---
title: "Agile Development and SAFe | Rami Sirkiä | Negotiator 95"
titleOriginal: "Ketterä kehitys ja SAFe | Rami Sirkiä | Neuvottelija 95"
episodeNumber: "95"
guest: "Rami Sirkiä"
datePublished: 2021-08-20
duration: "29:47"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["saas_software","leadership_governance"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and the publisher's own chapter marks, translated one for one. The marks are genuine: eighteen of them, with gaps from 28 to 210 seconds, tracking the recording rather than a grid. No transcript is published here — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. The guest is a consultant at a firm that sells agile transformation work and a named service of it is discussed, which makes parts of the episode promotional; the closing advice runs the other way. The long-form write-up in the Neuvottelija AI editions reads the 2021 argument from the far side of AI coding and finds it intact, because the case for agility rests on uncertainty rather than on the price of writing code. Recorded 20 August 2021."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/107-kettera-kehitys-ja-safe-rami-sirkia-neuvottelija-95"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep95-kettera-kehitys-ja-safe-rami-sirkia/
---
# Agile Development and SAFe | Rami Sirkiä | Negotiator 95

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=0s) Shortening the planning horizon is the hardest thing for management
- [00:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=51s) Rami Sirkiä of Nitor, and a father's machine-code background
- [02:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=163s) The waterfall model, and the agile manifesto's answer to it
- [04:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=283s) Resources, time, quality, and the cadence of sprints
- [06:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=371s) The pizza team, and the problem of coordinating many teams
- [07:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=469s) The Agile Release Train, a team of teams
- [08:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=528s) SAFe's big picture is a nautical chart for management
- [09:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=560s) OP's tribe model, and scaling SAFe into a conglomerate
- [10:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=631s) Lean simplification, and Bosch's three hundred developers
- [12:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=721s) PI planning and a quarterly rhythm in place of annual planning
- [13:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=823s) A shared platform: flow efficiency against utilisation
- [15:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=908s) DevOps is a shared culture and a shared responsibility
- [17:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=1043s) A Release Train does not dictate the release cadence
- [19:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=1155s) How to get business people involved in development
- [22:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=1340s) Nitor Delta, training, and business agility
- [24:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=1462s) Service design brought code closer to the business
- [27:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=1669s) Own capability or outsourced: the insourcing message
- [29:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A&t=1759s) Closing words, and SAFe version 5

## Summary

Nitor's Rami Sirkiä has been taking large companies into agile operating models since the Nokia Mobile Phones era, without ever having written a line of code. The episode's load-bearing observation is counter-intuitive: the hardest part of agility is not in the teams but in management, because management no longer gets to launch large programmes and is instead asked what matters today. Sirkiä describes SAFe as a nautical chart rather than a recipe, and stresses repeatedly that it takes no position on release cadence, feedback channels or who does the work — you could in principle run waterfall with SAFe. The conversation covers the limits of the pizza team, the Agile Release Train as a team of teams, the quarterly rhythm of PI planning, DevOps as a shared culture, and flow efficiency in place of utilisation. It closes with advice that runs against his own firm's sales pitch: hire the developers yourselves.

## Management loses the big launch

Teams adapt to a two-week rhythm fairly easily. What a shortened planning horizon takes away is management's largest instrument — the multi-year programme announced with a budget — and replaces it with being asked, repeatedly, what matters this quarter. That is the change organisations actually fail at.

## A chart, not a recipe

Sirkiä keeps saying what SAFe does not specify: not the release cadence, not the feedback channels, not who does the work. Taken seriously that means the framework cannot be blamed for a bad implementation and cannot be credited with a good one — it only shows where the rocks are.

## Advice against his own sale

The closing recommendation is to hire the developers rather than buy them, from someone whose firm sells them. The reason given is that you are building your own future competitiveness, and the fact that it costs him something is why it belongs on the page.


## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: [Ketterä kehitys ja SAFe | Rami Sirkiä | Neuvottelija 95](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnM39rHB67A).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at [www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/107-kettera-kehitys-ja-safe-rami-sirkia-neuvottelija-95).

## In depth

The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode:
[English](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep95-kettera-kehitys-ja-safe-rami-sirkia/) · [suomeksi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/tools/ep95-kettera-kehitys-ja-safe-rami-sirkia/).

## Explore the ideas in depth

- [Enterprise AI Agents: Economics, Governance and the Shift From Tools to Workers](https://www.neuvottelija.com/guides/enterprise-ai-agents-economics-and-governance/): A guide to enterprise AI agents — the real cost model behind agent work, why owning your own stack is becoming a strategic question, a working governance framework with approval gates and audit trails, the agent risk matrix, the EU AI Act timeline as it stands, and who captures the productivity gains. Grounded in a real multi-agent lab, two 2026 keynotes, and Neuvottelija conversations.
- [Nordic SaaS Valuation & M&A: How AI Reprices Software Companies](https://www.neuvottelija.com/guides/nordic-saas-valuation-and-ma/): How software companies in the Nordics are valued and sold as AI moves inference into the cost of goods sold — where multiples stand in mid-2026, the metrics that get repriced, why vertical SaaS defends its premium, AI due diligence, and the shift from seats to outcomes. Grounded in Translink's SaaS valuation work and Neuvottelija conversations.

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Agile Development and SAFe | Rami Sirkiä | Negotiator 95, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep95-kettera-kehitys-ja-safe-rami-sirkia/, 2021-08-20. For quotes include episode 95 and timestamp.