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

Culture follows structure is actually the fourth of “Larman’s Laws of Organizational Behavior.”

Rather, involve regular teams, and offer improvement items to them via the Product Backlog. This way, all the work is visible on the Product Backlog and continuous improvement becomes the normal system.

Attempting to change an organization’s culture is a folly, it always fails. People’s behavior (the culture) is a product of the system; when you change the system peoples’ behavior changes.

Here is the perfection vision for LeSS that we use: Create organizations able to deliver or change direction at any time without additional cost.

And pushing so-called best practices kills a culture of learning, questioning, engagement, and continuous improvement. Why would people challenge best?

one product—What product? A broad complete end-to-end customer-centric solution that real customers use. It’s not a component, platform, layer, or library.

A successful LeSS adoption needs both the energy of people doing the Right Thing and the support of people with organizational power. The managers’ frame of mind must be support, not control. They ensure the proper supporting structure is in place for the grass-roots energy to flourish and expand.

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

Why not have people maintain a reporting relationship to a functional department manager? Because that causes conflicting loyalties that destroy the team’s shared responsibility and cohesion. Right now you might be thinking “They’re exaggerating. It can work in our company.” Not gonna happen. We’ve seen many try and it doesn’t work. Just don’t do i