Descaling With LeSS
January 21, 2020
Surprising to some, LeSS is not actually for scaling, it is for descaling. That’s the implication of the name: to increase global adaptiveness by simplifying the organization.
LeSS is not about ‘enabling’ an existing big and clumsy organization to “do agile” by painting agile labels on top. It is about removing the organizational complexity that prevents natural agility.
In one way, LeSS is simple because there’s only a small set of elements whose purpose is transparency and empirical control. It’s ‘hard’ because transparency reveals the weakness, and empiricism requires learning and change rather than following a recipe.
You can’t “buy and install” LeSS. Instead, it will require creating a learning organization that owns its insights rather than rents them from some complete process cookbook. And from that, a group that wants to descale itself for more adaptiveness with less complexity.
Meet our panelists
On demand recording
Craig Larman
Craig Larman is the co-creator (with Bas Vodde) of LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum), and since 2005 has worked with clients to apply the LeSS framework to descale development in big product groups, from the BMW autonomous driving platform to Xerox digital presses.
Craig has been named one of the top 20 Agile influencers of all time and is the author of several books on scaling lean & agile development with LeSS, including:
- Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS
- Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking & Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum
- Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Successful Large, Multisite & Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum
- Agile & Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide
Mike Watson, VP Engineering at Synerzip
Mike Watson, VP Engineering at Synerzip, is a veteran engineering leader with over 15 years of experience leading software teams. Mike’s passion is in helping software product development organizations transition into strong Agile practices and cultures within. He has experience working with large and medium public companies (such as Motorola and Tangoe), as well as mid-to-late stage startups (such as 4thpass, Solbright and Quintessent). Mike has been fortunate to work with a few of the leading minds in modern agile process development.
Mike’s technical specialties include Kanban/Scrum, highly scalable enterprise software, SaS/Cloud compliance, Application Security, System Integration and Mobile Commerce.
