Date: Apr 8 - 10, 2025
Time: 8:30AM - 5:30PM Central
Venue: West End Conference Center
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Instructor: Craig Larman
Phone: 612-791-1388
This course will be held in person.
Description :
Learn with Craig Larman—the co-creator of LeSS—in this 3-day highly-participative course. Participants (senior managers, product developers, ...) explore a deep understanding of LeSS, Large-Scale Scrum, for lean & agile development with many teams working together on one product. We explore adoption, new organizational design, systems thinking & optimization, the role of management, and concretely how to work together in a Sprint at scale in terms of coordination, architecture, planning, and more.
(Aside, but noteworthy: Course runs until 17:30 on day 3; for certification, full attendance required)
Critically, we explore the Big Idea of more with LeSS: simplifying & descaling over "scaling", or... scaling product development by descaling the organization.
Perhaps most importantly and interestingly, this course runs mostly as a series of "at giant whiteboards" deep-thinking exercises involving systems modeling in small teams to explore why, so that people canown the ideas by discovering them for themselves, rather than "renting" the ideas. A focus on why and owning not renting are important elements of LeSS and how it's learned, and Craig emphasizes this in the course learning experience.
Join Larman for a deep dive into more with LeSS, based on his long experience with LeSS adoptions.
Feedback from previous courses
“It was inspiring to discuss Large-Scale Scrum with Craig Larman. The content of the course was top-notch.” – Steve Alexander
“The delivery was outstanding and the supporting material vast and detailed.” – Simone Zecchi
“The best course I have ever been on. Totally blown away.” – Simon Powers
In addition to course material, each participant will also receive 2 books on LeSS:
Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS
Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum
Agenda :
LeSS Overview
descaling and simplifying over scaling: more with LeSS
LeSS principles, frameworks, guides, experiments
two LeSS frameworks: basic & LeSS Huge
Adoption
pre-adoption: building interest
the adoption guides
3 principles
getting started
scope of first adoption
stories of LeSS adoptions
Local Optimization & System Optimization
local versus global systems optimization
local optimization in backlogs
local optimization in product definition
local optimization in planning
local optimization in in analysis & design
local optimization in programming
Product Definition
redefining the scope of product, and the impact on global optimization
portfolio management
Why LeSS?
shu-ha-ri and frameworks
empirical control
why "More with LeSS"?
systems optimization
occupational psychology
LeSS Sprint
preparation before first Sprint
Sprint Planning with many teams
coordination & integration: from communities to architecture
scaling Product Backlog Refinement
scaling the Sprint Review & Retrospective
multi-site development
LeSS Huge Framework
Requirement Areas
Area Product Owners
role of Overall Product Owner
Area Backlogs
adoption
More on LeSS Roles
Managers in a LeSS organization
Scrum Masters at scale
Product Owner in LeSS
Details :
After successful course completion (attending full-time, etc)...
All participants will be a Certified LeSS Practitioner and will get an account on less.works. Here you can find:
(free) digital versions of the first and third LeSS books
more LeSS learning (videos, etc)
the course handout PDF and photos of everything created within the course that was on the walls
contacts of all course participants
a course certificate