Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Wow more AI slop that just regurgitated the slop posted by the smooth brains on this Board. You deserve to be fired.

@qk, your post blames regulation and geography for Agile's "swamp" at Wells Fargo, but that's management's excuse to cling to control. Agile thrives in regulated banking with psychological safety—essential for collaboration, self-critique, and innovation, as HBR notes. Wells Fargo's failures? A fearful culture lacking safety, per Edmondson, where bullying and offshoring ki-l teams, not rules. JPMorgan's Scaled Scrum across global teams cut cycle times and delivered $1.5B AI value in 2023, complying with regs via empowered squads. Truist post-merger used Agile for cloud/digital onboarding, boosting deposits 42% in 2024 despite branches nationwide. {where is BE?}. ING's 350 cross-country squads sped launches 60%, handling GDPR via iterative compliance. Rocket Mortgage's Scaled Scrum reduced cycles 93% in regulated lending, dominating with AI. SoFi's squads scaled to $500M ARR in fintech-banking. Geography? ING and JPMorgan prove diverse teams succeed with safety. Regulation? These banks embed controls in sprints. Wells Fargo's real issue: fear—management bullies via "wagile," fearing Agile's team control. Safety unlocks Agile; without it, you're right—it's a swamp. Document abuses anonymously, join Wells Fargo Workers United, or file EEOC complaints. Read The Fearless Organization for fearless banks like JPMorgan. My mission: fearless workplaces. There's a better option!
Prompt: Provide detailed examples of successful Agile implementations at large, highly regulated banks with geographically diverse teams (e.g., across countries or regions), such as JPMorgan Chase, Truist Financial, ING Bank, Rocket Mortgage, and SoFi. For each, describe the key strategies, challenges overcome (like regulation, bureaucracy, and geographic separation), outcomes (e.g., productivity gains, time-to-market reductions), and how psychological safety enabled team collaboration and self-critique, drawing from Amy Edmondson's framework in The Fearless Organization. Contrast with failures in fear-based cultures like Wells Fargo's 'wagile,' where lack of safety leads to silos and bullying."

Agile will never work in a risk mgt-driven, highly regulated industry like Finance. The emphasis on controls and change risk management will always lead to a bloated bureaucracy like the one Wells has now. Add to that the geographically separated offices and generally lower talent level plus the cultural problems WF Tech brings to the table, and you have the swamp that exists today.

It is great when the original principles are adhered but this company has created a centralized ba----dized version of it that is the antithesis of agile.

From what I’ve seen, Agile is just a digital-age version of the Franklin-Covey system that has been working for eons. So just wait a few years, it’ll be outdated too

@aj+1k5rzwbhr

HY reads this and thinks, "I wonder if 50,000 people in one big office could pull it off...someone get Bangalore on the ho-n!"

Agile primarily serves to force the productive engineers to spoon feed the underperforming offshores who make an art of playing d-mb until someone else does their work for them. Super annoying way to start the day.

Agile depends on highly skilled developers who can collaborate, communicate, understand the business, etc. Wells Fargo uses it to manage the cheapest developers possible.

@aj - This is the best definition and explains exactly why its a failure at Wells.

Agile is great for a small co-located team. Lots of talking in person and working on the features real time. Wells does not do that.

Note the "agile" that you learned at Wells is NOT agile. Agile is not a facilitation or control mechanism. The abusive management have taken a methodology and convert it to meet their un-ethical needs. Agile is to facilitate TEAMS not facilitator's control. There is no upper management's trust in their employees. So revert back to waterfall, finger waving deadlines and a toxic culture. Agile failure leads to cloud migration failure and will lead to platform and AI failure. In order to succeed management at all levels will have to give up control to the TEAM.

What passes for agile at Wells Fargo is very different than how other companies have implemented it. It has it's issues but if you've been sheltered at Wells you've likely never seen a company that's actually trying to do it well

Wells Fargo has never been agile, and never will be.