Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn))

The job of managers is to build an environment in which teams continuously deliver and continuously improve.

Imbalanced and asynchronous dependencies—Customers want features and those tend to involve multiple components. This causes dependencies between the teams. These dependencies are (1) imbalanced, e.g. team Zombies have lots of work but team Draculas have little, and (2) asynchronous, e.g. team Mummies have work that depends on team Werewolfs who won

The manager-driven, “thou shalt do LeSS”-adoption causes resistance and sets up the organization for failure.

Prefer adopting LeSS in one product group1 really well over applying LeSS in many groups poorly.

Not all of the improvements are real improvements. Some are local optimizations—improvements that do not improve the whole system but only one perspective. Two common local optimizations are (1) functional local optimizations, and (2) unchallenged-assumption-based local optimizations.

(RULE: The Product Owner shouldn’t work alone on Product Backlog refinement; she is supported by the multiple Teams working directly with customers/users and other stakeholders.)

Truly scaled Scrum is Scrum scaled.

Structure the organization by using real teams as the basic organizational building block. Each team is (1) self-managing, (2) cross-functional, (3) co-located, and (4) long-lived.

true organizational flexibility comes from splitting work in meaningful customer-centric ways and giving that to suitable teams who make up for missing skills by using their learning skill.