(Bas Vodde and Craig Larman)

More with LeSS: Simplifying Organizations with 7 Design Principles

Why adopt agile or LeSS? Unfortunately, many organizations aim to increase individual or team productivity, activity, outputs, velocity, or resource utilization without realizing this usually leads to lower overall value delivery, longer cycle times for customer features, and less adaptiveness. LeSS does not focus on local optimizations such as increasing individual productivity, but on optimizing an organization for maximizing customer value delivery and organizational agility (adaptiveness)—the ease, speed with which an organization of people can change direction based on learning.

That’s not my job!

Digital tools considered harmful: Jira

At the time of this writing, Jira is probably the most widely used digital tool in Scrum and LeSS adoptions. Unfortunately, using Jira commonly leads to some predictable dysfunctions. Some of these are:

• Scrum confusion and tool-owned processes
• Micro-management due to integration of Product and Sprint Backlog
• No shared team responsibility due to poor Sprint Backlog

Digital tools considered harmful: Sprint Backlog

It is unfortunately common to use a digital Sprint Backlog. I explicitly say ‘unfortunately’ because of the negative impact a digital Sprint Backlog tends to have on team dynamics and collaboration. Using a digital tool for a Product Backlog might also be common but is less harmful. Digital Sprint Backlogs should be avoided!

I’ve observed four causes of digital Sprint Backlog,

1. The team is not co-located.
2. Management mandates a tool for Sprint Backlog.
3. The team uses a computer during Sprint Planning.
4. The Scrum Master adds tasks to the Sprint Backlog.

Each cause is a reflection of a team or an organizational dysfunction.

Co-location still matters!

It is 2019 christmas. Will you skip the traditional family visit in favor of remote communication technology?