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LeSS Rules Changes

Changed from March 2024 to November 2024:

Removed “framework” from the rules. 2-8 team LeSS is now referred to as “Basic LeSS”
Introduced the term “Organizational System” to describe LeSS, which was already used in the “Why LeSS” section.

Changed from December 2020 to March 2024:

Removed “or Team representatives” from the Sprint Planning One rule. The rule suggests that representatives is a good option whereas in practice it often causes some negative dynamics so removed from the rules.
Removed “majority” from the feature teams rule. It is such an exception to not have all feature teams that the word majority gives the wrong impression.

Changed from February 2020 to December 2020:

Added a comma to the rule related to a common definition of done.

Changed from April 2018 to February 2020:

Changed he to she for the Product Owner. Following our own writing guideline: “Scrum Master and Product Owner are shes, team members and management are hes.”
Moved a period inside a quote to make it consistent with most of our writing.

Changed from April 2017 to April 2018:

Removed “Each Requirement Area has one Area Product Owner.” under Product as it was duplicate
Changed the Product Backlog Refinement rules to only mention the multi-team variant to stress this. Multi-team Backlog Refinement should be the default, the others an exception.

Changed from April 2016 (2) to April 2017:

Removed the extranomoous ‘the’ in “the that Sprint”

Changed from April 2016 to April 2016 (2):

Changed “Representatives” to “representatives”
Changed “ScrumMaster” to “Scrum Master.” Decided to, in future writing, use them as separate words.

Changed from March 2016 (2) to April 2016:

LeSS Huge rule clarified. Original version “Each Team specializes in one Requirement Area. Teams are there “long term”; this won’t change each Sprint but Teams will change Requirement Area when others grow in value.” to new version “Each Team specializes in one Requirement Area. Teams stay in one area for a long time. When there is more value in other areas, teams might change Requirement Area”

Changed from March 2016 to March 2016 (2):

Clarified “One shared Definition of Done for the whole product.” to “One Definition of Done for the whole product common for all teams.”
Clarified “Each team can have their own expanded Definition of Done.” to “Each team can have their own stronger Definition of Done by expanding the common one”

Changed from February 2016 (6) to March 2016:

Changed “Over time, the definition of product might increase.” to “Over time, the definition of product might expand.”
Removed “A Sprint Review is held per Requirement Area.” as it is a duplicate of “Each Requirement Area acts like the basic LeSS framework.”
Removed “An Overall Retrospective is held per Requirement Area.” as it is also duplicate
Removed “All Sprint LeSS rules apply for each Requirement Area.” as it is also duplicate

Changed from February 2016 (5) to February 2016 (6):

Changed “and managers (if there are any).” to “and managers (if any).”

Changed from February 2016 (4) to February 2016 (5):

Remove: “Guidance: Coordination via Open Space, joining other teams’ Daily Scrum, multi-team workshops, or “simply” working in the same space, talking to each other, and using visual management.” and added to the rule “Emphasize Just Talk and informal networks via communicate in code, cross-team meetings, component mentors, travelers, scouts, and open spaces.”
Remove: “Guidance: Hold an additional product-level Overall Retrospective to identify global problems and structural changes, and create improvement experiments.”
Remove: “Guidance: Hold an additional product-level Sprint Review, to inspect key items, and to summarize and synchronize the learnings to enable product-level adaptation.”
Remove “Guidance: Hold an overall PBR with representatives before each team PBR to explore which teams might work on which items, and to increase learning and alignment.” and added “and/or overall” to the multi-team PBR rule.

Changed from February 2016 (3) to February 2016 (4):

Changed “All LeSS rules apply to LeSS Huge, unless otherwise stated.” to “All LeSS rules apply to LeSS Huge, unless otherwise stated. Each Requirement Area acts like the basic LeSS framework” to clarify that the events and other specific in-Sprint rules act per RA and not for all of LeSS Huge.

Changed from February 2016 (2) to February 2016 (3):

Small changes suggested by Richard Hundhausen:
Changed “They together tentatively select the items that each team will work on the next Sprint.” to “They together tentatively select the items that each team will work on that Sprint.” Next should be that as the Sprint started already.
Changed “Ensure that enough stakeholders join to contribute” to “Ensure that suitable stakeholders join to contribute”. Who are the stakeholders doesn’t purely depend on amount.
Changed “After the Sprint Review, they enable product-level adaptations.” to “After the Sprint Review, they further enable product-level adaptations.”. Added further to make clear this isn’t the only product-level adaptation.

Changed from February 2016 to February 2016 (2):

Added “Do multi-team Sprint Planning Two in a shared space for closely related items” to the Sprint Planning rule to create symmetry with the rule on Product Backlog Refinement.
Removed “Guidance: For some Teams, do it in a shared space to enhance coordination.” as all guidance will gradually be removed and the change in rule related to multi-team SP2 covers this.
Removed “Scrum of Scrums” out of the list of coordination guidance.
Removed “Guidance: Use decentralized “diverge-merge” techniques for better feedback and less boring meetings.” as we’re gradually removing all guidance from the rules to keep them simpler.

Changed from January 2016 to February 2016:

Changed location of rule related to definition of product
Removed “Part” from “Sprint Planning Part One”
Removed “The Team forecasts how many items they believe they can complete during the next Sprint.” as it is the same as in Scrum
Fixed typo “exploting” to “exploiting”

Changed from October 2015 to January 2016:

In rules related to managers. Changed “Their focus is the value-delivering capability of the product development system rather than the specific scope of a product.” to “Their focus shifts from managing the day-to-day product work to improving the value-delivering capability of the product development system.”

Changes from September 2015 to October 2015:

Change Sprint Planning One participants from “Product Owner and Team Representatives” to “Product Owner and Teams or Team Representatives” so that it better refects that it is ok for whole teams to join, especially when there are not that many teams.
Added the Multi-Team Product Backlog Refinement as a rule (and removed it as a recommendation) in order to show that Multi-Team Product Backlog Refinement is actually prefered over individual team Product Backlog Refinement. So, actual change added this “Do multi-team PBR to increase shared understanding and exploting coordination opportunities when having closely related items or a need for broader input/learning” and removed “(2) Hold a multi-team PBR to increase shared understanding and exploit coordination opportunities.” (and removed the numbering of recommendations as there is just one now)

Changes from August 2015 to September 2015:

Fixed typo “A Overall” to “An Overall”
Changed “Go See & Help” to “Go See”. To be more consistent with the original concept and to avoid micro-managing interpretations.

Changes from April 2015 to August 2015:

Removed “Overall” in front of “Overall Review” as it was superfluous. Review is always an Overall meeting.
Added “Prefer decentralized and informal coordination over centralized coordination” to the team coordination rule.
Change “Overall PBR” to “overall PBR” because it isn’t an ‘official’ meeting thus it ought to be lower case.