Pros and Cons of Using LeSS Framework

There is no denying that Agile has become incredibly popular among businesses from various sectors over the years.

23:00 16 September 2020

When utilized properly, it can really boost and enhance a company’s productivity, efficiency, and ability to finish projects faster. Once a team knows what they are doing within the Agile framework, it is easy enough to follow through on.

 

The real challenges come, though, when you are trying to implement it throughout a large organization in all the different departments and teams. If you find yourself in that kind of situation, don’t fret too much, as there are many different frameworks with the Agile way of doing things. For instance, LeSS, or Large-Scale Scrum. Is this right for your business. To figure that out you need to understand what it is and the benefits and disadvantages of using it. 

 

To help you out, we are going to cover all that in the following post.

 

What is Large-Scale Scrum?

 

Large-Scale Scrum, as the name suggests ins a larger-than-normal framework that offers you the ability to implement the important elements and core principles of Scrum throughout numerous teams. 

 

One of the things that are integral to LeSS’s popularity is that within it a lot of team attention is redirected towards the whole organization’s goals and desired results from a project it is working on, rather than that team’s own work. 

 

You need to be aware that within LeSS two different frameworks are suitable for different-sized businesses. These are: 

 

• LeSS – the standard form that is suitable for a maximum of 8 teams
  
  
• LeSS Huge – designed and scaled to be used by over 8 teams.
  
  

Both versions feature one individual in the position of Product Owner, but with the LeSS Huge framework, there is the addition of Area Product Owners that are there to work with smaller groups and areas. If you are particularly a fan of Lean Economics, you may find LeSS is beneficial thanks to the emphasis it places on queuing theory, systems thinking and doing more with less. 

 

To summarize, what are the main pros and cons you should take away from using LeSS. 

 

Pros of Using the LeSS Framework

• Familiar and comfortable – has firm Scrum roots, so if you are already knowledgeable about Scrum, this is much easier to implement than other frameworks not based on Scrum
  
  
• System-wide thinking emphasis
  
  
• Product focused, rather than project-focused
  
  
• Relies on there being just one Product Owner and one backlog, which avoids a lot of confusion and disharmony that occurs on larger teams with numerous people assigned to the Product Owner role and several backlogs.
  
  

For more inspiration and details, check a great write up about how ING uses Agile and improves on the LeSS framework to make it even more productive.

Cons of Using LeSS

• Scaling can be difficult with LeSS. If your company or team is unfamiliar with Scrum gestures, goals, and principles, it will be much harder to implement LeSS as it takes its foundations from Scrum.
  
  
• Similarly, if you have been using a different framework and methodology for running projects and product developments in the past, you may find it a lot harder to effectively utilize the LeSS methodology without a lot of extensive training throughout your company.
  
  
• The benefit of having just one Product Owner can actually be a downside too. They may find it hard to cope with liaising with, directing, and assisting a large number of different teams. 

The bottom line is, LeSS will work best if your company has already had success with Scrum in the past and you are looking to scale things up across the various departments in your organization. It’s not impossible to do it if you haven’t, but it takes a lot more work.