At Agila Sverige 2018, I explored a question that had been occupying my thinking for some time: when organizations set out to scale agile practices beyond individual teams, should they adopt a framework wholesale or assemble a curated toolbox of practices that fit their specific situation? The answer, unsurprisingly, is not straightforward. But the question itself is worth sitting with, because how you frame the problem shapes what kind of solutions you consider.
Scaling frameworks like SAFe, LeSS, and Spotify's model have become enormously popular, and for understandable reasons. They offer structure, a shared vocabulary, and a sense of direction for organizations that feel overwhelmed by the complexity of coordinating dozens or hundreds of teams. But I have watched too many organizations adopt these frameworks mechanically — implementing the ceremonies, the roles, the artifacts — without ever engaging with the underlying principles. The result is a kind of agile theater: everything looks right on paper, but nothing has fundamentally changed in how people think or work.
The toolbox approach has its own appeal. Instead of committing to one framework, you study several, understand the problems each practice is designed to solve, and then select the ones that address your actual challenges. This requires more maturity, more self-awareness, and more willingness to experiment. It also requires people who understand the principles deeply enough to make good choices. That is a higher bar than simply following a recipe, and not every organization is ready for it.
What I have come to believe is that the right answer depends on where an organization is in its journey. For companies just beginning to scale, a framework can provide helpful guardrails — a starting point that prevents the worst mistakes and gives teams a common language. But the framework should be understood as a beginning, not an end. The goal is to internalize the principles, not to perfect the rituals. Over time, as understanding deepens, the organization should feel increasingly free to adapt, to drop what does not work, and to borrow from elsewhere.
The danger lies in both extremes. Rigid framework adoption without understanding leads to cargo cult agile. And a toolbox without sufficient depth of knowledge leads to chaos dressed up as flexibility. The organizations that navigate this well are the ones that stay curious, that keep asking why a particular practice exists, and that have the courage to change course when something is not serving them. Scaling agile is not a destination. It is an ongoing conversation about how to work well together at a level of complexity that no single model can fully capture.