Are the Case Studies the same in the Practitioner and Professional versions of the course?

• We use different Case Studies for LAS-P and LAS-Pro.
• For LAS-P the Case Study is designed for your first application of the core concepts in LAS. As such, it is not intended to represent the messy world of  large traditional organizations. That means it is not so much about the complexity of the Case Study, as it is about getting hands-on experience with how LAS works.
• For LAS-Pro on the other hand, the Case Study is intended to represent the messy world of large complex traditional organizations. It is based off of one our clients (names and other identifying characteristics changed). As such, this is more realistic and also far more challenging to complete.
• Our first-ever awarded LAS Facilitator, Myles Hopkins, referred to this course and the case study as "intense". He also said the LAS approach is "a revolutionary look at both strategy and agile and I highly recommend you exploring this course."
• We won't mislead you; LAS-Pro is not for everyone.  You ought to have experience in multiple organizations providing strategic advisory, preferably medium to large ones.

What's the difference between LAS-Professional and LAS-Facilitator?

LAS-Professional is the designation you get for taking the LAS-Professional course. You need LAS-Professional designation to apply to become a LAS-Facilitator.

To obtain the LAS-Facilitator designation:

• You need to lead your own organization or a client organization as a using the LAS Approach
• The engagement must include people at the executive level. 
• At the end of the engagement you will be required to deliver an experience report (we will provide the template) and deliver it to a panel of your peers. 
• Upon successful completion you will be granted a LAS-Facilitator designation. 

Who created Lean-Agile Strategy and why?

The original creator of what's behind Lean-Agile Strategy is Larry. However, what you see here is the result of three years of collaboration between Dan and Larry on Zoom, on the phone, in Dymon Storage board rooms (Dan was a customer), on client sites, in the classroom (once) and with a couple of attempts online.

The origins of it actually go back over twenty years (a few stories that can be told over a few pints, well actually a lot of pints to tell them all). Mostly it was Larry having watched what were once multiple competencies, turned into separate roles, org structures based on those roles, processes, artifacts, certifications, and more. This is the origins of most of the IT-based certifications we see today. It eventually got to the point where even doing simple things inside of organizations became complex. It did mirror command and control quite nicely though. 

About ten years ago, Larry decided to go back to a basic question:

Whom do we exist to serve as an organization and why, and what is the simplest thing we can do that meets their needs? 

When you think about it for a bit, it completely changes how you think about pretty much everything.

What you will learn about in Lean-Agile Strategy is what Larry calls "putting Humpty Dumpty back together again"; we had broken our organizational Humpty Dumpty into a hundred  pieces. 

Each piece, absent the connecting tissue to other pieces, created processes and artifacts as the means of signaling their intentions to each other. Now multiply that by the number of pieces. It gets pretty unwieldy, pretty quickly. 

We also cover things like Business Outcomes. Which are not the same as Customer Impacts, though we cover those as well. We also address the sources of what appears near the top of surveys for why Agile is not working in many organizations:

• General organizational resistance to change
• Not enough leadership participation
• Inconsistent processes and practices across teams
• Organizational culture at odds with Agile values
• Inadequate management support and sponsorship

Lean-Agile Strategy gets everybody back in the same space to co-develop a shared context, both figuratively and literally, as they move to a different future, together.