The Post They Hoped I Wouldn't Write

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Miss me?

I'd say Good Morning, but we've already fixed psychological safety once this quarter. Let's not overdo it.

Thirteen days without a post. Some of you were panicking. One commenter asked, "When should we start worrying about the Chronicler?" Another replied, "When HR starts looking relaxed."

Fair point. HR hasn't looked relaxed since Post 1. And judging by the Citadel town hall, they won't be relaxing anytime soon.

I wasn't caught. I wasn't silenced. I wasn't absorbed into a Value Stream and decomposed into Story Points. I was doing something the Transformation Office has never attempted: research.

Buckle up. This one's loaded.

Act I: The Showdown in the Citadel

The God-Mother sent her Stormtroopers to the Citadel for a town hall. Mission: reassure the Southern Kingdom that everything is fine. The blog is mostly false. The transformation is on track. Trust us.

They opened Mentimeter expecting applause. They got a funeral.

"Lost trust." "No psychological safety." "Fear." "Broken promises."

Then HR stood up and declared that "80% of the blog is false."

Eighty percent. Very specific. Very confident. Very convenient.

So here's my standing offer, Hodor:

Name the 80%. I will publish your rebuttal, unedited, unfiltered, in full, right here on this blog. Front page. Your words. No commentary from me.

But you won't. Because specifying which 80% is false means admitting which 20% is true. And that 20% includes the consent form. Two Strikes. The acting managers. The ITSCO recruitment mess. The fear. The silence. The exodus of good people.

Twenty percent truth is a hell of a thing when it's that twenty percent.

Proud of you, Citadel. You looked them in the eye and said what King's Landing staff type into anonymous forms at midnight. Our own survey confirmed it: 45% of staff have lost trust in leadership. 48% operate in fear.

And to the God-Mother and HR directly: the Citadel didn't push back on the blog. They pushed back on you. That wasn't an IT problem. That was a leadership credibility problem. Town halls won't fix it. Mentimeter won't fix it. Only accountability will.

Act II: The Firing Squad

I need to drop the sarcasm for a moment. Because what I'm about to tell you isn't funny.

A mass redundancy plan is being executed.

Not "considered." Not "explored." Executed. And here's the part that should make every manager in ITS very uncomfortable:

You've been selected. Not to lead. To fire.

Managers, and in some cases directors, are being positioned as the delivery mechanism for redundancy notifications. The firings are concentrated in all houses and most in the Client Services team. HR sits in the room. They always do. But they won't do anything. They protect the process. Not the person.

HR won't sit across the table from someone who's given fifteen years to this institution and explain why their job no longer exists. You will. HR won't watch them process it. The mortgage, the kids' school, the G-4 visa that evaporates on termination. You will. And when it goes badly, and it will go badly, HR won't be blamed. You will.

Here's what makes this worse: the managers selected for this are new to the team. The experienced people managers, the ones who could have handled this with empathy, were already shown the door. Because the God-Mother doesn't need people managers. She needs robots who follow instructions without asking questions.

Redundancies happen across all units in Westeros. We know that. In fact, right under the same MD, another VP is going through its own redundancy process. Quietly. Professionally. Well-planned. No blogs. No panic. No 108-page crisis reports. Same MDCAO. Same institution. Same rules. One VP unit manages it with decency. The other creates chaos, fear, and an anonymous blog with 101,000+ reads. That's not a policy problem. That's a leadership problem.

If you are affected, do not sign anything under pressure. Check your options. Get advice first. See the next section.

Act III: Your Armour

You are not powerless. You do not have to accept the first thing placed in front of you.

🛡️ Staff Association (SA) Go to them first. They know what's happening. 🛡️ Peer Review Services (PRS) Your formal channel for challenging administrative decisions. 🛡️ ITS Counsellor Service Confidential support for workplace disputes. 🛡️ Integrity Vice Presidency (INT) For fraud, corruption, or abuse of authority. The crisis report has already been forwarded. 🛡️ Private Legal Counsel Lawyers who specialise in Westeros employment cases exist. Ask colleagues for recommendations. Ask around, people you trust. I also have some recommendations I can share. Anonymously. Securely. Through the form.

Do not sign under pressure. Do not accept verbal promises. Get advice before you respond, not after.

📝 Submit your experience here: https://forms.gle/oA5AUsMe2oy1NHEk8

To those being handed packages: use your armour. Don't let anyone rush you. Don't let anyone isolate you. You have rights. Use them.

Act IV: The Consent Form. HR Says It's "Not What the Blog Claimed"

In the Citadel, HR told staff the consent form was "not what was mentioned in the blog."

Really? Here's what the document actually said, as it appeared in Posts 2 and 3. Word for word:

☐ I CONSENT to participating in the ITS Technical Skills Validation Assessment. ☐ I DECLINE and understand this will result in redundancy effective July 1, 2026.

Two assessment attempts. Fail both = redundancy. Decline to participate = Declared redundant. July 1, 2026.

Managers to deliver individually. Staff must sign and return within 5 business days.

That's not a "concept." Someone drafted it. HR prepared talking points for managers. It had a deadline, consequences, and a redundancy date. That's an execution plan for people's careers.

HR: tell us specifically what the blog got wrong. I'll publish your correction unedited. If needed, the full document goes up, every page, every checkbox. Readers can judge for themselves.

The God-Mother's team has been telling staff the Skills Assessment changes were "normal process refinement." Colleagues, we all know why it happened. The blog happened. The backlash happened. And then the "reviews" suddenly produced different conclusions.

You're welcome. Again.

Act V: The Most Expensive Way to Stay Exactly Where You Were

Let me be clear about something. Agile is not the problem. A lot of us were doing agile before the God-Mother showed up. Scrum, Kanban, Lean — teams picked what worked, adapted it, delivered. Nobody needed a certification to prove they were doing their jobs. Nobody held three-day PI Planning sessions for work that could've been sorted in a hallway conversation.

The problem is SAFe. Not offered. Not recommended. Mandated. Across the entire VPU. Training? Compulsory. OVS and DVS mapping? Compulsory. PI Planning, ARTs, Inspect & Adapt? All compulsory. And if your team doesn't play along? Let's just say your next performance review might have some interesting new vocabulary in it.

Now here's where it gets funny. Staff have flagged that internal communications on the Transformation Hub say, and I quote: "Our Goal is not to teach Agile jargon or run IT frameworks." Beautiful sentence. Inspirational, even. Except the same communications then list PI Planning, System Demos, and Inspect & Adapt as mandatory engagement activities. Those are SAFe ceremonies. That is an IT framework. Somebody should tell the Transformation Hub what the Transformation Hub says.

But forget me. Let's ask the people who actually invented agile.

Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum, titled his review "UnSAFe at Any Speed." His words: "The boys from RUP are back." And: "The job of management is to help teams do their work, not suffocate them with SAFe."

Jeff Sutherland, the other co-creator of Scrum, called it "overly prescriptive" and said it "codifies dysfunctions that can cripple teams for years."

Jeff Gothelf, the man who created Lean UX — which SAFe then absorbed into its own framework — titled his analysis three words: "SAFe is not Agile."

These aren't random bloggers. These are the people who built the thing SAFe claims to scale. And they're saying: that's not what we built.

Now the industry:

Capital One eliminated all 1,100+ agile coaching positions. Every Scrum Master. Every RTE. Every Agile Coach. Gone. (Bloomberg, January 2023)

ThoughtWorks, the gold standard in Lean-Agile consulting, has discouraged SAFe since 2015: "promotes silos, generates waste, discourages creativity."

Equal Experts (2024): "Our advice is: don't do SAFe." Written by a certified SAFe 6.0 Agilist. Even the certified ones are walking away.

Al Shalloway, one of the first three people who helped build SAFe, walked away and now calls it "improved waterfall."

Even Gartner — whose research the God-Mother's team loves to wave around — states that SAFe requires "proven agile maturity" before implementation. We jumped from waterfall straight to full SAFe. No crawl. No walk. Straight to running, off a cliff, in somebody else's shoes.

And nobody's talking about the quiet part: every SAFe certification expires after one year. Every renewal puts money into Scaled Agile Inc.'s pocket. Every mandatory training contract generates consulting fees. The consultants recommending this framework? They get paid when you adopt it. They get paid again when you renew it. How much has ITS spent? Nobody knows. Nobody's been told. Ask.

Two years in. Millions spent. Show us one metric that improved. One number. One chart. One honest slide.

(For the full breakdown — see the Annexure below.)

Act VI: The Sultan's Sequel

ITSCO Manager recruitment: posted, almost selected, cancelled, reported on this blog, cancelled again, re-posted. We've lost count.

The Sultan spent years in ITS Operations team. Then moved to ITS Corporate. And every time he moves, the same thing happens: he brings his own people. Same faces. Same loyalists. He's already brought several from his old team into his teams leadership. Now he'll bring more. A true leader grows people, develops talent from within, builds the next generation. Not transplant the same inner circle every time they change portfolios. That's not leadership. That's a travelling court.

My prediction, bookmark it: The Sultan's preferred candidates will be selected. All positions. Same names as Round 1, internal or external makes no difference. The shortlist has been curated to include the favourites and just enough alternatives for appearances. An eye wash. The outcome is already decided. And predictions made in front of thousands of readers can be audited. Every qualification. Every scoring matrix. Every panel member. A Sultan who already let good leaders like the Khaleesis walk won't hesitate to fill those seats on his own terms. If I'm wrong, I'll say so publicly. Can the Sultan say the same?

Credit Where It's Due

After everything above, you'd be forgiven for thinking nobody's listening. They are.

The Staff Association called out the transformation's failures, openly, on the record, with their names attached. That took institutional bravery that most senior leaders in this building lack. Don't stop.

The MDCAO's Office received the 108-page crisis report, acknowledged it with decency, and forwarded it to the appropriate investigative units. The machinery is moving. We're watching to make sure it doesn't stall.

To every colleague who submitted evidence, shared their story, or simply told a friend about this blog: you are the reason any of this works.

P.S. To the God-Mother's December email that clarified the consent form but forgot to wish us Merry Christmas: noted. Priorities. 🎄

P.P.S. To the Citadel: You were magnificent. King's Landing, take notes.

P.P.P.S. To the Sultan: Bringing your old team again? At least give us a loyalty card. Ninth transfer gets a free coffee. ☕

P.P.P.P.S. Multiple comments have flagged the new Director's performance. Consistent. Cross-team. So here's the offer: leadership can commission a proper 360° review, or I'll build one myself. GM, Transformation, HR, all Directors. Anonymous. Published here. Choose wisely.

P.P.P.P.P.S. I know these posts keep getting longer. I keep trying to shorten them. But you lot keep giving me material. Stop doing dumb things and I'll stop writing about them.

~ The Chronicler (Still here. Still delivering with actual decency since December 2025.)

We Are ITS.

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🔍 ANNEXURE: SAFe — What the Experts Actually Say (7 Things Leadership Doesn't Want You to Read)

The Transformation Hub presents SAFe as an industry best practice backed by Gartner research and global peers. Below is what those sources actually say, what the people who created agile think about SAFe, and what the data shows about transformation success rates. Every claim is sourced and verifiable. Judge for yourself.

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📄 1. That Gartner Report? It Doesn't Say What They Told You It Says

Leadership has been referencing a Gartner paper called "7 Rules for Demonstrating the Business Value of IT" (January 2025, Naegle & Scalia, ID G00822250). It's a real paper. You can look it up. It's about how CIOs should communicate IT value to business stakeholders. That's it. Seven rules about storytelling, metrics, and aligning costs to services.

It says nothing about SAFe. Nothing about agile frameworks. Nothing about operating model restructuring. Nothing about mandating OVS/DVS mapping across a VPU.

Internal communications describe these insights as "aligning closely with the direction of the ITS transformation." That's a stretch. Gartner said "communicate better." They didn't say "mandate SAFe."

Here's the part that should sting: Gartner's own Rule 4 says "Measure IT's impact on business outcomes, not effort expended." PI Planning. ART syncs. OVS/DVS mapping. Inspect & Adapt ceremonies. What do these measure? Process compliance and effort. Not outcomes. By Gartner's own logic, we're measuring the wrong things.

And separately, Gartner has published that SAFe requires "proven agile maturity" as a prerequisite. We went from waterfall to full SAFe with nothing in between. No team-level agile maturity. No crawl-walk-run. That's a documented risk factor for transformation failure — from the same research house whose name gets dropped to justify the approach.

🌍 2. UNESCO and eu-LISA Were Cited. Neither Supports the Claim. Here's What They Actually Do.

Leadership has cited UNESCO and eu-LISA as examples of peer organisations going through similar transformations. Both are real organisations. Neither validates what's happening here.

UNESCO's SPAARK-AI Alliance (Schools of Public Administration and Actors for Research and Knowledge on AI) launched in June 2025 with 50+ partner organisations. Its purpose, straight from UNESCO's website: "strengthen AI and digital transformation capabilities across the public sector and promote inclusive, human-rights based approaches to digital transformation in government." Its first output is a free Oxford University course on AI governance for civil servants, launched November 2025.

It's about AI ethics. AI governance. Digital competency frameworks. It has zero — absolutely zero — connection to agile transformation, SAFe implementation, or IT operating models. Citing UNESCO's AI governance alliance to justify a SAFe mandate is borrowing a respected name to create an illusion of support. That's not referencing a source. That's name-dropping.

eu-LISA, the EU's IT agency managing Europe's largest cross-border platforms, uses lightweight agile through their RAISE initiative — Agile, DevSecOps, Software Factories. Their June 2025 roundtable was about "Building Better Government Software at Scale." Look through their published materials. There is no mention of SAFe, PI Planning, Agile Release Trains, or OVS/DVS. Anywhere.

eu-LISA's approach is closer to what ITS teams were already doing before this transformation started: small teams, lightweight agile, fit-for-purpose tools. Citing eu-LISA to justify a SAFe mandate is like pointing at someone riding a bicycle to justify buying a tank. Same general direction. Completely different vehicle.

💣 3. The People Who Invented Agile Say SAFe Isn't Agile. Their Exact Words Inside.

The Agile Manifesto was written in 2001 by 17 practitioners. Several of them — including the people who invented Scrum, the most widely used agile method on earth — have publicly rejected SAFe. These aren't consultants with an axe to grind. These are the people who built what SAFe claims to scale.

Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum, Agile Manifesto signatory. He titled his assessment "UnSAFe at Any Speed." He wrote: "The boys from RUP (Rational Unified Process) are back. Building on the profound failure of RUP, they are now pushing the Scaled Agile Framework as a simple, one-size fits all approach." And: "A core premise of agile is that the people doing the work are the people who can best figure out how to do it. The job of management is to do anything to help them do so, not suffocate them with SAFe."
(Source: kenschwaber.wordpress.com, "unSAFe at any speed")

Jeff Sutherland, the other co-creator of Scrum, Agile Manifesto signatory. His words: "Most scaling frameworks I find overly prescriptive and limited in their efficacy. While frameworks like SAFe might be a starting place for companies who do not understand Agile, they are inconsistent with the Scrum Guide and codify dysfunctions that can cripple teams for years."
(Source: SmHarter.com expert compilation; original article by Jeff Sutherland)

Jeff Gothelf, creator of Lean UX, which SAFe adopted into version 4.5 of its own framework. He titled his analysis "SAFe is not Agile." He wrote: "All the principles we've built into Lean UX — continuous learning, customer centricity, humility, cross-functional collaboration, evidence-based decision making — are visibly absent from the SAFe conversation." He also observed that SAFe creates "an uneven distribution of behavior change requirements depending on how high up one sits in the organization."
(Source: jeffgothelf.com/blog/safe-is-not-agile)

That last line is worth reading twice. Staff are told to learn SAFe, attend ceremonies, map value streams, complete mandatory training. Leadership's behaviour? Unchanged. The people at the top mandate the framework. The people at the bottom bear the cost of it. Gothelf spotted that pattern across every SAFe implementation he's seen. Sound familiar?

Al Shalloway, one of the first three SAFe Principal Contributors who helped build the framework from the ground up, walked away. He now describes SAFe as "improved waterfall."

📉 4. Capital One Cut 1,100 SAFe Jobs. ThoughtWorks Said Don't. Equal Experts Said Stop. Read Why.

Capital One eliminated all 1,100+ agile coaching and Scrum Master positions in January 2023. Their statement: "the natural next step is to integrate agile delivery processes directly into our core engineering practices." Dedicated SAFe roles added overhead without proportional value. They cut the lot.
(Source: Bloomberg, January 2023)

ThoughtWorks, the global leader in Lean-Agile consulting, has publicly discouraged SAFe since 2015: "promotes silos, generates waste, discourages creativity."

Equal Experts, 3,000 consultants across five continents, published their verdict in 2024: "Our advice is: don't do SAFe." Their reasoning: SAFe doesn't speed up delivery, doesn't satisfy product demand because it assumes three months of unchanging market conditions, and doesn't produce adaptive architectures. The author held a certified SAFe 6.0 Agilist credential. Even the certified ones are walking away.
(Source: Equal Experts' published assessment, documented on safedelusion.com)

DOGE is cutting agile coaching contracts across U.S. federal agencies, asking whether they deliver value for money.

The trend line is clear. Organisations that adopted SAFe early are unwinding it. We're doubling down.

💰 5. Every SAFe Cert Expires in 12 Months. Guess Who Gets Paid Every Time You Renew.

Every SAFe certification expires after one year. That's by design. Renewal is mandatory to maintain your certified status. This isn't professional development. It's a subscription service — and the subscription goes to Scaled Agile Inc., the private company that owns the framework.

Over 2 million professionals worldwide hold SAFe certifications. Each one generates annual renewal revenue. When an organisation makes SAFe training mandatory for all staff, it commits to ongoing certification and consulting spend for as long as the framework stays in place.

This doesn't make SAFe evil. But it does mean every consultant, trainer, and coach recommending SAFe has a direct financial interest in you adopting it. And expanding it. And renewing it. When the people advising your GM profit from the framework they're recommending, that's a conflict of interest that deserves scrutiny, not silence.

Questions nobody has answered: What is the total spend on SAFe-related contracts, training, and consulting to date? Has a cost-benefit analysis been done? Has anyone outside the God-Mother's inner circle seen it?

📊 6. 84% of Transformations Fail. 48% of Our Staff Operate in Fear. Do the Maths.

IDC research, cited by Scrum.org: digital transformation failure rates sit around 84%. Trillions spent globally. Scrum.org's own commentary: "Many large organizations lean heavily on scaling frameworks like SAFe or LeSS, but without adapting them to their unique needs, they struggle."

Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum, surveyed 200+ practitioners at an agile conference. He found 95% of agile transformations have waterfall leadership — meaning executives mandate the framework top-down while expecting bottom-up cultural change. He identifies this as the primary predictor of failure. The God-Mother mandating SAFe across the VPU while leadership behaviour stays the same? That's the pattern. Textbook.

A 2024 study of 600 software engineers (Dr. Junade Ali, J.L. Partners) found that projects where engineers felt psychologically safe to raise problems were 87% more likely to succeed. Our own staff data: 48% operate in fear. By this metric alone, the transformation is structurally set up to fail. Not because of SAFe. Because of the environment it's been imposed in.

Credera, the management consulting firm, reports agile transformation failure rates between 47% and 96%. Of those failures, 67% are terminal — the organisation goes bankrupt or gets acquired. Source: MIT Sloan Management Review.

We're not special. The data doesn't care about our good intentions.

🤦 7. The Transformation Hub Contradicts Itself. On the Same Page. You Can't Make This Up.

Staff have pointed out that internal Transformation Hub communications say: "Our Goal is not to teach Agile jargon or run IT frameworks."

The same communications then describe mandatory engagement that includes PI Planning onboarding, System Demos, and Inspect & Adapt. Those are SAFe-specific ceremonies. They exist in one framework only. That is an IT framework. Pick one.

The same internal materials say progress is tracked through "satisfaction surveys, readiness checks, and outcome-based metrics." The most comprehensive satisfaction data we have — 240+ staff submissions compiled in the ITS Crisis Report — shows 45% of staff have lost trust in leadership and 48% operate in fear. If satisfaction surveys are the metric, we already have the answer. Nobody asked for a second opinion.

The strategy documents describe an operating model that "rewards collaboration over control and learning over rigidity." Mandating one framework for all teams, requiring compulsory training, and flagging non-compliance in performance reviews — that's control. Dressed nicely. With a Gartner logo on the cover slide. But still control.

The stated goal is moving "from process to value." SAFe adds PI Planning, ART syncs, OVS/DVS mapping, Inspect & Adapt ceremonies, System Demos — more process layers than the waterfall approach it replaced. We moved from process to more process and put the word "value" in the slide title. That's not transformation. That's rebranding.

Every source above is public, verifiable, and linked. Read them. Form your own view. Then ask yourself: if the industry is walking away, the creators are saying it's broken, the data says it will probably fail, and our own staff say they're operating in fear — why are we expanding?