
Question: Is Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) better than Scrum?
The answer to this question greatly depends on what better means and who is the benefactor.
Generally speaking, it seems that SAFe has tapped into something that Scrum did not provide and thus is gaining much popularity at the expense of Scrum.
For example: "The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) is the framework of choice for 70 percent of the Fortune 100, used by more than 700,000 practitioners in 20,000 organizations globally." 2019 Gartner report.
We see that SAFe is doing to Scrum what Scrum did to Waterfall. This tactic, found in business and politics, discredits the competition and offers itself as an alternative.
SAFe employs a version of Scrum. Schwaber and Sutherland, the authors of Scrum, have asserted that SAFe's interpretation of Scrum is inconsistent and wrong.
This assertion is in itself incompatible with Scrum, which supposedly is "intentionally incomplete and unclear".
Some Scrum proponents argued that SAFe is not Agile. Yet, it does not matter whether SAFe is Agile or not.
SAFe shrewdly and successfully positioned itself as a viable alternative and natural evolution to Scrum.
Overall, different scaling frameworks are on the rise, and SAFe is just one of several Agile methods that promise success, just as Scrum did.
Several notable Scrum proponents argued that SAFe is preferred by company executives who seek the "command and control" which SAFe affords.
This claim is incorrect because, at the macro level, executives do not care which software development method is used.
Executives have no loyalty or interest in Agile or the method of choice in software development.
Executives only care about business results and frictionless organizations.
Executives will be inclined to try anything that contributes to these objectives.