Framework comparisons
Compare how different frameworks help teams solve problems, deliver software, and work at scale. See what to retain and which conditions around your teams need to change as delivery gets faster.
Problem solving
Are we solving the right problem?
Understand people’s needs, explore possible solutions, and test assumptions. This is about how to find a problem worth solving.
Finding a solution worth building
Compare with ZeroBlockers
Product development
How do we turn an idea into working software?
Organize how a team plans, builds, and improves its work. These frameworks differ in scope: some deliberately leave funding, decision rights, and wider organizational design for you to resolve.
Helping a team deliver
Compare with ZeroBlockers
Working at scale
How do many teams work together?
Many frameworks focus on the team level, but the organization still has to run. How do you coordinate many teams, and how do you make sure they are all working on the right problems?
Connecting work across the organization
Compare with ZeroBlockers
Handoffs
Who carries the work from idea to satisfied customer
Each change in who carries the work is a place where learning can get lost and work can wait. Most team-level frameworks leave strategy and funding to the organization. The scaling frameworks name an owner for it, and their differences with ZeroBlockers lie in how teams depend on each other, which each comparison covers.
| Strategy and funding | Discover the problem | Test solutions | Build | Release | Run and measure | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZeroBlockers | Product Team | Stream Team | ||||
| Design Thinking | Left to the organization | Design team | Left to the organization | |||
| Double Diamond | Left to the organization | Design team | Left to the organization | |||
| Lean UX | Left to the organization | Cross-functional team | The same team, though the book says much less about how | |||
| User-Centered Design | Left to the organization | Multidisciplinary design team | Left to the organization | |||
| Scrum | Left to the organization | Scrum Team on paper, often designed up front in practice | Scrum Team | Scrum Team on paper, often a release board and operations in practice | ||
| Kanban | Your existing services and roles | |||||
| Extreme Programming (XP) | Left to the organization | On-site Customer sets priorities, with no research practice | Whole team | Left to the organization | ||
| Waterfall | Sponsor and PMO | Analysts and designers | Developers | Test and release | Operations | |
| SAFe | Lean Portfolio Management | Product Management | Agile Release Train teams | Product Management and Business Owners time each release | Business Owners score the value delivered each PI | |
| LeSS / LeSS Huge | Product Owner | Teams clarify with users, and the Product Owner decides | Feature teams | |||
| Nexus | Product Owner | Scrum Team on paper, often designed up front in practice | Scrum Teams, integrating every Sprint | Scrum Teams on paper, often approvals outside the Nexus in practice | ||
| Scrum@Scale | Executive MetaScrum | Scrum Team on paper, often designed up front in practice | Scrum Teams | Own path to production on paper, often a shared release process in practice | ||
| Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) | Chosen by each group | Delivery team | The team, or separate release groups, depending on the options chosen | Measured in production only in the exploratory lifecycle | ||
| Spotify Model | Left to the organization | Squad | ||||
Where ZeroBlockers fits
Connect the practices. Make empowerment work.
A team cannot own an outcome if someone else controls its solutions, funding, releases and access to expertise. Faster teams reach those constraints sooner.
ZeroBlockers connects process, structure, governance, funding, alignment, and scaling. Implement progressively, but fulfill all the conditions: isolated changes cannot deliver the full benefit. The aim is faster learning and better outcomes—not just more software.
Explore the six changes