Design is Not the Frosting on the Scaled Agile Layer Cake
Summary
For many in Design and UX, news that your company or organization is adopting the Scaled Agile Framework can feel like the beginning of the end for fully integrating design and design teams in the software development lifecycle. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I will talk about how Design and Business Agility built a deep and cross-functional partnership at USAA to bake a human-centered approach into the Scaled Agile layer cake resulting in: SAFe Coaches who advocate for design, a Lean Business Case that uncouples business and user outcomes, and a shared definition of value that aligns whole teams on the best outcomes.
Key Insights
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Combining multiple organizational changes creates a 'hairball' effect that complicates adoption and impacts employee wellbeing.
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Empathy is critical not just for users but also for internal employees dealing with constant change.
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Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) often assumes maturity in teaming and decision-making that legacy companies may lack.
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Design thinking can be obscured or marginalized in large Agile frameworks unless actively advocated and tailored.
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Breaking down silos by defining cross-functional teams around shared value criteria improves collaboration and outcomes.
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Lawyers and compliance partners can become enablers and co-creators in design solutions when included early.
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Design teams must become the 'antidote' to change overload by making design immediately usable and relevant.
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Internal programs, like Bring Your Own Epic, help embed design practices by turning teams into champions through shared stories and hands-on work.
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Cultural change efforts require creating tangible 'covetable' artifacts that foster belonging and reinforce new behaviors.
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Sustained success in cultural and process change depends on cultivating internal champions, including initially skeptical roles such as SAFe coaches.
Notable Quotes
"Change is a constant in design, but at USAA it often felt like change within change — inception-like change."
"Scaled Agile felt at first like a step backwards—design looked like just the finishing touch, not a key ingredient."
"Maybe the ambiguity and frequent changes in SAFe could actually be an opportunity, not just a headache."
"Empathy applies to us too—we needed to understand how our own people were feeling about these layered changes."
"People were overwhelmed, missing the point, and didn’t even know where to start with all this change."
"Defining teams by shared value — what’s desirable, compliant, feasible, and viable — broke down silos effectively."
"The lawyer got to be the guy who said yes and, not just the guy who said no."
"Design thinking can feel like a magical black box or utterly overwhelming; it has to be made immediately usable and valuable."
"It’s up to designers to be the antidote, to articulate all these changes as one movement."
"I jump out of bed every morning because an executive said for the first time, this feels like home, this is how I want to work."
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