Welcome to the

LARGE-SCALE Scrum simulation with lego

LeSS = Large-Scale Scrum

more with less!

h"p://less.works/

What am I supposed to learn? 1.  Complexity thinking, system, customer-focus and lean

thinking applied to organizational design

2.  Role of the top management and managers in LeSS adoption

3.  Local vs. global optimizations 4.  “IKEA affect” and difference between owning vs. renting

systems

5.  Some ideas how to de-scale (simplify) organizations and why

6.  Scaling of agility is about doing more with less (not more with more)

More with less Less management Less focus on processes Less standardization Less hierarchies Less complexity Less inner-ward focus

More empowered teams More learning More global optimization More transparency More thinking More customer focus

I’ve done this before… It kinda works.

… And it also seems chaotic, messy and disorganized.

In fact it should be this way.

LeSS is Customer-Focused and product-oriented

The perfection vision (something that is unreachable but guiding all decisions, the “true north”) of a LeSS-like organization: Create and deliver a product almost all the time, at almost no cost, with no defects, that d e l i g h t s c u s t o m e r s , i m p r o v e s t h e environment, and makes lives better. Do endless humble and radical improvement experiments toward that goal.

LeSS is about constant learning and creating learning organizations

So what can we learn about our customers?

1.  Our potential customers are interested in traveling among the capitals of Europe.

2.  They are willing to pay for bus rides among the cities.

3.  They are attracted by sightseeing sites.

Market Demands Amsterdam <-> Rome: 2M Amsterdam <-> Berlin: 3M Amsterdam <-> Barcelona: 2M Amsterdam <-> Paris: 5M Amsterdam <-> London: 3M Rome <-> Berlin: 8M Rome <-> Barcelona: 12M Rome <-> Paris: 10M Paris <-> London: 20M Paris <-> Kiev: 8M Kiev <-> Berlin: 15M Kiev <-> Barcelona: 25M For every sightseeing on the tour +1M

Price of materials

LEGO bus set: 10M LEGO standard set: 2M Flipchart paper sheet: 1M Tape: 1M / meter

Engineering constraints Each city needs to be recognizable Distances between the cities should be in relative scale Buildings and buses should be made from LEGO For transportation to function there should be roads Other stuff can be done on paper

What is our product? 1.  How many products are we building?

2.  How many Product Backlogs will we need?

3.  How many Product Owners do we need?

What is your product?

What is your product? What is your product?

What is your product? What is your product? your product?

What is your product?

Q: How long does it take to add an edit field to your product? A: it depends how badly f**cked your company is.

LOCAL optimization

tRaP

WHOLE PRODUCT FOCUS

LeSS Principle:

What is our product? 1.  How many products are we building?

=> one

2.  How many Product Backlogs will we need? => one

3.  How many Product Owners do we need?

=> one, and exceptions are known …

The “Less Framework” 3-7 teams

LeSS Principle: LeSS is Scrum Product Owner (for overall product) Single Product Backlog (for overall product) Single Sprint (for all teams) Single Product Increment (from all teams)

The “Less Huge Framework” 8-108 teams

Initial Investments

60 M for the product

The goal of the simulation

Is to build a profitable and sustainable business.

And also enjoy it!

LeSS Principle: LEAN THINKING eliminate waste!

What are the top activities managers are kept busy with in traditional organizations?

1.  Management of resources

2. Management of dependencies

3. Management of managers

Hiring managers

We need 10 people with good management experience (5+ years, PMP is a plus).

Why one has to manage “resources”?

WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?

Why one has to manage “dependencies”?

WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?

free your managers! 1.  Teams are the minimal building blocks

of an organization No external resource mgmt needed.

2.  Teams are cross-functional with minimal outbound dependencies who learn to coordinate with others when needed No external dependency mgmt needed.

Culture Follows Structure

Craig Larman’s Laws of Org Change

“Your Structure is Your Strategy”

less.works/case-studies/ericson.html

“Culture Follows Structure”

16 Shades of Self-management

Setting overall direction

Designing teams and its org context

Monitoring and managing work process

and progress

Executing team task

“Leading Teams” book by Richard Hackman

Most Scrum teams

Some LeSS adoptions

Is there life of Mars? Pre-agile

Assign yourself a Primary Skill “birthday randomizer”

1-10: Drawing ‘D’ 11-20: Construction ‘C’ 21-31: Transportation ‘T’

Team self design workshop 1.  6 people per team is ideal

2.  Team members like each other to the extend that they can work together for about two hours

3.  Each team has all necessary skills (‘D’, ‘C’ and ‘T’)

Who assigns

scrum masters to teams?

LeSS and Lean thinking What are the top activities managers are kept busy with in LeSS organizations?

1.  Management of resources

2. Management of dependencies

3. Management of managers

What do you do with free managers?

Fire? RE-Hire? Admire?

Re-hire project managers

1.  As Area Product Owners (good skillset)

2.  As general managers (yes, we need them)

3.  As team members (now go and do good!)

4.  As ScrumMasters (nah…)

(1) Getting Ready

1.  Product Owner Team (PO and APOs) get together to build an overall Product Backlog (write on A4 sheets)

2.  Team representatives go study the API (LEGO and other stuff)

3.  Meanwhile each team picks a city and brainstorms sightseeing (sketch them on paper)

(2) Getting Ready 1.  Product Owner pitches the vision to

everyone

2.  Area Product Owners select teams based on their relatedness to cities (2-5 teams per an area)

(3) Getting Ready 1.  Each Area Product Owner and her teams

select a war space (enough wall and floor space)

2.  They are getting ready to run their Initial

Product Backlog Refinement session (in parallel to the others)

3.  They go find the real users

(4) Getting Ready Initial product backlog refinement

1.  Each APO explains the vision of the city to her teams

2.  Teams brainstorm ideas of PBIs on post-its with real users

3.  Team do a two-level prioritization: effort (S, M, L) vs. value (Low, Mid, High)

4.  They prioritize their Area Product Backlog: smallest and highest-value items have higher priority (we’re optimizing for value delivery)

Let’s get to work!

LEARN MORE!

•  Official LeSS website: www.less.works

•  My attempt developing LeSS awareness on the Russian-speaking market www.krivitsky.com/large-scale-scrum