After working on a large scale SAFe installation and observing the issues with the implementation, I came upon the understanding that for scaling agile, support for urgent last minute requirements is needed . I call it "Maneuverability" of Agile teams. And it means supporting just-in-time planning even right before the start of a n increment (such as SAFe PI) and even during a planning session (such as SAFe PI Planning) and even if it means shifting in/out of epics/user stories during an incremental delivery
Although frameworks like SAFe support uncommitted objectives or variability in a program increment, these objectives are still pre-defined and planned for although the outcomes are uncertain. Perhaps a certain capacity for variability or uncommitted objective needs to be added or planned in each PI to support urgent needs.
It helps to remember that frameworks such as Scaled Agile usually have very definite requisites on team size, train size and processes. Nonetheless one should be able to adapt it to one's needs. And seriously, even large corporations such as in the Aerospace or Telecom industries work with smaller suppliers to get services and these suppliers are often dedicated to multiple customers. So to avoid the framework becoming another "tyrannical framework" with processes to be followed to the letter, the framework needs to support it's own adaptability.
Hopefully in one of the future SAFe release (maybe SAFe 6), they will decide to include "maneuverability" or the ability of teams to maneuver some of the items they are working on to support the "urgent"
Although SAFe references "avoiding tyranny of the urgent", yet sometimes urgency is the nature of markets and business. If teams can swap out lower priority stories planned in the next incremental delivery and have frameworks that support ability for just in time planning for "urgent" user stories, then are they not being truly agile?
