Why LeSS?
If you invested $100 of stock in a company listed as a ‘Great Place to Work’ in 1998, by 2008 your investment was worth $266. Compare that to a benchmark of comparable companies that didn’t make the ‘Great Place to Work’ list, that $100 would have only been worth $180. That’s a 2.1x higher return on your investment. Source
Today – many large organisations are turning to agile to change mindsets, processes and relationships in order to become a great place to work. One of the popular frameworks in which to achieve this at scale is Large Scale Scrum (LeSS).
What is LeSS?
LeSS is a framework for scaling agile development to multiple teams. It builds on top of the Scrum principles such as empiricism, cross-functional, self-managing teams and provides a framework for applying that at scale. It provides simple structural rules and guidelines on how to adopt Scrum in large product development.
It’s the only full lifecycle Agile scaling framework that is truly Agile throughout the entire value stream flow. Large Scale Scrum is truly Scrum (at scale). We do not end up with lots of Scrum teams; we end up with lots of teams Scrum. It’s not limited to Software Development so the principles and values can be applied to “all aspects of product-centric-enterprise” (Scaling Lean and Agile Development, 2009) including marketing, sales and finance.
LeSS in practice works. It’s firmly aligned with the Agile values and lives by its motto, “LeSS is more.” Which is why we’re so passionate about LeSS. We truly believe it will help change the way people work and the world for the better. Read more about the whats and the whys here.
Who Created LeSS?
LeSS was created by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde following their experiences helping large organisations adopt scrum at scale. They formally released it to the world in 2008 and 2010 via their two books. Since then Craig and Bas have helped many organisations and people learn that “LeSS is more” via trainings, consultancy and conferences. Having been impressed by the books and courses – we invited Craig Larman to London to teach his course and to give an introduction to LeSS at an AWA meetup in February 2015.
Since 2005, we’ve worked with clients to apply the LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) framework for scaling Scrum, lean and agile development to big product groups. We share that experience and knowledge through LeSS so that you too can succeed when scaling.—Craig Larman & Bas Vodde
AWA & LeSS
This year we have held four meetups in London and New York – covering a range of LeSS topics, each hosted by LeSS co-founders, Bas and Craig. We have also hosted many, three-day Certified LeSS Practitioner Courses in London, New York, Prague, San Francisco and Toronto
How to Learn LeSS?
These events have been created to teach you the LeSS values, principles and practices, and have been very popular. Which is why we have agreed to host more Certified LeSS Practitioner courses.
In response to the increasing demand, the team at LeSS works have trained up more trainers to teach the LeSS principles and practices.
Recommended Resources
There are lots of resources out there. To start with there are the two LeSS books, which have been written by Craig and Bas:
The highly anticipated 3rd book is planned for release June 2016 – all course attendees receive access to the draft of this.
The less.works website lists a whole range of reading material and videos. This article offers a great intro to LeSS.
You can also watch both Craig and Bas at previous AWA events and earn SEU points:
- Craig Larman Q & A – Evening Session – November 2015
- Bas Vodde – Large Scale Scrum – LeSS – A fireside story – September 2015
- Craig Larman – Evening Session – Introduction to Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) – February 2015