LeSS with Gene and James: Why Agile Roles Are Being Eliminated? What Are Systemic Root Causes Of This?

Industry Announcements That Led To This Discussion. On January 19, both Bloomberg and Reuters, independently, came out with the news about one large American bank holding company that eliminated 1100 Tech Jobs, and by making this decision, directly impacted ‘agile delivery’ roles/agile jobs families.  (click the links above for details). Interestingly, a few years ago, … Read more

LeSS with Gene and James: Communicate in Code & Integrate Continuously

The following two LeSS guides for technical excellence are captured in LeSS book 1 and 2: Guide: Communicate in Code. This is the best way for developers to exchange information and understand each other’s work. Reading someone’s clean code and not having the need to be given additional interpretation of what the code means is … Read more

LeSS Talks: Internal [Unintentional] Distortions of LeSS

Download Materials In this discussion we spoke about some most common distortions of Large Scale Scrum (LeSS & LeSS Huge), seen within organizations, when LeSS terminology was applied, internally, without deep understanding of its meaning.  We also focused on systemic implications of such misuse and omissions. The following was discussed: Multiple Component (or even Feature/Product … Read more

LeSS with Gene and James: Navigating the LeSS Complete Picture

Synopsis: How to embrace and digest the entire body of knowledge that Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) offers? How to understand what is foundational, what is minimally required and what is optional? There is an image on less.works site that graphically illustrates LeSS Principles, Frameworks (Rules), Guides & Experiments. However, how the aforementioned relate to one … Read more

LeSS Talks: Agile Transformation And The Elephant In The Room, with Bjarte Bogsnes

Download Materials This session will address why any agile transformation will struggle without Beyond Budgeting. Agile was not intended and designed as an agile way of running an organization, whereas Beyond Budgeting was. Learn how an entire organization can be run in an agile way, applying the Beyond Budgeting principles. You will get unique insights … Read more

LeSS Talks: Should Design Teams Sprint Separately From Feature/Product Teams?

Materials Sometimes, we see traditional component teams, adopting Scrum dynamics and trying to sprint within narrow dimensions of their component specialty. They [teams] go through ‘motions’ of sprinting (attending Scrum events, creating Scrum artifacts, assigning Scrum roles), yet at the end of a sprint, they are not able to deliver a PSPI. Such teams tend … Read more

LeSS with Gene and James: LeSS Training Alone Is Not Enough

LeSS badge is a validation of training content authenticity and quality LeSS badge is not proof of attendee’s post-training capability LeSS training is not enough to ensure success with a LeSS adoption, even if training is authentic Self-study BEFORE and self-reflection AFTER LeSS training is a huge plus Initial LeSS adoption coaching is important

LeSS with Gene and James: Focusing on Fundamentals. Reducing “Second Market” Frameworks.

Summary: Why do we need more fancy frameworks? Why not re-focus on having small successes with good-n-old fundamentals? The history of Agile Manifesto (AM) and Scrum has 20+ years. Yet, the % of companies that are consistent with basic principles of AM that can demonstrate rudimentary success with Scrum is still very low. These are … Read more

12/21- LeSS Talks: Understanding Organizations as a complex adaptive system, with Dave Snowden

Download Chat Script Synopsis: Understanding the organization as a complex adaptive system offers many opportunities to organizations to increase the rate of innovation and remove excessive costs by understanding what can actually managed. This session will provide some of the background principles to managing complexity and will also look at pragmatic methods and tools that … Read more