Certified LeSS Practitioner: Principles to Practices

Overview

First, see http://less.works for a listing of courses, more course descriptions, and a complete introduction to LeSS.

In this 3-day highly-participative course, participants get a thorough introduction to LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum). And people are introduced to — and practice — Systems Thinking with Causal Loop Modeling. There will also be an in-depth clinic with Craig Larman, the co-creator of LeSS, based on his long experience with Large-Scale Scrum adoptions.

In addition to course material, each participant will also receive 3 books on LeSS:

• Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS
• Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Large, Multisite & Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum
• Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum=

Outline

Introduction

• Why LeSS?
• Systems Thinking, Organizational Design, and the Contract Game
• LeSS Organizational Design
• LeSS Principles
• LeSS Rules
• Two LeSS Frameworks

LeSS Structure

• Multiple Feature Teams on One Product
• ScrumMasters in Large-Scale Scrum
• Role of Managers
• Adoption: From Smallish to Huge
• Multisite

LeSS Product

• Definition of Done and its Impact on Structure
• Product Owner and the Five Relationships
• Product Backlog: Organizing and Prioritizing Bigger Backlogs
• Product Backlog Refinement with Many Teams
• Multisite

LeSS Sprint

• Sprint Planning with Many Teams
• Coordination and Integration: From Communities to Architecture
• Scaling the Sprint Review and Retrospective
• Multisite

In-Depth Special Topics: A Deep-Dive Q&A Clinic

Although there are some constants in a LeSS adoption, there are many variations, due to myriad contexts. And there are many special-topic questions that participants have, usually variations of “When scaling Scrum, how do we…?” These questions range from “contracts to career path.” Therefore, a full half-day to day of this course is dedicated to a structured Q&A session that works through a group-prioritized list of burning issues and questions. Craig Larman, drawing on his many years of experience of actual LeSS adoptions, will dialog and explore solutions with the group.

Certification

After course completion, all participants will be a Certified LeSS Practitioner and will get an account on less.works. Here they can find additional information about LeSS, share course information and stay in contact with the other course participants.

Pre-readings

Before the course, please read the following. There are some course exercises that depend on having done these readings, and knowing their content:

LeSS Principles: All the LeSS principles, starting from this root page, and reading the details within each sub-page for each principle:
LeSS Principles
Exceptions: For the very long descriptions of the principles of Systems Thinking, Queueing Theory, and Lean Thinking, you only need to read the "25%" of these sections, to get the general gist of the big ideas.

LeSS Rules: All the LeSS rules:
LeSS Rules

Maximum Participants

30

Environment - Room and Supplies

Read this: Course Environment - LeSS

Texts and Course Notes

There will be several PDFs of course notes, and supporting student learning aids, that will need to be printed and distributed to students

As mentioned, in addition to course material, each participant will also receive 3 books on LeSS:

• Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS
• Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Large, Multisite & Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum
• Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum=