Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)

Large-scale Scrum (LeSS) offers another approach to apply Scrum principles beyond a single team, specifically when multiple teams collaborate on the development of a single product.

LeSS aims to scale Scrum by extending its core elements (such as sprints, retrospectives, definition of "done") while minimizing additional complexity in roles, artifacts and processes.

It emphasizes organizational design changes to support effective collaboration across multiple teams, rather than simply adding layers of management.

The goal is to apply the familiar Scrum framework in a broader context, maintaining transparency, inspection and adaptation across all participating teams working from a shared understanding of the product.

One Backlog, One PO, Multiple Teams

A defining feature of LeSS is its structure centered on a single Backlog for the entire product, managed by a single Product Owner.

This Product Owner is responsible for the product overview and prioritizing the backlog to maximize value.

Several cross-functional, self-managed feature teams (typically up to eight in basic LeSS) extract work from this shared backlog.

All teams operate within the same synchronized sprint cycle, producing a potentially deliverable integrated product increment at the end of each sprint.

This structure ensures alignment and a holistic focus on the product, rather than on individual team deliverables.

LeSS and LeSS Huge Principles and Structure

LeSS is based on the core principles and values of Scrum, complemented by LeSS-specific principles such as Lean thinking, systems thinking, empirical process control and queuing theory.

It emphasizes global product focus, customer focus and continuous improvement towards perfection.

LeSS offers two frameworks:

• LeSS: Designed for between 2 and 8 teams. It retains most of the standard Scrum events, adding only sprint planning part 1 (overall planning) and a general retrospective, along with coordination mechanisms.
• LeSS Huge: for products involving more than eight teams (up to thousands of people). It introduces additional requirements areas, area product owners and coordination events, while striving to maintain the basic LeSS principles.

Both frameworks are based on experiments, guidelines and principles, rather than rigid rules.

Focus on Simplicity and Organizational Design

LeSS actively promotes simplicity, often summarized as "More with LeSS."

It consciously avoids adding many new roles, processes, or artifacts beyond those found in single-team Scrum.

Rather than creating complex coordination layers, LeSS focuses on simplifying organizational design to enable effective communication and collaboration directly between teams.

It challenges traditional hierarchical structures and promotes feature teams that can deliver end-to-end customer value.

This focus on reducing organizational complexity, rather than simply scaling processes, is a key differentiator compared to potentially more prescriptive scaled frameworks.

Summary

Large-scale Scrum (LeSS) is another approach to scaling Scrum. It seeks to scale its core elements while minimizing additional complexity in roles and processes.

A defining characteristic of LeSS is having a single Product Backlog and a single Product Owner. Multiple teams extract work from this shared backlog.

LeSS promotes simplicity, summarized as "More with LeSS". It focuses on simplifying organizational design to enable direct collaboration between teams.