Perspectives on LeSS Conference: Scaling Scrum for Larger Teams
LeSS Conference begins!
As I stood in front of the registration table looking for my name tag, I couldn’t help but wonder what is in store for us in this conference.
In September, I set out with my colleagues, Barry and Hock Kay, to attend the Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) Conference in Munich.
We are all Scrum Masters, eager to learn more about the wider community’s take on agile projects that are growing larger.
Wait … So what is LeSS?
LeSS or Large Scale Scrum, is a lightweight (agile) framework for scaling Scrum to more than one team. It was extracted from the experiences of Bas Vodde and Craig Larman while scaling agile development in many different companies, products and industries over the last decade.
Why LeSS?
I’m currently one of the Scrum Masters working on the Business Grants Portal (BGP).
BGP is a government portal that brings grants from different agencies in one place, so that companies can search for and apply for the ones they need easily.
As the project scope expanded to include more public agencies over the years, our team has also expanded from just 1 to 4 scrum teams comprising over 40 people.
While Scrum is an effective way for individual teams to work, it has become increasingly important to consider LeSS as a framework for inter-team collaboration, to ensure the success of a large-scale project like BGP.
Now… back to the conference Experience!
As we got our name tags and coffee, we were ushered into a large hall, where round tables were set across the floor.
We first broke off into random teams of 5 to 7 people. This assigned team will follow us through the conference, with the purpose of providing a safe and collaborative space to share and reflect on our individual insights throughout the 2 days. Moreover, as there were many parallel events and workshops happening and different members may join different events, getting together allowed us to share and learn from one another and maximise our time at the conference.
Bas then made an opening to welcome everyone officially to the LeSS conference, and shared with us the high level itinerary for the next 2 days.
High Level Itinerary
Throughout the two days, we had a mix of talks and workshops by guest speakers, together with Open Space and team reflections.
For the second half of this article, I will be sharing some of the key insights gleaned from the talks, open space, and reflections.
Talks
Two talks stood out to me. One was by Craig Larman, and the other was by Wolfgang Steffens, a Certified LeSS Trainer at Gosei Ltd.
Chicken Breeding & the Core Design Principles by Craig Larman
Craig Larman shared an interesting insight on team culture and building a healthy community.
The first part of the talk was about chicken breeding.
Yes, you heard me correctly, chicken breeding. Craig shared about a social experiment, to get the most productive chickens (in terms of eggs laid).
Long story short, this experiment was done with 2 methods.
The first method was to get the most productive hen to breed the next generation of hens. Surprisingly, the experiment produced a strain of hyper-aggressive hens, as shown in the photograph below.
Out of an initial nine hens in the cage, six were murdered and the survivors had plucked each other in their incessant attacks. This happened because the most productive hen in each cage was the biggest bully, who achieved her productivity by suppressing the productivity of other hens.
Egg productivity plummeted, even though the best egg-layers had been selected each and every generation.
In the second experiment, Muir monitored the productivity of the cages and selected all of the hens from the best cages to breed the next generation of hens. The result of that experiment is shown in the second photograph.
All nine hens are alive and fully feathered. Egg productivity increased 160% in only a few generations- an almost unheard of response to artificial selection in animal breeding experiments.
Craig shared that this reveals a tremendous naiveté in the idea that creating a good society is merely a matter of selecting the “best” individuals.
A good society requires members working well together to create what cannot be produced alone, or at least to refrain from exploiting each other.
Relating back to LeSS, Craig mentions that this social experiment is similar to that of a LeSS project, with multiple teams working together to create a product.
A good LeSS project implementation requires team members to work well together, not just from an individual perspective.
Are Teams the main problem when adopting LeSS by WolfGang Steffens
This topic intrigued me as I thought to myself, is there even a main problem when adopting LeSS?
Turns out, as with most complex problems in life, it depends. As we learnt during this workshop, there are a multitude of factors that could reduce the efficiency of adopting LeSS, as can be seen from the diagram below.
The key is to slowly inch each section wider, moving from the current state to the ideal state that we imagine it to be.
During the conference, one of the key examples brought up was the collaboration between product and users.
As requirements tend to be a top-down approach (From Senior Level Management or Product Owners) instead of the actual users of the product, the teams can suggest having user testing studies (Intermediate State) to get insights on how the existing product is being used. In the future, it can be discussed with Senior Level Management or Product Owners for user insights to be taken into consideration before the product is being created (Ideal State).
I found this diagram to be especially helpful, as it categorizes the possible landscape of problems hindering LeSS adoption.
By defining the ideal state, we can start to see what are the changes needed to move forward.
Open Space
Open Space is a concept where people come together to explore particular questions or issues in smaller groups. There are general principles that we adhere to in Open Space, called the Four Rules and One Law:
The Four Rules state:
- Whoever comes are the right people.
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
- Whenever it starts is the right time.
- When it’s over, it’s over.
and The Law of Two Feet states that:
“If, during the course of the gathering, any person finds themselves in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use their feet and go to some more productive place.”
During the LeSS Conference, apart from talks by guest speakers, conference participants were also given the opportunity to present their thoughts or queries as well!
We had two whiteboards, where we denoted the timeslots and available areas for like-minded people to share or listen to topics that were of interest to them.
I really liked the way that it was planned, as it gave everyone the flexibility to move around and join topics.
One of the more memorable mini booths for me was about team/company culture when adopting LeSS.
Culture follows Structure by Peter Beck
Peter Beck is a founding member and Product Owner of a Scrum consultancy called DasScrumTeam AG.
In his open space booth, he shared with us fundamental concepts of culture, and how a company culture follows the structure that it has been given.
To illustrate it clearly, we played a game.
First, we formed a circle. The aim of the game was for everyone to swap positions with another person at least once within the circle. Once everyone has done it, the round will end.
In the first round, we had a rule, which was:
“Person A can only move towards person B when the person B has approved/nodded his head”.
Sounds easy, right?
However, as we were playing, we realised that because of the structure (asking for approval), it led to awkward behaviour (glances and waiting for approval) and generally a negative experience.
In the second round, however, we were allowed to make up our own rules when moving.
In an almost unanimous decision, we all decided to remove the need for approvals, and move as per we felt.
Surprisingly, this led to a more natural behaviour (moving across the circle when I want), and a positive experience of flow.
Peter went on to explain why we felt that way with the below diagram.
Essentially, what we played was a demonstration of what typically happens in corporations across the world.
A structure for the sake of structure stifles people’s progress and causes awkward behaviour and/or a negative experience.
This feeds back into the organisation’s culture, whereby everyone eventually gets used to the incessant need for approvals, but it is not what feels natural or most efficient.
However, in the second round, we focused on agile values (self-organizing), where people were able to interact and agree on how to improve on current processes. This led to a more positive experience, which in turn feeds back to creating a better culture.
I felt this game was a simple but powerful way to show how company structure could make it easier for people to interact and work with one another, which leads to the building of a healthier culture.
Team Reflections!
As we ended the conference, Barry, Hock Kay and I had a retrospective about the entire event.
These are some of the key takeaways we had:
1: There is no ideal implementation of LeSS.
Every project will have a different implementation of LeSS; the aim is to help improve the efficiency and develop large scale projects within the boundaries of Scrum.
A structure for the sake of structure stifles people’s progress and causes awkward behaviour and/or a negative experience.
2: There is no shortcut to success.
LeSS implementation is similar to iterative development; constantly improving on any blockers to its implementation, be it stakeholders, code base etc.
By defining the ideal state with the team, we can start to see what are the changes needed to move forward.
3: LeSS is about building a healthy team community, that will be able to deliver large projects successfully.
A good LeSS project implementation requires team members to work well together, not just from an individual perspective.
Closing
As Day 2 came to an end, and we bade farewell to our team members and other participants we met during the conference, I felt a wave of gratitude for the opportunity to attend this conference.
Throughout these 2 days, I have gained invaluable insight into how other companies around the world are implementing LeSS and the fundamental principles and values that helped teams stay the course. I have also learnt so much about the challenges they have faced and benefited 1st-hand from their shared experiences which we can in turn use to improve our own LeSS implementation.
Interested to find out more about LeSS or conference details? Check out https://less.works/
or look me up at https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenqzx/ !
Credits
Would like to give special thanks to the below folks for the opportunity to attend the conference, and helping out with this article.
A shout out to the BGP team for covering while I was on conference as well! :P
Credits to Yeong Sheng Tan and LeSS team for the photos and materials :)
