doesn’t get rid of SAFE during this whole thing then there’s no hope for the IT function.
It’s the easiest cut in the world to make, would save a ton of money, and help teams go faster with absolutely ZERO downside.
If he can’t see that, and is being told by those around him to keep SAFE then this whole reorg is being guided by mo--ns and id--ts and there’s no hope for success in anything else they do.
If anyone in the BU knew how to spell "digital" then I'd agree to get rid of the central team. Unfortunately, I don't think we have many good spellers out in the BUs.
I hear my BU’s digital manager talk about how when we centralize stuff, the BU won’t have all the random stuff that doesn’t scale. Everything is delivered by the digital platforms and centralization of the other functions will help things run smoother.
But guess what, even when I talk to CTC subsurface employees in the center, they also b!tch and moan about platforms too. We’ve got a bunch of IT people thinking they’re providing these so-called scalable solutions to us, and the reality is that no one cares for it. Cut all of them.
Just get rid of the digital platforms.
Give every new asset its own digital group and let ITC be ITC - like the MSP sh!t like laptops, ERP/SAP, and cyber.
All the business enabling IT stuff, give it to the asset org. The digital platforms have been utterly useless. I am sure the technical contributors on platforms feel awesome about having none of their stuff used by anybody who’s actually delivering the oil. Put them on things that people actually g.a.f.
The digital platform, along with agile, was the worst decision that Chevron’s made. Right up there with Triple Crime.
And the enterprise data group. OMFG. Just cut all of it. A bunch of incompetent data people who have never seen a rig.
Agree with others that the Chevronization of Agile and over implementation of SAFe ki-led it. Ki-led Lean Sigma too. Lean and Agile mindsets and processes can be a great benefit but it has to stay lean. We force fit SAFe into everything. We have massive trains with few to no common products being delivered. Why are they on the same train? Having local BU scrum teams was working well but we had to Chevron it up.
We have POs that don't understand the Agile and Lean concepts. They try to be people managers instead of driving priority and value delivery. Many can't prioritize work or pushback on the business. Some are really good but most are mediocre at best.
Ah the same old story. Why do people forget. Lowest level engineer, we have a problem it’s cr-p. Middle management meeting massages message. BOD hears its fertilizer and it’s increasing, makes plants grow. So it’s great.
Just remember Harry’s rules. The masses are arses and managers are like cats. They love to cover their ….
I agree with that agile is not to blame- it’s how we Chevronized it. We added roles that weren’t necessary to save leadership employees. In many companies agile streamlines their processes and cuts out unnecessary work. Somehow, we moved the unnecessary and plopped it into our structure and processes. We still have too many layers of work. I have more meetings providing status to layers of management whose main job is to ask for status- they’re not helpful in resolving issues and we could do without them.
Because of self preservation, we’ll move the burdened processes and layers of management into the new org. Even if we start out streamlined, over time we will migrate back and force the 5 year layoff cycle. It doesn’t take an army of consultants to figure that out.
Bringing in externals might work but you’d have to have enough to make a difference or they’ll get overruled by the existing system.
SAFE is a result of our culture problem - but it is not the root cause.
The Good to Great book showed how Bank of america changed its culture by gutting its leadership and dead weight and hiring tons of hard core Wells Fargo leaders. At that time, the Wells Fargo culture is competitive, cost effective and super focused …
if the matra is any hint, they will need to get some external folks w their selection team… many Chevron lifers has no idea what the real competitive world is outside of this CVX “super nice, I cant give u feedback that u dont carry your weight or u r busy w busy work” culture bubble
SAFe is the biggest scam for the consulting industry
Nothing wrong with agile for IT. Agile is a mindset. A philosophy. It’s about self organizing teams and about prioritising tangible output over process.
Chevron’s implementation of SAFe, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of that.
why you blame SAFE or Agile?
So I doubt they’ll get rid of SAFE, because the way it’s reported to the LT, for example, when we don’t meet our velocity or it dips, then our PO makes us cut our stories to smaller chunks so that velocity creeps up, e.g, let’s say that you have a story to create a spreadsheet with the columns A B C, but our velocity is down, so she’ll just create a story for A a story for B and a story for C to manipulate the velocity and it works because no one in leadership knows the work and as long as that kind of good news manipulation is happening then everyone is happy and everyone wins. That’s just ONE example being passed off as a win and then let’s not even get into burn down rate and story point and capacity and how that is spun. There’s so many ways to spin that tail just by tweaking a thing here or there, so I guarantee you, that the upper upper LT only sees it as good news. See, the problem is also the PO / GA has been given too much power so there’s no checks and balances, no one will say anything because of retribution. Resnick, Hernandez, Smithson and company, they just manage upwards, it’s the name of the game, it’s the Chevron way.
This may be a test whether the leadership can make the decisions needed to improve the workflows....