LeSS is Scrum

Large-Scale Scrum(LeSS) is not improved or customized Scrum. LeSS is Scrum. The values, principles and practices associated with the empirical process control which is applied to one team Scrum are used for scaling or should we say de-scaling purposes.

If you know Scrum well, then LeSS would be a cake-walk from "understanding" perspective. However, implementation takes a bit of experience. 

One of the fundamental tenets of LeSS is to stop thinking about "Scaling" work rather start focussing on "descaling" the complexity associated with the organization. 

Descaling complexity in an organisation involves removal of wastes, identification of bottlenecks, creating a learning culture, reduction of queues and removing the hierarchies associated with Taylorism. 

It is not sufficient to know how to do daily Scrum or Sprint retrospectives; it is all about getting deeper insights into Systems Thinking, Queuing theory and Lean Thinking. As one can see in the picture below, the ten principles lay the sound basis to descaling the complexity in the organization.

Need for TQC with Toyota Production System (TPS)

Toyota has become a synonym for quality, and one would find "Lean" related activities borrowed from the TPS all over the place. 

However, one needs to be cautious while adopting TPS just because you want to improve the quality. 

One of the key TPS tools to enhance the quality is "Stop and Fix." As soon as any worker sees a defect, one would stop the line, get everyone involved, fix it before the root-cause analysis. Of course, this is a no-brainer to support how TPS could help to improve the quality.

Here is the primary challenge, for a worker to "see the defect," he/she needs to be trained to identify all sorts of defects. However, Toyota also has admitted that not all of their workers have the ability to catch defects and so, they have implemented TQC in place.

IT organizations trying to adopt the TPS ideas to improve quality should ensure that they have some system in place enabling the employees to identify the defects, without which TPS will be another toolkit. 

Toyota never had plans to create TPS

Toyota Production Systems (TPS) is something that is referred across IT organizations to prove that they are doing something valuable. Nowadays, If you say, you know TPS that means something, isn't it?

Do you know that TPS has never been a planned goal of Toyota? It was an accidental discovery of various ideas as seen by an outsider.

Taiichi Ohno is the most famous name associated with TPS. However, I feel it would be an injustice to TPS if we leave out rest of the employees who worked with him in making it a reality, for eg: Kikuo Suzumura.

A bunch of ideas that took birth in different parts of Toyota, whether it is the pull system or the kanban, all made a difference to the production line and made Toyota famous. This, in turn, attracted many outsiders to collate these ideas to call it TPS. 

You might question, how did they come up with these ideas ?. These thoughts came up mostly because of Toyota's culture of passion for continuous improvement and respect for people. 

Every organization can create their version of TPS provided they have the same underlying forces as Toyota did. 

Which framework is better LeSS or SAFe ?

Pretty much in every meet up I do, or in the LeSS training, one of the audience will have this question 

which framework is good or better?

Even though I had answered such questions in the past, now I feel that

it is totally a wrong question to ask. 

You might want to know, what is the problem with the question?

My answer would be, before asking the above question "good or better framework," one needs to ask, what is needed for our organization to maintain agility while delivering the highest value to our customers. Once you get some answers, then work backswords to identify a framework that fulfill the needs. 

I have googled around and read several comparisons. All of them are comparing the features. For example, one framework is based on Scrum, but the other on XP. One talks about managers and the other as optional. Do you think, reading such tabular comparison helps you to answer your question about agility and delivering value to the customers? I believe, it won't. 

I had shared in my previous articles that, no matter which framework you adopt, it is guaranteed that you will have some outcome. The question is, does this outcome help your organization with agility and delivering value to the customers. Until and unless you practically implement the framework as per the book, one will never know if it works for them or not.

Based on my experience and empirical observation, it is very rare to see large organisations following the rules of the frameworks. As soon as they hit a hurdle with implementation, instead of trying to fix the culture or leadership, they tweak the rules of the framework to suit their context, thus reducing the effectiveness of the framework.

Tell me how many companies in the world are following Scrum by the book ? when I posed this question in my meet up yesterday,

the answer was unanimous: 0%

No matter what how many hours you spend n comparing the frameworks, you would still end up choosing that confirms your biases. You will only look at things that confirm your thinking. That's why I suggest you to stop asking the question which is better but asks

What should I do keep agility and deliver value to the customers ?. 

But don't get me wrong. Some framework is needed to begin the journey, especially for companies at SHU level. Companies at HA or RI level would be comfortable in inventing on their own. But even for SHU level companies, their questions should be focussed towards what is our end goal? How can we be agile? How can we satisfy the customers? 

Birth of LeSS

Many people ask me, how long have you been practicing Large-Scale Scrum(LeSS)? I invariably end up telling this story. 

LeSS framework is not something that is conceived overnight. The experiments that lead to the birth of LeSS started back in 2004-2005. I used to work with Valtech India, and we used to apply mostly iterative and incremental development practices.

I distinctly remember the news about the arrival of Craig Larman, the Chief Scientist of Valtech to our newly built office and coach us. We had moved into this new building of Valtech which had the traditional cubicle structure with distinct separation of cabins for the managers. 

One of the earliest experiments that were initiated was to change the physical structure from cubicles to open space with teams sitting together. Also, managers were encouraged to sit with the teams to participate in process improvement (Gemba Kaizen).

To bring visibility, transparency and improve technical excellence we had setup the red-green screen, a centralized continuous integration server using Cruise control. I had captured some of the experiments and published as an article back in 2006. You can check it out here.

An open space session gathering ideas to improve agility was conducted with more than 200 people, and it is as fresh in my mind as though it happened last week. Other experiments to encourage learning and education included: setting up a library, book reading clubs, the introduction of Causal loop modeling as part of the retrospective.

Nearly 600 experiments were conducted as Craig truly follows the empirical process control through inspection, adaptation cycles. These experiments have been well articulated in the two books mentioned below:

It is also important for me to mention that Craig and Bas were working and trying out various ideas at Nokia Siemens network with large teams. 

In summary, we could say that ideas that lead to the birth of LeSS started decades ago. Probably LeSS could be the only scaling framework that has been built on top of 100s of "published" experiments and in a truly empirical fashion.

If you are keen to learn more and in-depth about the experiments and Large-Scale Framework, please register for upcoming Certified LeSS Practitioner courses.

• Sydney Course: March 26th - 28th 2018 
• Melbourne Course: April 11th - 13th 2018
• Brisbane Course: May 21st - 23rd 2018

Top-down or Bottom-up adoption strategy for LeSS adoption

Adopting a new framework, process, methodology or an idea into a large enterprise requires a strategy. A decade ago, while participating in large-scale agile deliveries, I saw quite a bit of success, and I attributed that to the support from the senior management. 

I was so impressed with the success that, I authored an article about the importance of top-down agile adoption strategy. That is, a strategy that is not only endorsed but has complete support from the CxO or chairman of the company. 

Fast forward, I have realized that top-down strategy is insufficient. I saw two problems going solely with this approach:

1. Any endorsement or support from the top management is taken as a "command" by the rest of the enterprise in a hierarchical org setting. No one at the bottom of the pyramid dares to question, and adoption becomes a tick in the box to please the top management.

During the initial years of my career, while working at the bottom of the pyramid as a developer, I used to look up and used to feel that the CxOs as the most influential people. I used to question many times, why are they struggling to make a simple decision. 

2. However, when I had the opportunity to be a Vice President during my tenure with one of the Big 4 consulting firms, I realized that everyone is equally powerless :-). 

So, it is futile to believe that getting a CxO to endorse a strategy does not mean that everyone will accept the idea with a whole heart. 

If top-down does not work all the time means, should we say bottom-up approach works? 

As we know, a developer or someone at the bottom of the hierarchy could get inspired by an idea, however, it is quite challenging to go through the mazes uphill to get the necessary support in big enterprises.

Keeping the above constraints in mind, Manns and Rising explain,

It is not top-down or bottom-up, but participative at all levels—aligned through a common understanding of a system. 

If you are keen to learn more adoption specifically from the LeSS perspective, please join me in my upcoming trainings, the details are as below:

Sydney Course: March 26th - 28th 2018 

Melbourne Course: April 11th - 13th 2018

Brisbane Course: May 21st - 23rd 2018

What is stopping us from embracing Agile mindset ?

Recently I attended an open session at a school and also, had an opportunity to interact with the teachers. One of the teaching techniques this school has been implementing is called "Thinking and Learning." 

Even though "Thinking and Learning" seem like any other common words, but in the context of the conversation with teachers, it had some deeper meaning. The teacher articulated how they are preparing the kids to for the future jobs, which is predicted to be entirely different than what we see around today.

Since the schools cannot teach a particular subject in the context of an unknown job which would come up in two decades, they are preparing the kids to think and learn in a specific way creating a flexible mindset.

The conversation with the teachers reminded me of what Deming (1990) said

We will never transform the prevailing system of management without transforming our prevailing system of education   

In the next 20 or 30 years, there will be new technologies and a new system in place. The new system needs a different style of thinking and management. The past education (Or the current system in many schools) where the teacher's duty is to teach a set of pre-defined subjects, and the students learn just to get good grades won't work. 

According to Deming,

The relationship between a boss and a subordinate is the same as the relationship between a teacher and student   

Unfortunately, the present leaders/managers and of course all of us have gone through the traditional system of education which encouraged us to study for getting good grades. Senge's in Fifth Discipline expands Deming's thinking about the prevailing education system by saying:

The teacher sets the aims; the student responds to those aims. The teacher has the answer; the student works to get the answer. Students know when they have succeeded because the teacher tells them. By the time all children are 10, they know what it takes to get ahead in school and please the teacher – a lesson they carry forward through their careers of ‘pleasing bosses and failing to improve the system that serves customers’    

In the context of agility and Agile mindset, agilists blame a few leaders in the middle-management or the entire leadership for not having a "flexible mindset." But it looks like, one of the root causes for this failure in embracing the agile mindset seems to be the education system. 

Yes, we can't change the past education system, but what levers do we have at our disposal to revers the impact from the past?

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Upcoming Certified LeSS Training: From principles to practices:

Sydney Course: March 26th - 28th 2018

Melbourne Course: April 11th - 13th 2018

Brisbane Course: May 21st - 23rd 2018

Agile Placebo

Have you watched Penn and Teller Water Bottle Survey episode ? It is hilarious. If you haven't watched, please watch it before reading the rest of this article.

This is a good example of a placebo effect, isn't it? You give something a brand and sell it at a high price. People get carried away with the fancy titles, names and the price. 

What if we do the same experiment in the IT industry as well ?. Pick 3 companies and let them all do waterfall method internally. But for the exercise sake, brand one company as pioneering in "Waterfall" method, the next in "Agile," with the third one saying, "Prince2".  

If you ask our comrades in the IT industry to vote for a company that is delivering value to the customers by looking at the brand name, they would undoubtedly vote for the company branded as "Agile," even though internally they might just be doing waterfall method. 

I feel the above phenomenon is happening in many organizations. Since there is a whole lot of branding around Agile and that application of this method would lead to an increase in customer satisfaction, revenue, employee engagement, etc. Organizations in every nook and corner of the world would like to try it.

No doubt, any method followed as per the recommendation will deliver the promised outcome.

However, I see that the spirit and DNA in most of the companies are still associated with Waterfall method with Tayloristic management thinking. However, as soon as they start doing the so-called "Stand-ups," "Iterations" etc., everyone starts feeling something good about it, leading to a euphoria in the company. 

I am guessing that the "Agile" placebo is currently driving many organizations. 

One could create a placebo by using a "Japanese" terminology as well. The premise here is, since Japanese are considered to be efficient, anything that has a Japanese name will be useful. 

Before I end this article, let me ask you this, what other placebos have you seen in the Agile world ?

Building the organisational culture:Systems Thinking

Even though Systems Thinking is a way of looking at the world as a whole rather than the parts. As we know, the parts play a critical role in influencing the whole. 

This is because, when parts come together and start interacting with each other, the underlying relationship and patterns of behavior lead to new emergent properties. 

The new emergent properties are also influenced by the surrounding environment. The environment impacts not only the individual behavior but plays a critical role in defining the system's character. 

The simple formal that defines the individual behaviour is B = f(P, E), Where  B is behavior, P is Person, and  E is the environment.

Lewin emphasizes that the desires and motivations within the person and the situation in its entirety, the sum of all these competing forces, combine to form something larger: the life space.

Organisations, groups or departments start small with individuals/leaders laying the foundation to create a new system. As more individuals join the system, the interactions creates the emergent properties.

If the environment is purely based on command and control, the individuals joining the system either have to accept the laid out rules or gets rejected by the system. However, as the environments becomes large and complex, the structures governing the system needs to be redefined keeping the goals in mind.

Leaders play a critical role in laying out the appropriate structure to drive the systems behaviour to achieve the needed goals. These structures in turn leads to creation of the culture. Unfortunately, large organisations struggle quite a bit as we don't have enough leaders with the knowledge of Systems thinking.

Melbourne Certified LeSS Practitioner Course announced: Aug 21st - 23rd

Happy to announce Certified LeSS Practitioner (CLP) course: From principles to practices.

Dates: 21st Aug - 23rd Aug

3 days intensive and interactive session with a lot of focus on Systems Thinking, Causal loop modelling and applicability of ideas from many of the first principles in Large Scale Product development applying Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS).

Tickets can be purchased from here

Please reach out to me for group discounts.

Importance of structure: Systems thinking

One of the beauties of Systems thinking is, it is easier to observe but difficult to design. I compare this to a river. It keeps flowing, carving out its directions, carrying it away that comes in it's path. 

Even though the behavior of the river remains the same, but the water is not the same. The old water keeps flowing in from various sources, mixing with the existing structure. 

Similar to the river, the organizations gets created with a structure, but the people keeps moving in and out of the system. The structure determines the behavior of the agents operating in the system. 

Designing the structure of the organization/system during its inception is simple but plays a crucial role in deciding the future of the organization. That hardest part is to have the patience to wait to understand the system's behavior due to the changes. 

Uber is a classic example in the recent times. It looks like the senior management created the structure allowing the non-sense to happen and its impact is being seen after several years.

That is why it is essential for the organizations to create a proper structure in place for the people to operate. Of course, the structure needs to be deliberately designed to ensure to achieve the system optimizing goals. But again, this is not something can be done in a day. Keeping the delay in mind, one needs to keep a tab on the system's behavior and making necessary course corrections in structure. 

In large organizations, it 's challenging for a single person(like a CEO or a founder) to manage every part of the company, and this is where the "decentralized" structure could work better. 

The cure is worse than the disease:Systems Thinking

Recently I read this news about the Indian Govt waiving loan as the farmers couldn't pay. I thought aloud in my mind, what a disastrous decision by the government!

This is not the first time I have read such a piece of news. A couple of years ago, there was big news about farmers committing suicide as they couldn't pay the loan, so, the government went ahead and waived their loan. 

If the government keeps waiving loans like the one in the news, they are never going to solve the farmer's problem, even worse, they would push the farmers into more trouble in the years to come.

Do you want to understand why this is a problem ? There is a law in Systems thinking

The cure is worse than the disease

It means that many a times the cure that is applied is not only ineffective but leads to causing issues that are worse than the current problem. 

In the above case of waiving the farmer's loan, the short-sightedness of the govt leads to short term improvement but never looks at the root causes leading to farmers financial problems. 

Each time, the loan is waived, the farmers will go back, doing exactly what they were doing earlier, which in turn creates the same set of results/problems in the years to come. 

The government aids, waiver programs makes the system weaker leading to more dependency on the government.  The govt needs to do a root-cause analysis to identify the causes behind the financial problems at a system level before recommending any solution.

I am just worried that the waiver programs will harm more farmers and their families in the coming years, due to the stupidity of such short-sighted solutions.

A systems thinker need to look at the longer-term solution to empower the system, so that root causes are addressed rather than identifying short-term quick solutions. 

If you are keen to learn more about Systems Thinking and understand the laws, please register for my upcoming Certified LeSS Practitioner course. Details below:

Sydney: July 10th, 11th and 12th. Register here

Melbourne: Aug 21st, 22nd and 23rd. Register here

Fascinating LAST Conference 2017

Today I had the opportunity to speak at the LAST conference and what a fascinating event. I have been attending the LAST conference since it took birth several years ago in Melbourne, and each year it had made the impact on hundreds of Agilists across the city.

People like Craig Brown, Ed Wong, Peter lam are working with the agile community around to make it not only valuable but affordable as well.

LAST is also expanding to Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra. Check this link out for more details.

During today's session, I shared about the 5 relationships of the Product owner(PO), including the difference between clarification and prioritisation role of a PO.

Here is the picture that explains the 5 relationships. I have made this available under Creative Commons with Attribution.

If you are keen to deep dive into Large-Scale Scrum and learn more about the topics on scaling, feel free to register for my upcoming courses in the following cities:

Sydney: July 10th, 11th and 12th. Register here

Melbourne: Aug 21st, 22nd and 23rd. Register here

Please don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions.

3 days of CLP Fun and Learning: Thank you Sydney

Returned from Sydney last week after successfully completing the 3 days of Certified LeSS Practitioner(CLP) program. It is a privilege to lead, facilitate, share and learn while training highly experienced and committed individuals.

All the 3 days included a lot of open discussions, interactions and enabling the teams to apply Systems Thinking while descaling the complexities of the organisations.

Here are some selected pix:

Causal Loop Modelling

Mindmapping

A lot of learning

Discussions, interactions, exercises and challenges to solve

Do you want to be part of another fun filled learning as part of Certified LeSS Practitioner Course in Melbourne ?

Please register for the upcoming CLP Course: From principles to practices starting Aug 21st for 3 days. The link to register is here.

Feel free to reach out with any questions.