This post is a short review of book Scaling Agile: A Lean JumpStart. The purpose of this book is introducing into scaling Agile using Lean Thinking. In my opinion it is recommended to have at least basic understanding of Agile principles and how they work in practice before diving into scaling area. It is about Agile, not only about Scrum.
The book is short and provides overview of scaling with an attention paid on the Lean approach. There is required further research for choosing best suited scaling method or to elaborate own scaling version. The book is a good start point to recognize area and understand scaling issues. It is written in a pleasure to read language. Issues are supported by a good described and illustrated examples. This publication is concise and practical.
This book may make you more aware of Agile scaling activities. Thanks to methods and frameworks, scaling in your organization may be more efficient and will bring more benefits. This book will be helpful for all people who deal with Agile teams and projects with a tendency to grow. You will find here information how create new teams from already existing working on a common domain. We can read here what matters when it comes to scaling Agile. Most of these practices are desired even we do not need scaling. It will be always a challenge to start with Agile in some environments. Scaling is the next step. In order to achieve effective scaling results, some structured ways will be useful. There are shortly presented some existing Agile scaling frameworks.
Starting Lean is the most detailed described part of this book. Sanjiv is the Lean expert and suggests to use Lean method to start with scaling. The Lean way is Sanjiv’s proposal and in his eyes is a foundation to start scaling Agile. I would say that most of these principles apply to Agile without a need to scale. However there are some key aspects of Lean way which particularly support scaling.
The publication gives many ideas worth to consider when implementing Agile and scaling it. I recommend this book everyone who is interested in Agile and wants to gain skills with more advanced topics. Scaling is a topic in Agile world which you will face sooner or later if you deal with Agile teams.