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  • The Rollout: A Novel about Leadership and Building a Lean-Agile Enterprise with SAFe®

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The Rollout: A Novel about Leadership and Building a Lean-Agile Enterprise with SAFe® Paperback – October 13, 2016

by Alex Yakyma (Author)
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Ethan, the newly appointed Transformation Team Leader at VeraComm Systems—a large product development organization—finds himself in the middle of violent action: the company has failed to cope with the increasing complexities of building competitive communications solutions and is rapidly losing market share. Caught between a traditional approach to program and portfolio management, and half-baked Agile methods at the team level, he struggles to help his company find a way out. Faced with a nearly impossible quest, he attends a conference desperately seeking a solution. There he finds a glimpse of hope—a method that applies the notion of Agility at a much higher scale. Inspired by this discovery, Ethan charges into action, launching the rollout of a new method at his company. But in no time, he runs into a brick wall which puts the rollout, and his own career, in grave danger. He comes to realize that the basic culture and his enterprise’s way of thinking are its biggest impediments to success. His quest leads him to understand that his own mindset is also part of the problem....The reader will be pulled into the exciting action unfolding as Ethan leads his organization towards enterprise agility. Fictional, but based on a broad range of real-life implementations, this novel by Alex Yakyma provides a war chest of techniques and tools to support large-scale rollouts of Lean and Agile methods.
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  1. Print length
    370 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    October 13, 2016
  4. Dimensions
    6 x 0.84 x 9 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0998162906
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0998162904
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Alex Yakyma
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 13, 2016
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 370 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0998162906
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0998162904
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.84 x 9 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #2,222,550 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:

About the author

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Alex Yakyma

Alex Yakyma

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Alex Yakyma is a consultant helping enterprises succeed with complex challenges. Throughout his career, he operated in multi-cultural, highly distributed environments. Alex has trained a large number of change agents whose key role is to help their organizations achieve higher effectiveness at pursuing business outcomes.

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
268 global ratings
A needed perspective on SAFe
5 out of 5 stars
A needed perspective on SAFe
SAFe is a substantive framework, designed to address the challenge of large-scale software and system development via application of Lean-Agile principles and practices. While the site is replete with guidance, SAFe doesn’t provide a perspective on itself. In this innovative novel, “the Rollout”, Alex Yakyma describes SAFe from an implementers perspective. Based on first person knowledge, I can say for certain that, while fictional, every vignette in the book represents a real world challenge we faced together in some enterprise. As a bonus, the “Ethan’s Diary” chapter summaries contain a plethora of practical tips, learnings and guidance that every practitioner and change agent can use in successfully implementing SAFe. I highly recommend this fun, informal read, to anyone considering or implementing SAFe.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • H. P. Portman
    5.0 out of 5 stars A give-away to convince senior management to lead the change towards business agility
    Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2016
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Alex Yakyma wrote a great book “The Rollout: A Novel about Leadership and Building a Lean-Agile Enterprise with SAFe”. It’s a business novel in the style of The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt or The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford.

    This book gives you a good understanding what it means to implement SAFe in an organization. It’s a fictional story but on the other hand it is based on a broad range of real-life implementations and the pitfalls you can make or have to overcome.

    In this novel we will follow Ethan, the newly appointed Transformation Team Leader at VeraComm System, a large product development organization. He is facing an organization who can’t deliver anymore what they are promising. They are rapidly losing market share due to increasing complexity of their communications solutions, they are over promising and underperforming. The organization has implemented half-baked agile methods at the team level but failed to scale up to the program and portfolio level.

    Ethan desperately searches for a solution to help his organization find a way out. At a conference he attends a session by Adi, a SAFe consultant explaining what it means to really build large systems. Ethan was very impressed by the presentation and thought that this approach could be the solution to the problems he was facing.

    In the story we see Nathan implementing SAFe. He wants to start as soon as possible with the implementation of a release train and here we see why, in SAFe, we say that management must be in the lead in the rollout. Reading the novel, we understand what it means if we think we can do without this involvement. It’s the company’s culture and the mindset which are the key to success or disaster.

    With help of Adi, Ethan is capable to implement the first release train. We see what it costs to prepare and run a Program Increment Planning event and the value of real alignment between the teams. We follow him with his struggle to make this a success and we see what problems he is facing with the first program iteration and what the success is of real integration and management commitment.

    To survive, the organization wants to copy the success of the first Agile Release Train, but they understand at a certain moment that this is not that simple. After a lot of brainstorming the concept of value streams and their ARTs becomes clear. Problem solved?

    Not really. The new trains are not delivering. They are overloaded. What is lacking is the mechanisms of epics, their owners and a portfolio Kanban system including WIP limits for each process step. The story ends when Ethan presents his own SAFe success story during a conference.

    Conclusion. A great book for senior management to understand the concept of SAFe. A little jigsaw piece, a give-away, in your road to convince senior management to lead the change towards enterprise agility.
    5 people found this helpful
    Helpful
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  • deepmoon
    4.0 out of 5 stars Gives a good overview of SAFe implemations work under ideal conditions.
    Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2025
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Give you a good overview how SAFe works. Everyone who takes the SAFe SPC course should read this. But don't forget this is like a hollywood movie script. It's how everything works in the idea world.
    Helpful
     Report
  • Tim Bertheau
    5.0 out of 5 stars This book has taken a highly technical topic and created a believable story that is as suspenseful as a novel.
    Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2016
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    This book has taken a highly technical topic and created a believable story that is as suspenseful as a novel.

    It is hard to describe what The Rollout is, on one had it is a great reference into the technical difficulties a transformation team has when applying new ways of thinking to a business enterprise. On the other hand The Rollout makes those difficulties human through the eyes of the protagonist Ethan who is at the focus of saving the company he works for, VeraComm Systems.

    What James Michener has done for history with books such as Chesapeake and Alaska Alex has done for a SAFe Framework implementation.

    We are introduced to Ethan’s personal and professional life with all the conflicts that must be balanced to keep both worlds in some degree of equilibrium. Alex has taken many of the anti-patterns most businesses experience when transforming and applied them into the sorry-lines of The Rollout. His cleaver way of threading all points of view into the plot is amazing, it is almost as if you are actually part of the team. And yes you become intimately aware of where the home tensions and support fit into the whole person, that of Ethan.

    I can only suggest you read this brilliant work to find out if Ethan is able to influence VeraComm Systems into transforming to a sustainable company built for the future or the failure that becomes the learning; as you will come to understand, failure for learning is a key component of continuous improvement.

    On a final note, I believe there are many great attributes of all the agile frameworks of which SAFe happens to be one. The benefit of Alex’s work will advantage those who are considering any of the agile approaches not just SAFe.

    - Tim Bertheau
    @TimBertheau
    4 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • C
    3.0 out of 5 stars Decent content, though not incredibly well written.
    Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2017
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    I'm a SAFe SPC4 and am currently leading an effort to implement some SAFe concepts at a medium sized enterprise. That said, the content in this book is decent in terms of good quality info presented. The issue is, the style of the writing is distractingly awkward. I've met Alex before and the guy is SMART; but his writing is just strange. It feels like an attempt to emulate The Phoenix Project, but the clumsiness of the writing shatters your suspension of disbelief virtually every page.

    The reason I'm coming down so hard is, the concept of books like these is supposed to be that the characters and narrative should make consumption of the content easier. The opposite ends up being the case, I'll take the SAFe reference guide any day.
    14 people found this helpful
    Helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic novel highlighting transformation
    Reviewed in India on April 30, 2021
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    One of the biggest obstacles in transformation is gaining leadership support and that of ability of leadership to trust teams to make decision. The novel has bought this aspect out in a very lucid way.
    Report
  • Marco
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good SAFe overview
    Reviewed in Italy on August 31, 2018
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    If you want to understand the path which an organization must follow in order to scale Agile methodology to program and portfolio management level this is a good starting point. Through a novel you can learn a basic understanding of SAFe.
    Report
  • Lhotea
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book of you want to learn about leading a SAFe Transformation
    Reviewed in France on September 24, 2019
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Written as a novel it will help understand the concepts and principles as well as the rational behind them.
    Ethan’s diary inspired maybe from Tom deMarco in the deadline helps summarize the ideas and the learnings
    Report
  • G
    3.0 out of 5 stars Just okay
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2019
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Tries to pick on the theme of business books written as a story. But this is clunky and signposts where it’s going considerably obviously. The middle section about the pi planning event is okay but the start and end was just poor. Think a poor a mans pheonix project.
    Report
  • Van H.
    5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful narrative on SAFe principles that was easy to follow and understand
    Reviewed in Canada on March 13, 2020
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    This book brought forward all the key principles and methods within the SAFe framework and told in an enthralling story manner. Not a dry textbook but an interesting story set against a relatable example from the view point of a company looking to improve overall. The story telling made it hard to put the book down all the while delivering on teaching the SAFe framework. I highly recommend this book.
    Report
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