LeSS Vs SAFe®️: Which Certification Should You Choose And Why?

Pure Agile works with the following principles and frameworks. Most of IT companies adapt to use Agile approaches to meet enterprise’s demand either in a large-scale or complex project. These approaches follow a systematic framework that incorporates best practices in large-scale implementation.

Brief Introduction to LeSS

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)

LeSS is a framework to Scale Agile software development for multiple teams. The acronym indicates less artifacts, less process, and fewer roles. It plays on top position among all the Scrum principles such as cross-functional and self-managing teams, investigations. LeSS provides simple systematic rules and instructions in incorporating Scrum in the large projects. This framework scales up with less process compared to single-team Scrum.

• LeSS includes practices, principles for organizational structure
• Queuing theory, lean waste and more
• Theory of constraints

Bas Vodde and Craig Larman introduced Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), the scaling model.

Two Agile Scaling frameworks:

In 2002, the coach and trainer Craig Larman wrote about the Agile and iterative development model. Most of them thought that Agile methodology fits for smaller groups. They both got interested in developing scrum towards large teams. So in 2005 they had to build a team to work with clients to scale up the Scrum processes.

Now, we have two frameworks which have been adopted by the large-scale projects. The two LeSS frameworks are Smaller LeSS and LeSS Huge.

Smaller LeSS: It applies to smaller companies with less team members 

LeSS Huge: It works for larger companies with at least thousands of team members for one product 

Rules of LeSS

• It focuses on the overall retrospective for each sprint, to maintain focus on delivery of a product.
• LeSS frameworks apply effectively to small projects with 2-8 members in a team.

Structure and Principles of LeSS

• Good team for a good organizational structure.
• The team focuses on being cross-functional, self-managing, co-located and long-lived.
• Scrum Master should focus on working on the adoption of Less.
• SM is responsible for performance with LeSS adoption.
• Focus towards development teams, product owner and organizational practices.
• It has to look over the entire team, not for one project team. 
• Scrum Master is dedicated to full time working and can serve up to 1-3 teams.
• LeSS offers Scrum roles of product owner for up to 8 teams. In this framework, PO doesn't have direct contact with the end customer.
• Team members will contact the end-users regarding their requirements but PO will look over the priorities over a success with 8 members of Scrum team.
• Scrum Master should be continuously making increments to achieve perfection of the end product.
• LeSS keeps the Scrum attributes-roles, sprint meetings are same with additional advantage to scale the work.

Roles of management 

• In LeSS, managers may be involved or may not be. But if they involve, their roles may most likely change.
• They may divert their focus to improving the value delivery of a product instead of managing the day-to-day product work.
• Manager's role is to enable continuous development of product delivery by practices.
• Encourage the team members with experiments of adding skills.

Business benefits of LeSS

• LeSS offers the roles of Scrum, the product owner is one among all who has to understand framework overview and principles
• One product owner and product backlog are enough for the delivery of a product.
• LeSS principles, procedures, and adoption in managing the success of the product. 
• Defines the product and its roles, and the cost of implementation is “less” in LeSS.

Certifications:-

No matter which scaled Agile approach you want to opt for your project, it depends on the size of the company, large-scale organization, and team size. This certification training covers all the principles, guidelines and rules of LeSS. The individuals who have basic knowledge of Scrum can attend the training and have a chance to get certified.

Coming towards SAFe®️

In the above, we have discussed how LeSS framework functions in the organization. Moving on we will discuss the SAFe®️ framework in the development projects of an organization.

Before proceeding with the detailed discussion on SAFe®️, let us see the LeSS vs. SAFe®️ trends in the past 5 years. 

Scaled Agile Framework(SAFe®️)

The Scaled Agile frameworks (SAFe®️) helps business individuals to address the significant challenges by spreading and delivering enterprise software systems in shortest intervals. The individuals can get free online knowledge to build their software systems with their success patterns. 

SAFe®️ was first developed by Dean Leffingwell's in his books to enhance large enterprises to set with highly structured and prescriptive methods.

Its intention was to scale the enterprises with Agile and Lean practices for large-scale Agile teams to meet large organization’s strategic goals.

Benefits in Business:

• No predefined metrics in this stage, if we adopt a SAFe®️ framework
• Discussing with team levels about products-retrospective
• Productivity-estimated time and effort to release a product
• The time to market will be based on the status of a report with the variation of workflows.