Scaling Agile Part 3: An Introduction to Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)

Large-scale Scrum (LeSS) is a product development framework that extends Scrum with scaling rules and guidelines without losing the original purposes of Scrum. According to Less – “There are no such things as best practices. There are only practices that are good within a certain context”. LeSS provides two different large-scale Scrum frameworks:

LeSS?for 2 – 8 teams (of eight people each)

LeSS Huge?for 8+ teams (up to a few thousand people on one product).

One-Team Scrum

LeSS is a scaled-up version of one-team Scrum. LeSS enables a team to perform based on the guidelines to work under certain conditions. The main features of a one-team Scrum are mentioned below:

• A single Product Backlog for all the teams
• One Definition of Done for all teams
• One potentially shippable product increment at the end of each Sprint
• One Product Owner for 2-8 teams?
• A Scrum Master does not focus on just one team but on the overall organizational system. One Scrum Master can serve 1-3 teams
• There is one product-level Sprint, not a different Sprint for each Team. Each Team starts and ends the Sprint at the same time.
• One Product Sprint Review?
• Multi-Team Sprint Planning: Sprint Planning consists of two parts:?

Sprint Planning 1 is common for all teams and includes people from each team.

Sprint Planning 2 is usually done separately and parallelly for each team.

• Overall Product Backlog Refinement (PBR): Overall PBR meeting includes one Product Owner and people from all the teams
• Multi-Team PBR - Product Backlog Refinement (PBR) is done, where two or more teams are in the same room together
• An Overall Retrospective is held after the Team Retrospectives to discuss cross-team and system-wide issues
• Exchange members in Daily Scrum Meetings

The 10 LeSS Principles

Although the Less framework is defined by the LeSS rules, the rules are basic and fail to provide directions as to how to implement LeSS in specific circumstances. The ten LeSS Principles give the basis of implementing LeSS:

1. Large-Scale Scrum- It is Scrum scaled on all the levels. Scaled Scrum is Scrum scaled.
2. Empirical process control- In Scrum, decisions are made based on observation and experiments rather than on detailed upfront plannings. Empirical process control relies on the three main ideas: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
3. Transparency- With transparency, adaptive control and improvement is feasible. Transparency is greatly linked to the Definition of Done.
4. More with LeSS- According to the official website of LeSS:

More roles lead to less responsible teams

More installed processes lead to less ownership in the teams and no continuous improvement

More artifacts lead to less customer-centric teams

1. Whole-product focus- Always keep a whole product focus, there is no value in separate parts or half-working parts. This principle recommends the implementation of System Thinking.
2. Customer-centric- This principle suggests a focus on feature teams that are aligned with creating end-to-end customer-centric features.
3. Continuous improvement towards perfection – It is not only a LeSS Principle but also one of the two pillars of Lean Thinking. This principle is based on multiple ideas and practices:

·??????Go See

·??????Kaizen

·??????Value and waste

·??????Perfection challenge

·??????Work toward flow

·??????Respect for people?

1. Systems Thinking - Explore system dynamics. See, understand, and optimize the whole system (not only parts).
2. Lean Thinking - Removing waste, respect for people, and continuous improvement.
3. Queuing Theory – Limit Work In Progress queue.

Certification of LeSS

There are multiple courses available for learning more about LeSS, provided by Certified LeSS trainers:

·??????Certified LeSS Practitioner: Principles to Practices and online variant provisional Certified LeSS Practitioner

·??????Certified LeSS for Executives: Principles, Organization, and Change

·??????Certified LeSS Basics: Short one-day Teaser to LeSS

·??????LeSS & Learn: Deepening Knowledge and Sharing Experiences

The LeSS Practitioner course requires basic Scrum knowledge. It is recommended to refer Scrum Primer or Scrum Guide and to join a Scrum course (from either Scrum Alliance or Scrum.org).

LeSS is a good starting point when you already have Scrum in place and are just beginning to scale up with more teams. For more information, you can read the "Large-Scale Scrum" book by Bas Vodde and Craig Larman. It is a guidebook on how to be Agile at scale with LeSS. In this article, my motive is to give an overview of LeSS and mention its significant features.

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