Debugging Scaling Problems with LeSS - with Rowan Bunning

Note: Event date changed to Tuesday 19th May...

For this session we welcome Rowan Bunning (Scrum WithStyle (http://www.scrumwithstyle.com/)). Rowan is going to take us through using the Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) framework created by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde......

What is LeSS?

Whilst becoming proficient at single-team Agile is not easy, scaling to many teams and/or many sites adds many additional challenges.

Often these challenges include...

1. Water-Scrum-Fall
2. The 'contract game' and its misalignment with "customer collaboration over contract negotiation"
3. Release rigidity - inability to adjust scope and/or release timing in order to maximise value for money
4. Dependency hell
5. Skills bottlenecks
6. Lack of design and architectural alignment whilst avoiding 'ivory tower' architecture
7. Lack of cross-team learning
8. Organisational misalignment issues outside of delivery teams

Not all frameworks marketed as Agile are designed to address these problems. In this session, Rowan will introduce Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) as an organisational design framework and illustrate how it provides solutions to problems that commonly lead to friction, deliver challenges and difficulties realising the benefits of Agile within large programs and product development efforts.

Rowan will outline each organisational dysfunction / scaling challenge, and connect these with the elements of LeSS that avoid the dysfunction or greatly LeSSen the problem.

LeSS is more widely applicable than some other scaling frameworks having been designed from the ground-up to work for efforts from two teams all the way up to a few thousand people in the case of the LeSS Huge framework.

LeSS has been implemented in a variety of large-scale product development groups in a wide variety of domains including...
• telecom-equipment creators such as Ericsson & Nokia Networks
• investment and retail banks such as JP Morgan Chase and BAML
• trading-system creators such as ION Trading
• gaming site creators such as bwin
• offshore outsourcers such as Valtech India

About Rowan:

Rowan Bunning is an Australian pioneer of the world’s most widely used Agile framework: Scrum. Rowan has trained well over 2,500 people in Australia, New Zealand and south-east Asia making him one of the most experienced Agile trainers in the region.

Rowan began using Agile development practices (then known as eXtreme Programming) in 2001 and introduced Scrum throughout the organisation in 2003 to deliver projects at much lower risk as well as to radically increase the level of innovation for product development on an enterprise product that was exported to Europe and North America.

As an Agile Coach in the U.K., Ireland and Australia since 2008, Rowan has a track record of facilitating rapid Agile transformations including cultural change at organisations ranging from start-ups to global brand-name enterprises across the banking, real estate, media, food, building security, data security, collection and content management industries as well as the public sector. Rowan is a founding director of both the boutique Agile training provider and consultancy Scrum WithStyle as well as Scrum Australia - a not-for-profit organisation that organises the Regional Scrum Gatherings® in Australia.