By Venkatesh Krishnamurthy.

Read the first part of this series about Large Scale Scrum

There are several frameworks, ideas and methods available for scaling Agile projects. Many are either too prescriptive detailing out practices making it too narrowly focused with no wiggle room. The prescriptive, highly defined process destroys the principles of empirical process control.

There are others which are purely principles based pushing the onus on users to worry about the practices.

The secret lies in balancing the principles and the practices. This is where Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) captures the sweet spot.

LeSS achieves the same balance as Scrum, for larger product groups. It adds a bit more concrete structure to Scrum, whose purpose is to maintain transparency and emphasize the inspect-adapt cycle so that groups can continuously improve their own ways of working. LeSS consciously leaves the space for users to create context dependent practices.

Find out more about LeSS training in Melbourne in February 2015. This is the first LeSS certification training in the ANZ region.

By Venkatesh Krishnamurthy

In 2015, we are going to introduce Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) to an Australian audience. We think there are many who will be interested to hear about what LeSS is all about. How can it benefit large scale Agile projects? What are the principles driving LeSS? How can I be LeSS certified?

My intention is to share knowledge about LeSS and at the same time, answer the above questions and beyond. In this series of articles, you will be able to gain an understanding of LeSS and LeSS huge frameworks.

Why LeSS?

Let me begin with "What is Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)? Essentially, LeSS is Scrum being applied to many teams working on a product development.

As we know, Scrum is one of the most popular methods in the software development. Its popularity is due to its simplicity and powerful empirical process control. However, while multiple teams working on a product development apply Scrum, they need some additional guidance for improved collaboration and coordination. This is where Large Scale Scrum sits.

Since LeSS is based on Scrum, the learning curve in adopting this framework is minimal. Personally, I have used LeSS on a large scale development with >100 people with no additional training on this framework.

LeSS Principles and Themes

LeSS is fundamentally based on Scrum, and in addition, it has principles/ideas based on Queuing Theory, Systems Thinking, Lean Thinking, Empirical process control.

I will delve a bit deeper into the backlog grooming and other practices in the upcoming articles.

Read the Part 2 of this series "LeSS: Scaling Sweet Spot"
Find out about the upcoming LeSS course in Melbourne