LeSS Newsletter - March 2025
23-03-2025Hi everyone 👋
In this edition, I’m excited to share a few key highlights with you!
We’re thrilled to announce the 10th LeSS Conference in Amsterdam in October. You’ll also hear from Bas Vodde on Requirement Areas, dive into the origins of LeSS with our brand-new CafeTalk video, and explore the hands-on LeSS City Guide Simulation created by Robert Briese.
And finally, we’re proud to share our new partnership with The Agile Network — your go-to source for a broader expert insights and agile learning.
Enjoy the read and see you in Amsterdam! 🇳🇱
— Bastiaan van Hamersveld
CEO at less.works
LeSS 2025 Conference in Amsterdam
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🎉 Celebrating the 10th LeSS Conference – Join Us in Amsterdam!
This October 9–10, the LeSS Conference lands in Amsterdam — and it promises to be more than just another event. It’s a unique opportunity to dive into the forefront of large-scale product development and organizational design.
Expect a transformative experience packed with inspiration on innovation, collaboration, technical excellence, and simplification. Whether you're looking to enhance team multi-skilling, reshape your organizational structure, seeking business resilience or figure out how to bring your CEO on board — this is the place to be.
💡 What makes it special?
- Real stories from companies sharing their LeSS journey — not theory, but practice.
- Have deep conversations with peers, experts, and C-level leaders.
- A team-based conference experience — just like you’re in a LeSS adoption!
The program is shaping up fast. The submission team is reviewing a large number of great proposals, and the final lineup will be announced in the second half of April.
Check out all of LeSS2025 now ➔
A word from Bas Vodde - Requirement Areas
In the last months, I’ve had many conversations in the LeSS community as well as in the product I work for, about Requirement Areas. From those discussions, I’ve discovered new ways of explaining them. Here, I’d like to share some of these.
What are Requirement Areas?
Requirement Areas is a grouping of items on the product roadmap used to create a view on the Product Backlog. This view helps us structure the teams accordingly.
Then what is the product roadmap? A product roadmap is a high-level view of the Product Backlog. In the LeSS books, Craig and I talk about items in the backlog that can have ancestors. Nowadays, I refer to items that have ancestors as “roadmap items”. Together they form a high-level view of the Product Backlog, which is usually referred to as the Product Roadmap. Requirement Areas is a grouping or categorizing items on the product roadmap that we use for structuring the work.
Why Requirement Areas?
The original reason for starting this grouping, which began about 20 years ago with the first LeSS Huge adoption, was to support the Product Owner in keeping an overview of the development and prioritization. By having a grouping, we can create a view of the Product Backlog according to this categorization and structure the teams and PO around this. This enables us to scale from roughly 8 teams to any size product development...
continue reading on less.works →
New Video: CafeTalk 1: Discover the origins of LeSS
A new series has emerged, CafeTalks. The first one is "Discover the origins of LeSS - A Journey of Learning and Innovation", where Bas and Bastiaan talk about how LeSS came about.
Learn how a shared vision and years of collaboration led to the creation of LeSS – and how it continues to evolve today.
LeSS Simulation - Create A City Guide
LeSS enthousiast Robert Briese created The LeSS City Guide Simulation. A workshop/simulation which provides an engaging, practical way for participants to understand the challenges and dynamics of multi-team Scrum, focusing on collaboration, handling dependencies, and continuous improvement.
This simulation is an evolution of the Nexus Zoo exercise, but with a practical twist: participants collaborate to create a city guide for the location where the training is taking place. What makes this simulation particularly valuable is how it incorporates authentic LeSS events like the Self-Design Team Workshop and Multi-Team Refinement, providing participants with a realistic taste of LeSS dynamics.
We've found this activity especially powerful when introduced before explaining the formal LeSS events. Why? Because experiencing the challenges firsthand creates those "aha!" moments when participants later learn how LeSS addresses these exact pain points.
Check out the step-by-step guide prepared by Robert →
The Agile Network - partnership
We have partnered with a new kid on the block The Agile Network, which is the #1 resource for Agile Professionals across the globe. Access cutting edge research, livestreams and more. with industry experts.
It is a great concept with monthly micro conferences, you can "ask the experts" questions and many informational videos. Obviously, LeSS is present on this platform as well.
If you like to try it out, use the voucher LESSCOMPCMC33 for a 33% discount (valid unil 3/31/2025)
