Minor side note: My current employer has been pushing SAFe hard (training for everyone, etc.) recently. As a result (and I do mean "as a result") about 3/4ths of the senior technical people have resigned in the last three months. This is at a "Large, non-tech enterprise" (sort of; it's an engineery chunk of the federal government).
Now back to a personal opinion: Most "software engineering" "methodologies" are intended to appear productive without actually requiring productivity. Or, as I sometimes put it, "software engineering is about making people who are fundamentally not very good at writing code look as if they were producing code." Look at the number of managers, leads, coaches, trainers, and consultants required for every methodology and compare that with the number of such "overhead" positions in, say, open-source projects. (Note: I'm not trying to start a "which is better" discussion; open-source is just a convenient example since their development techniques are transparent, unlike everyone else's.)
Further, many medium- and large-scale initiatives in large, non-tech enterprises fail spectacularly, in spite of using the then-popular methodologies. I would go further and suggest that they all fail at some point, even if they eventually deliver a usable product.
The only solid generalization I can see is that good developers can develop good software with any (or no) methodology; poor developers cannot, and most formal methodologies are built around trying to get them to do so.
Now back to a personal opinion: Most "software engineering" "methodologies" are intended to appear productive without actually requiring productivity. Or, as I sometimes put it, "software engineering is about making people who are fundamentally not very good at writing code look as if they were producing code." Look at the number of managers, leads, coaches, trainers, and consultants required for every methodology and compare that with the number of such "overhead" positions in, say, open-source projects. (Note: I'm not trying to start a "which is better" discussion; open-source is just a convenient example since their development techniques are transparent, unlike everyone else's.)
Further, many medium- and large-scale initiatives in large, non-tech enterprises fail spectacularly, in spite of using the then-popular methodologies. I would go further and suggest that they all fail at some point, even if they eventually deliver a usable product.
The only solid generalization I can see is that good developers can develop good software with any (or no) methodology; poor developers cannot, and most formal methodologies are built around trying to get them to do so.