Certified LeSS Basics
This Certified LeSS Basics training class
is a brief introduction into the LeSS Framework. It provides a 1-day overview of the framework and some of the essential concepts that it uses. It will help determining whether LeSS is for you but for LeSS adoptions, we’d recommend to follow it up with a LeSS Practitioner course.
Language: The training will be held in English
Trainer: Your trainer will be the internationally renowned Kanban trainer John Coleman (see below for bio)
Price: If you buy from outside Estonia, VAT is not applicable. The correct price is shown on this page and the last step of checkout.
Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) is a framework for scaling agile development to multiple teams. LeSS builds on top of the Scrum principles such as empiricism, cross-functional self-managing teams and provides a framework for applying that at scale. It provides simple structural rules and guidelines on how to adopt Scrum in large product development.
The following topics will be covered in the Certified LeSS Basics course:
- Why LeSS?
- LeSS Overview and introduction to LeSS Huge
- LeSS Rules and Principles
- Feature Teams
For more info on the course content, check out the LeSS Basics Learning Objectives
The Certified LeSS Basics course is suitable for anyone who deals with the concept of LeSS. Basic knowledge of Scrum is required, which means, for example, that a course has already been completed as a Certified Scrum Master or a Professional Scrum Master, or has been acquired through the study of specialist literature such as the Scrum Primer and practical experience in using Scrum. The Certified Less Basics course is often offered as an extension day of a Scrum course and thus serves to deepen Scrum-focused training.
The first step toward earning certification is to take a Certified LeSS Basics course with a Professional LeSS trainer such as this course here.
All participants will be receiving :
- Certified LeSS Basics certificate
- Account on less.works website
- The LeSS Basics Certificate will not expire.
Foundational Knowledge
A year (or more) after this course is over, we want and hope that participants will still be able to:
- Articulate why LeSS
- Explain how LeSS is a Scrum-based approach to scaling
- Summarize what impact this has on the organizational design (structures, policies, etc.)
- Explain the dynamics of component teams vs. feature teams
- Explain all LeSS roles and their purposes
- Explain why there is one and only real PO and not so-called team POs
- Explain the LeSS Complete diagram, organizing LeSS information in terms of the principles, rules, guides, and experiments
- Explain how LeSS scales over ~8 teams
- Know the existence of and location of major learning resources at less.works, including at least these sections: Why LeSS?, Introduction to LeSS (chapter 2 from book 3), the rules, the online videos & books chapters.
Application Goals
After the class, we expect that participants will have skills to:
- Analyze their current organizations’ state
- Evaluate the applicability of LeSS in their current work environment
Integration Goals
After the class we want and hope participants are able to make following the connections:
- LeSS is Scrum.
- What organizational impacts LeSS adoption may cause.
- What impact would LeSS adoption make to participants’ work life?
- LeSS is building on top of modern management thinking. Eg. Peter Senge, John Seddon, W. Edwards Deming, Taiichi Ohno, Richard Hackman, Robert Sutton, and Jeffrey Pfeffer. The authors and practitioners of LeSS advocate understanding leading management thinkers and prevailing evidence in terms of management thinking and participants are encouraged to continue learning post-training.
Human Dimensions Goals
After the class we want and hope participants have made the following realizations:
- There is no blame. People’s behavior is determined by the system they are in (managers have a responsibility to change the system).
- What participants could or should learn about themselves
- What is preventing them from influencing the organization they are currently in
- What participants could or should learn about understanding others and/or interacting with them
Caring Goals
After the class, we want and hope participants have
- Interest in learning more about topics discussed in the class
- New ideas about their future
John Coleman
John Coleman, founder of Orderly Disruption, Thinkers360 top 10 agility thought leader, Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer, co-author of Kanban Guide and Prokanban.org Professional Kanban Trainer, LeSS Friendly Scrum Trainer, founder and host of Xagility™️ and Daily Flow podcasts.
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/johncolemanxagility
Review & Ratings for John Coleman of Orderly Disruption on Google, VocalReferences & Trustpilot
Reviews & Ratings for all of John Coleman's workshops are available on:
It's not just about Reviews & Ratings
Reviews & ratings are limited by nature. John needs to understand if the learning made a real difference back in the office. So, John checks in up to 12-18 months later. He sees a pattern of improvement and regularly gets pleasant vibes from successful agility inspired by ideas on the workshops. For example, see this experience report.
Content writing
John Coleman is a Professional Scrum Trainer, a candidate LeSS trainer / LeSS Friendly Scrum Trainer, organizer of ELNA (Executive Leadership Network for Adaptiveness), co-author of Kanban Guide, and author of Kanban for Complexity™ aka Kanplexity™ with lots of attribution to Dave Snowden & Cognitive Edge for Cynefin and related theory. See https://kanbanguides.org.
John did one of the most comprehensive comparisons/contrast of the scaling/descaling frameworks at https://valueglide.com/blog and https://orderlydisruption.com/blogs/grow-agility-for-your-why/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-preamble-to-1-of-4 ("Mirror Mirror" series). John Coleman's blog posts on executives, Scrum, Kanban, Nexus Vs. LeSS, are available at https://bit.ly/JohnColemanBlog. John blogs prolifically at orderlydisruption.com, valueglide.com, Medium, CIO Water Cooler, and The Digital Transformation People.
Practicing what he preaches, except he doesn't preach -- he doesn't sell, huh?
John helps teams, managers, leaders, change agents, and execs. He can answer all sorts of up to date questions with ease. John coaches, teaches, consults for sustainable growth of agility in non-software as well as software. He created Broad and Deep agility (BaDa) on top of the shoulders of existing theory & practice. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUen2CeyTDk. John himself is broad & deep from the points of view of agility, people & change.
Standing on the shoulders of giants
John is a systems thinker who happens to be a huge fan of Cynefin and sees the benefits of both, erring on the side of Cynefin where they clash. Most importantly, John takes an independent view. John is also a people & change thinker; he uses Spiral Dynamics Integral (certified to level 2) and other models; even if they are criticized in some quarters as pseudoscience, John finds aspects of Spiral Dynamics helpful in structuring better conversations with people.
More proof he knows what he's talking about, and has done what he talks about
John's Scrum+Kanban Nexus+ case studies can be found (international payments company, European bank) at https://www.valueglide.com/blog/nexus-nexus-and-scrum.org-certifications.
John is grateful to be part of Marshall Goldsmith's #payitforward campaign and, in so doing, offers free coaching/mentoring/co-training to a selection of potential agility chefs. John is a member of the #MarshallGoldsmithLead60 group, a cohort from the 16,000+ #MarshallGoldsmith100CoachesApplicants. It was a privilege for John to be one of a lucky group of 60 people; Marshall Goldsmith himself taught that group in Salt Lake City in February 2018. All of John's workshops #payitforward Marshall Goldsmith content, including Marshall's advice to John himself.
Client list
John typically practiced with many of his clients for 18+ months. He is switching to shorter-term engagements. John's client list (directly or indirectly) includes Japanese Tobacco International, Shell, Barclaycard, Vocalink Mastercard, Centrica / British Gas, the Musgrave Group, RR Donnelley, DELL, Nordic Aviation Services, 84.51, Intralinks, PaySafe, Vodafone, Ericsson, NASA, Sky and BP.
