Principles Overview

Large-Scale Scrum is Scrum—It is not “new and improved Scrum.” LeSS is about applying the principles, elements, and purpose of Scrum in a large-scale context. Multiple-team Scrum, not multiple Scrum teams.

Empirical process control—Inspection and adaptation of the product, processes, organizational design, and practices to craft a situational appropriate organization based on Scrum, rather than following a detailed formula. And empirical process control requires and creates transparency.

Transparency—Based on tangible ‘done’ items, short cycles, working together, common definitions, and driving out fear in the workplace.

More with less—(1) In empirical process control: more learning with less defined processes. (2) In lean thinking: more value with less waste and overhead. (3) In scaling, more ownership, purpose, and joy with less roles, artifacts, and special groups.

Whole-product focus—One Product Backlog, one Product Owner, one potentially shippable product increment, one Sprint—regardless if there are 3 or 33 teams. Customers want the product, not a part.

Customer-centric—Identify value and waste in the eyes of the paying customer. Reduce the cycle time from their perspective. Increase feedback loops with real customers. Everyone understands how their work today directly relates to paying customers.

Continuous improvement towards perfection—Create and deliver a product all the time, without defects, that utterly delights customers, improves the environment, and makes lives better. Do humble and radical improvement experiments each Sprint towards that.

Systems thinking—See, understand, and optimize the whole system (not parts), and explore system dynamics. Avoid the local and sub-optimizations of focusing on the ‘efficiency’ or ‘productivity’ of individuals and individual teams. Customers care about the overall concept-to-cash cycle time and flow, not individual steps.

Lean thinking—Create an organizational system whose foundation is managers-as-teachers who apply and teach systems thinking and lean thinking, manage to improve, and who practice Go See at gemba. Add the two pillars of respect for people and continuous improvement. All towards the goal of perfection.

Queuing theory—Understand how systems with queues behave in the R&D domain, and apply those insights to managing queue sizes, work-in-progress limits, multitasking, work packages, and variability.