Experience Reports of LeSS & LeSS Huge Adoptions: How to Start with an Agile Transformation

Talk by Sofia Pelzl
LeSS Conference Amsterdam 2026

How do you actually start an agile transformation in a large organization?

In this talk, Sofia Pelz shares practical lessons from three different LeSS adoption journeys across telecom, public utilities, and insurance. Drawing on years of hands-on experience as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, and organizational coach, she explores what it really takes to begin an agile transformation — and how to make it sustainable.

Rather than presenting theory alone, Sofia connects LeSS principles with real-world transformation work: defining the product, educating everyone, forming feature teams, creating one product backlog, and building the management support needed to make change stick.

Across the three cases, she shows how organizations moved from project thinking and fragmented priorities toward stronger product focus, better collaboration, faster learning, and improved transparency.

Topics covered in this talk

• How to start small and grow an adoption over time
• Why product definition is essential for organizational change
• The role of volunteering, management support, and education
• How feature teams and multi-team events improve collaboration
• Common challenges in agile transformations and how teams addressed them
• What helps LeSS and LeSS Huge adoptions succeed in practice

Sofia also reflects on the less visible side of change: resistance, leadership support, communities of practice, reward systems, and the importance of creating an environment where teams can truly collaborate and learn.

This session is especially relevant for leaders, coaches, Scrum Masters, and change agents who want a grounded, experience-based view on how to begin and grow an agile transformation with LeSS.

LeSS Conference Amsterdam 2026
https://less.works