Readings Preparing for First Call

Revision as of 07:24, 16 August 2016 by Clarman (talk | contribs)


There's better-than-even odds that if you're reading this, you think you want to learn an approach to scale agile development.

Surprisingly, LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) is about not about scaling. It's about descaling and simplification of the limiting organizational structures so that many teams can work together on one product as simply as possible to towards the system optimizing goals of (1) highest value from global perspective and (2) agility to change cheaply based on learning.

But there's a change problem that you the reader are part of... If I had to boil down about 40 years of this work to one key idea, it is:

You must own, not rent, your change and organizational design.

And to own it, senior managers that have the authority to change the organizational design (eliminating groups, roles, sites, policies, etc.) have to do learning and change. LeSS is not about superficial techniques that don't impact the structure.

What learning? To start, the following pre-readings before our first call.


Who's Asking?

I'm Craig Larman, the creator (along with my friend and colleague Bas Vodde) of LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum), the author of three books on scaling lean thinking & agile development, and have focused for over a decade helping organizations succeed with scaling (or more precisely, descaling) with LeSS.


Why Learning Before the First Call?

Before I start any discussion with a senior management team that is interested in introducing LeSS and becoming a Learning Organization, these are the pre-readings I ask to study before we start. Why?

  • The Learning Organization and Lean Thinking approach means lots of learning and teaching by the senior management. And it's learning about the subjects covered in these first readings. If you don't like reading and learning for the next one to two years about these subjects, it's (let's say) 90% unlikely the change will succeed.
  • The content of the pre-readings is the context for the first call, because I'll be asking you questions that depend on knowing the pre-reading content.
  • It's the first step in owning rather than renting your change and organizational design.



Adoption Process

Briefly, I'll be recommending these steps if you want to go deeper:

1. A 2.5-day "Informed Consent" workshop with senior management and me, where I will help the group learn more by using Systems Thinking, with a focus on why, and answer all your questions about the implications and next steps in a LeSS adoption.

2. A period of reflection and more learning by the senior management and hands-on developers, rather than a rush to decision.

3. If "go", preparation for defining the first product group to change to LeSS.






I recommend you do not simply decide to adopt LeSS. Rather, I recommend that you take the time to carefully learn, apply sober reflection, and then make an informed consent decision to try a non-trivial experiment — or not. Therefore, I recommend that the starting process is this:

1. Carefully study these pre-readings.

2. Discuss them amongst yourselves.

3. Participate in a 2- or 3-day "Informed Consent" workshop with me, where I will help you learn more in depth, explore your system with you, and answer all your questions about the implications and next steps.

4. After I leave, you together take a careful and considered decision to consent to the next step, or decide to decline continuing.

5. If your group decides with careful informed consent to go forward with an experiment, then I will help you in the next major phases: (1) LeSS Preparation, and (2) LeSS Sprint1.


The Preparation Readings to Learn From


1. HBR: Six Myths of Product Development



2. The following chapters from our book Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools with LeSS:

Systems Thinking (or the equivalent Systems Thinking chapter at less.works)
Lean Thinking (or the equivalent Lean Thinking chapter at less.works)
Queuing Theory (or the equivalent Queuing Theory chapter at less.works)
False Dichotomies
Be Agile
Feature Teams (or the equivalent Feature Teams chapter at infoq.com)
Teams (or the equivalent Teams chapter at less.works)



3. The following chapters from the book The Fifth Discipline:

Give Me a Lever Long Enough
Does Your Organization Have a Learning Disability?
Prisoners of the System, or Prisoners of our own Thinking?
The Laws of the Fifth Discipline
Personal Mastery
Mental Models