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Fitbit – Benefits of Using SAFe in Consumer Technology

Fitbit Benefits of SAFe in Consumer Technology

“SAFe has been a successful story for us. It allowed us to grow our team in a seamless way that integrated cross-functional groups and aligned with the company’s long-term strategy. Fitbit has grown significantly since we adopted SAFe, and we were able to scale the process and still deliver high achievement every PI. My VP calls it the scaffolding that has helped moved our team forward.”

—Damian Brown, Sr. Director of Program Management Office, Fitbit

Challenge:

With major consumer holidays as deadlines, target dates are immovable. Early Scrum efforts could not keep pace with company growth.

Industry:

Consumer Products, Information Technology

Results:

  • Fitbit achieved a long-term look-ahead on its product roadmap and a short-term look-ahead on team tasks
  • Teams now achieve five business goals per PI, compared to three previously
  • Velocity increased 33 percent year over year
  • Fitbit launched a record number of products last year

Best Practices:

  • Don’t miss retrospectives – After every PI planning event, Fitbit listens to feedback on what went well and what needs improvement—and integrates those changes for the next PI.
  • Establish long-lived teams – Long-lived teams provide more stability and predictability.
  • Collect metrics along the way – Collect as many metrics as possible, which could back up decision-making. These could include velocity, overall objectives completion rate and reasons for scope changes during execution.
  • Always plan for the next PI – Cadence is important to align multiple groups in the PI in preparation for the next PI planning event. Start early and make sure every participant is aware of the timeline, so all stakeholders are well-informed and prepared for PI planning.

Introduction

In 2016, consumer technology company, Fitbit, released four new products to the market that were positively received by consumers, and shipped over 22 million devices.

Delivering its highest number of products in a year is due in part to the company’s commitment to, and success in adopting SAFe® (Scaled Agile Framework®) as a way to scale the team to meet target dates.

Challenge: Delivering for Consumer Shopping Seasons

Benefits of SAFe in Consumer Technology

Since 2007, Fitbit has helped millions of people around the world lead healthier, more active lives by empowering them with data, inspiration, and guidance to reach their goals.

At Fitbit, major consumer holidays drive the product delivery schedule, including the year-end holiday season, Valentine’s Day, graduation, and Mother’s and Father’s Days. For that reason, target dates are inflexible when it comes to developing firmware and software for every product for each major platform (iOS, Android, and Windows).

In working toward targets, Fitbit engineering managers, tech leads, and Scrum masters have collaborated closely in recent years, sprint to sprint. But as the company and user base grew, Fitbit had to expand and evolve this process to meeting company and consumer needs.

“With our growing team and global presence, we knew our Scrum efforts were not going to scale,” says Damian Brown, Sr. Director of Program Management Office, Fitbit. “The question was, ‘How do we keep the organic culture people like about Fitbit while addressing the needs of the business and our global community of users?’”

Always Planning, Always Delivering

At a previous company, Brown and colleague, Brian Hsieh, had been part of a successful Agile effort by deploying SAFe. When they arrived at Fitbit, they saw an opportunity to deploy SAFe once again.

“We had done research on the different models for scaling Scrum,” Brown says. “Brian and I had been to Leading SAFe training, and once you see that big picture, your eyes start lighting up. It’s a powerful story how the Program layer aligns with Scrum teams. We knew that SAFe was something that would work for us at Fitbit.”

But first, they had to gain executive buy-in. “I think the story we told of always planning, always delivering, was very powerful for leadership,” Brown says

A Big Picture—for the First Time

With leadership on board, in fall 2015 the company started with 12 Scrum teams at its first Program Increment (PI) planning event in San Francisco. They created a highly interactive experience with physical boards and red ribbon for a visual of team dependencies within the PI. In that first meeting, teams were energized and excited about their PI objectives.

Benefits of SAFe in Consumer Technology

“Teams reported that they could see the whole picture across company-wide initiatives and understood where they could contribute,” says Hsieh, Manager of Program Management Office.

But as early as the first PI retrospective, the company realized it had not included all the teams that would benefit from this process. Thus in the next PI, Fitbit added other teams, including firmware engineering groups.

With each PI—now up to ten—Fitbit folded in more teams and more functional groups, including some not typically part of an Agile transformation. Today, members of Firmware, Software, Design, Research, Marketing, Customer Support, Data Analytics and Infrastructure Engineering all participate in PIs. Fitbit trained all those who were leading PI events, with events extended to its other office locations, including Boston, San Diego, and Minsk, Belarus.

100% Delivery on Objectives

In adopting SAFe, Fitbit aimed to evolve its process for scaling development teams in many ways:

  • Create a fast and flexible flow across the entire Fitbit ecosystem
  • Create a system of teams across the ecosystem that work together to deliver quickly
  • Scale up to adopt team growth
  • Improve visibility with the objective of a two-month look-ahead on what each team will be working on
  • Create mechanisms for teams and stakeholders to identify cross-team dependencies and add items to other teams’ backlogs as needed
  • Align key business dates across all of the programs, including security, data center moves, compliance, and marketing programs

With the help of SAFe, Fitbit successfully achieved process evolution.

As for visibility, Fitbit achieved a long-term look-ahead on its product roadmap and a short-term execution plan at areas of work for the teams, supporting planning and decision-making for leadership. It’s a roadmap process that Brown and Hsieh credit SAFe with providing.

Velocity likewise increased; teams now achieve five objectives per PI, on average, “With the metrics that SAFe provides, combined with what we regularly report on, we can tell our CTO that velocity has increased 33 percent over the past year,” Brown says.

With higher cadence and velocity, Fitbit can more readily respond to market needs. For example, when the company noticed an opportunity to add a specific capability to its products, it brought the new feature to market in a very short time with no major bugs in internal and external testing.

Benefits of SAFe in Consumer Technology

In 2016, with an aggressive plan for launching four new products, Brown and Hsieh credit the SAFe approach with enabling teams to complete goals and objectives two to three PIs ahead of schedule.

Additionally, the integrated, measured approach contributes to the quality of the user experience. In particular, Brown points to that critical time between Black Friday and New Year’s Day when many new Fitbit owners activate products and visit the Fitbit app and website for the first time to create accounts and sync their new devices. In 2016, the company experienced no major impact to the site during that timeframe.

Just as critical, team engagement has gone up since deploying the SAFe. As a result, teams now regularly hit their top objectives. “Having PIs and objectives really rallies us around something positive several times a year,” Brown says.

Now, as the company plans for next year, it’s working toward funding value streams rather than projects—a goal that SAFe 4.0 supports with its Value Stream level.

“SAFe has been a success story for us. It allowed us to grow our team seamlessly that integrated cross-functional groups and aligned with the company’s long-term strategy,” Brown adds. “Fitbit has grown significantly since we adopted SAFe, and we could scale the process and still deliver high achievement every PI. My VP calls it the scaffolding that has helped move our team forward.”

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Northwestern Mutual – Adopting SAFe for Lean-Agile IT Transformation

“We had been challenged a number of times in changing our underlying CRM platform. After implementing SAFe, our overall effort actually came in $12M less than originally estimated and 18 months sooner than predicted.”

—Bryan Kadlec, Director, Client Digital Experience

Challenge:

Market leader Northwestern Mutual sought to apply Lean-Agile practices to remain competitive, though previous efforts had been stymied by a longtime Waterfall culture.

Industry:

Financial Services, Insurance

Solution:

SAFe®

Results:

  • Collection Feature Cycle Time improved 30-50%
  • IT delivers requested capabilities 80-90 % of the time
  • The overall effort on a project came in $12 million less than originally estimated and 18 months sooner than predicted

Best Practices:

  • Support experimentation—Leadership at NWM fostered an environment, and provided resources, to enable this transformation. “Our forward-thinking leadership knew we needed to bring in some changes so they invested in continuous learning and improvement,” Schindler says.
  • Use proxies for offshore teams—NWM pre-plans with offshore teams and then brings proxy representatives to PI planning events.
  • Customize SAFe—NWM increased engagement with its own spin on the program board, with the Transformation Railway Station.

Introduction

In business, staying ahead of the competition inevitably requires taking some risks. But how do you do this, when a key part of your success depends on keeping risk at bay? That’s the question Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual (NWM) had to answer while seeking new ways to maintain and build on their 160-year history of helping families and businesses achieve financial security.

To maintain the leadership position NWM has built over nearly 160 years, the organization has taken an innovative, entrepreneurial approach to business. It’s paid off: The past year (2016) was one of the company’s strongest. The company reported record-level revenue ($27.9 billion), was named by FORTUNE® magazine as one of the “World’s Most Admired” life insurance companies, and has maintained the highest financial strength ratings awarded to any U.S. life insurer.*

300-Day Cycles

In 2012, the company reached a turning point. In addition to a company-wide push for continuous learning and improvement, IT needed to move faster.

“It took over 300 days and many instances to deliver value to our customers,” says Jill Schindler, Manager, Client Digital Experience. “We were getting a lot of questions around, ‘Why does it take so long and cost so much?’ We knew we needed to be more flexible, adaptable and responsive, and it didn’t take us long to realize that Agile was a big part of that.”

SAFe for Financial Services

NWM had tried to adopt Lean-Agile practices before, experimenting with a few Scrum teams in the mid-2000s. However, those efforts ran headfirst into a deeply ingrained Waterfall culture.

“We didn’t start with much training or coaching, and teams worked on the aspects they wanted instead of the aspects that we needed,” says Bryan Kadlec, Director, Client Digital Experience. “We fell woefully behind and then were slammed by a waterfall world to put out the fire.”

A Second Attempt at Agile

Northwestern Mutual shelved its Scrum efforts until 2012, when the company embarked on a more methodical approach to Agile. This time, they set out to train as many people as possible. “We wanted to do this and senior leadership believed in it, so we pushed forward,” Schindler says.

At the time, three or four teams experimented with Agile but the organization simply was not set up to accommodate it.

For next steps, they held their first rapid improvement event (Value Stream mapping). The weeklong event brought together Scrum teams and specialized teams with the goal of addressing the challenges of these distinct groups working together. The end result: a better understanding of the problems and a systematic way of approaching them. Key to that was engaging the IT strategy team to help remove barriers.

The Missing Piece

About that time, NWM found the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) and quickly saw it as the missing piece. “SAFe totally lines up with what we were already trying to do but we just didn’t have a platform for it,” Schindler says. “This was the framework we needed for delivering Agile at scale.”

“In SAFe, we could see Agile and Lean together and had this sense that it was a very powerful thing,” Kadlec adds.

Schindler and Kadlec went back to the leaders of their respective organizations and secured resources to try SAFe—becoming pioneers not just for their own company, but also establishing NWM as the first large company in Wisconsin to take this course. They believed firmly in their chosen path, but it still felt risky to apply new Lean-Agile practices to a large chunk of the company’s portfolio.

“It shaved a few years off our lives!” Kadlec quips. “We believed that the path we were taking would deliver high value, but it still felt high risk. But if we’re going to compete, we had to have a quicker response time.”

The First Program Increment (PI)

Schindler and Kadlec trained as SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs) and additionally tapped Al Shalloway, CEO, Net Objectives, along with SAFe Fellow Jennifer Fawcett to facilitate the company’s first PI planning event. NWM asked 270 people to come together for the first two-day event—in January in Wisconsin—where they launched their first four Agile Release Trains (ARTs).

The response was heartening. People were engaged and ultimately on board. “At the end of the day, we felt a huge sense of accomplishment,” Schindler says. “Everyone understood what was expected of them.” Northwestern went on to train as many people as possible. In fact, for some team members, training was the first sprint.

SAFe for Financial Services

Making the shift in the company’s longtime waterfall culture wasn’t easy. Coaching was key, especially at the beginning. As teams went through cycles of Plan, Do, Check and Adjust, old behaviors would emerge—and need to be addressed. In truth, some individuals chose to leave—but most chose to dedicate themselves to the new way of working. The “new era” behaviors the Agile mindset fosters have taken such a firm hold companywide that they are now a factor in performance reviews.

By the second PI event, again with Fawcett facilitating, Release Train Engineers had a sense of ownership.

Transformation Railway Station

Northwestern Mutual took a clever twist on the ART program board, dubbing it Transformation Railway Station. On its board, a tunnel image represents the funnel of new work/ideas and cows represent impediments. The former is particularly apt given that, in 1859, two policy owners were killed when a train hit a cow and derailed. When the new company lacked the full funds to pay out those first life insurance claims (for $3500), NWM’s president at the time personally borrowed the funds.

On the board, laminated trains make their way along the track (the Portfolio level) from the departure station through various stages:

  • Identify—Communicate change vision, and determine Value Stream, ARTs, scope, PI planning date and training
  • Prep—Perform SAFe training
  • Launch—Conduct final prep and first PI planning event
  • Mature—Coach and develop the ART
  • Inspect and Adapt—Hold Inspect and Adapt workshop, plus second PI planning event
  • Aftercare—Complete coach strength, weakness, opportunity and threats (SWOT) assessment; discuss future coaching engagement

Through the PI, all parties keep a close watch on progress and metrics. “Leadership can walk up and know where we are at any time,” says Sarah Scott, Agile Lean Organization Coach at Northwestern Mutual.

SAFe for Financial Services
Transformation Railway Station

Cycle Time Improvement

Since deploying SAFe, and beginning its first earnest Agile efforts, Northwestern Mutual reduced Collection Feature Cycle Time by 30-50%. And surveys of business representatives indicate that IT delivers what they requested 80-90 percent of the time.

Ultimately, the changes affected the bottom-line—for the better. “After implementing SAFe, our overall effort actually came in $12 million less than originally estimated and 18 months sooner than predicted,” Kadlec says.

Now in year three, with 12 PIs behind them, the company has five SAFe instances and 14 ARTs in progress across a wide range of product areas. Northwestern Mutual provides leadership for SAFe in Wisconsin, even hosting a Scaling Agile Meetup Group that draws as many as 300 attendees to its monthly gatherings.

“We’re at a tipping point now, continuing to break down barriers,” Schindler says. “The whole organization is in the heart of a major transformation and we’re leveraging SAFe to accelerate our Lean-Agile IT transformation. We’re at a whole other level that I don’t think would have happened as quickly or with as much impact if we’d just had a handful of Scrum teams.”

* Ratings are for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and Northwestern Long Term Care Insurance Company, as of the most recent review and report by each rating agency. Northwestern Mutual’s ratings: A.M. Best Company A++ (highest), 5/2016; Fitch Ratings AAA (highest), 11/2016; Moody’s Investors Service Aaa (highest), 1/2017; Standard & Poor’s AA+ (second highest), 6/2016. Ratings are subject to change.

Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company (NWM), Milwaukee, WI and its subsidiaries.

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Amdocs – Applying Lean and Agile Practices by Adopting SAFe

“Our time-to-value has gone down using the SAFe® process. If reaching production would normally take 1½ years, now it could be eight months with the new processes and approach.”

—Hrishikesh Karekar, Lead Agile Coach, Amdocs

Challenge:

Long scoping and development times failed to keep pace with the rate of change happening within Amdocs’ client organizations.

Industry:

Software, Telecommunications

Results:

  • More frequent deliveries to production
  • 30% faster delivery for user acceptance testing
  • Monthly demos to customers, enabling early feedback and better alignment with customer expectations
  • System stabilization time down from six weeks to less than a week

Best Practices:

  • Follow SAFe Closely—Instead of modifying the approach for the company, Amdocs chose to follow the Scaled Agile Framework as closely as possible.
  • Leverage Gamification—Gamification, and early successes, motivated teams to push on and commit to the change.

The partner that made it happen:

See Partner

Introduction

In the complex and competitive communications industry, many of the world’s largest telecom and entertainment players turn to Amdocs for customer care, billing and order management systems. At the $3.6 billion company, more than 24,000 employees serve customers in over 90 countries.

Implementing SAFe in Telecommunications

The Amdocs portfolio includes a full set of BSS/OSS capabilities on a variety of platforms and technologies to support communication service providers. Projects can take anywhere from a few months to a few years to complete, requiring close collaboration across widely distributed teams. The Amdocs Delivery organization comprises approximately 5,000 professionals around the world.

In this challenging environment, Amdocs sought ways to improve quality and delivery times. The time from initial scoping to delivery simply stretched too long for the rate of change happening for Amdocs’ customers. Amdocs Delivery had been experimenting with ways to be Agile; however the need for a more structured approach was evident given projects’ scale and complexity.

“We were working in big blocks,” says Levana Barkai, a Lead of Center of Excellence in the Amdocs Israeli office. “Even scoping requirements with the customer could take a year. Only after we closed in on the bits and bytes of customer requirements (long phase of ~8 months) we started the next phases of design, development and testing. But then we would realize that the customer already has new requirements we needed to address. We needed to be more flexible to customers’ changing needs.”

Choosing a Proven, Enterprise-Level Framework

After evaluating several options to scale Agile, Amdocs Delivery decided to adopt the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) for a number of reasons. For one, the Framework offered a proven, public-facing method of applying Lean and Agile practices at an enterprise level. The Framework also offered the level of detail the company needed to truly roll out the practices at every level of the organization, and to do so quickly.

In late 2014, executives, managers and leaders began SAFe certification training, followed by teams. As they began applying Agile practices to real projects, the Delivery Transformation team, comprised of Agile Coaches, guided the SAFe implementation and execution. Unlike previous efforts at applying Agile methods, this time the company took a more disciplined approach to more closely align the implementation to the framework to reap the benefits of industry learnings.

Barkai said, “This time we’re doing it differently. We’re taking industry best practices and not modifying them for Amdocs. We set the expectation that we are implementing SAFe as is.”

Upping Adoption through Gamification

Gamification played a big role in the change management strategy, especially to drive the adoption of new practices at the Team level. One of the successful gamification techniques included “FLIP,” a game that requires teams to check items off a checklist to ensure Scrum ceremonies are done in the true spirit. Teams earn points based on how quickly they complete the checklists.

FLIP stands for:

Finish–The team finished the current iteration fully

Learn–Teams performed a retrospective to learn for the future

Improve–The retrospective resulted in specific items that teams can focus on to improve in the next iteration

Plan–Teams completed the iteration planning ceremony and are ready to begin execution for the next iteration

Implementing SAFe in Telecommunications

As teams “FLIP-ed,” they took selfie photos and posted them on physical boards with their marked checklists. Only the teams themselves checked whether criteria were really achieved—to prevent the game from being perceived as a monitoring tool.

The FLIP game drove several successful outcomes:

  • Deeper understanding–To win, teams had to review the checklist, encouraging them to delve into the details of the process broadening the number of people with a detailed understanding of the new process.
  • More discipline–More teams began following Scrum in a disciplined way, helping Amdocs Delivery achieve the new status quo much faster.

“Using gamification for Scrum adoption resulted in better outcomes,” says Hrishikesh Karekar, Lead Agile Coach. “It helped us boost motivation, better the engagement and drive positive behavioral change in teams. Most important of all, the teams loved the process and had fun.”

Delighted Customers

Team members also found reward in seeing the new process produce customer satisfaction and real results. After initial hesitance to share early and frequent demos with customers, team members were pleasantly surprised by customer reactions.

“Customers were really delighted,” Barkai says. “They have been giving us great feedback about seeing the system in such an early state. Now teams understand that this is the key to success.”

“We reduced the time to take an idea to production,” adds Karekar. “Our time to value has gone down using the SAFe process. If reaching production would normally take 1½ years, now it could be eight months with the new processes and approach.”

On average, the company has quantified delivery for user acceptance testing 30 percent faster—a major indication of value for Amdocs. Demos take place every two weeks to two months, instead of the previous four months at a minimum.

Likewise, system stabilization time has shortened in step with quality improvements, from six weeks to less than a week. And with more stability comes greater predictability in the early stages.

Next Steps

Word has spread quickly about early teams’ success, with many initiatives now running on SAFe. And management is encouraging company-wide rollout of the Framework, a goal coaches expect to reach by early next year.

“It’s not theory anymore,” Barkai says. “Now we have a lot of evidence that SAFe works. The success with SAFe implementation has generated a lot of interest in raising the bar for excellence, and laid a great foundation for the DevOps journey.”

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Software – Enterprise Agile Expansion with SAFe

“With a proven framework, we can deliver solutions much faster and with less effort. SAFe® defines the roles, teams, activities and artifacts to apply Lean and Agile principles at enterprise scale, and provides outstanding training and coaching materials to increase our chance of success.”

—Peter Vollmer, Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Challenge:

HP teams had experimented with Agile methods for years, but efforts were limited to individual teams with mixed results.

Industry:

Information Technology, Software

Solution:

  • SAFe®
  • HPE Agile Manager
  • HPE ALM

Results:

  • Teams run iterations within a number of weeks rather than months.
  • Typically, teams complete sprints within two weeks.
  • The company noticed a 20 percent drop in defects.
  • Company leaders are backing Agile globally as means of meeting strategic business goals.

Best Practices:

  • Start small – Start with one or two teams to reduce risk and create evangelists that will spread the news.
  • Use a light hand – Don’t force teams to go Agile but rather let evangelists share that Agile is fun and delivers better results.
  • Educate, educate, educate – Establish change agents and continuously educate. Many may assume they know what Agile is all about, but in reality may not.

Introduction

Created as a result of the split of Hewlett Packard into two companies in late 2015, the newly formed Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) helps organizations adapt to modern digital demands—to create secure, cloud-enabled, mobile-friendly infrastructures. HPE Software, one of four divisions within HPE, drives a significant percentage of the company’s overall profit.

Agile Expansion with SAFe

At HPE, business units span multiple continents, from the headquarters in Palo Alto, CA to Europe and the Asia Pacific. One product team may include members in up to five different locations.

The company’s journey to Agile began as early as 2001 when some HP teams began iterative development independently. In the years that followed, they went on to experiment with a mix of XP, Kanban and Scrum. However, their efforts, while approaching Agile in business, were limited to individual teams with mixed results.

To scale Agile adoption beyond a few scattered teams would require a more formalized effort and a methodical approach to ensure business continuity.

“We needed to respond more quickly to user requests and environmental changes, and reduce the cost of software development using traditional methodologies such as waterfall,” says Peter Vollmer, Distinguished Technologist at HPE. “Yet we could not risk compromising core business processes and KPIs.”

A Proven Framework for Faster Delivery

When team leaders evaluated the variety of Agile methodologies, they found the measured approach they needed in the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®).

“With a proven framework, we can deliver solutions much faster and with less effort,” Vollmer says. “SAFe defines the roles, teams, activities and artifacts to apply Lean and Agile principles at enterprise scale, and provides outstanding training and coaching materials to increase our chance of success.”

HPE began SAFe Agile expansion with a “coalition of the willing,” Vollmer says. The first to raise their hands, a team based in Fort Collins, Colorado, with members in India, became the first to begin SAFe training and training. With the Colorado team underway, a second-team at HPE’s headquarters in Sunnyvale began as well.

Beyond the Classroom

To help teams apply SAFe beyond the classroom, HPE provided some teams with access to a trainer to educate and coach them through the process. Coaches provide feedback to teams, ask questions and help them find the right answers based on context, culture and environment. To coach the first two teams, and now others, Vollmer ramped up on SAFe through a SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) course.

Success with scaling Agile at HPE has hinged on education and ensuring that team members understood SAFe clearly, including taking the effort to get on the same page regarding terminology. “We found a great deal of misunderstanding when it comes to Agile and its principles, which is why teams often struggle with accepting the change,” Vollmer says. “In order to get the most out of Agile practices, each team should have a trainer who educates and coaches them throughout the learning and adoption process.”

HPE Software - Agile Expansion with SAFe

20% Defect Drop

Early SAFe users evangelized their experience, increasing engagement and adoption. To date, several hundred team members have attended SAFe training and achieved certification. Those actively applying Agile methods numbers in the thousands, based on usage of an HPE-developed onboarding portal (Agile Manager), and continues to grow. Between 2014 and 2015, the number of registered users jumped by 50 percent as the effort gained momentum.

Though still adopting SAFe more broadly, HPE already sees an impact. “Our teams run iterations within a number of weeks rather than months, all while executing robust delivery processes,” Vollmer says. And with the change, teams run sprints in two weeks instead of four.

As SAFe practices expanded, the company also noticed a 20 percent drop in defects, as measured by its own defect-tracking application. Within the system, HPE can easily measure key performance indicators, including customer-encountered defects – insight that contributes to customer satisfaction and delivering higher-quality releases on schedule.

“Like most of our customers, HPE Software must adopt Enterprise Agile practices,” says Jerome Labat, CTO of HP Software. “Working closely with our HPE ALM (application lifecycle management) and AGM (Agile Manager) engineering teams allows us to continuously improve our product, scale out our software operations while keeping our costs under control. We‘ve seen tremendous benefits such as efficiencies, improved quality, and a reduction in time-to-market windows.”

Next Steps

HPE Software - Agile Expansion with SAFe

So far, HPE has run four Agile Release Trains (ARTs), all in one business unit. In the coming months, another business unit in Sunnyvale will quickly launch another ART.

Next, HPE Software targets training an additional thousand people on SAFe, which includes all R&D and product management roles. Toward that effort, HPE will establish an Agile transformation team and deploy up to three SPC-certified change agents in each major geographic area.

All these steps underscore the increasing importance of scaling Agile in meeting HPE’s broader strategic business goals.

“We have to get the whole of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, from a development perspective, adopting the Agile methodology, so that we can go faster and deliver more to our customers’ expectations,” said Martin Fink, CTO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

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Valpak – Achieving Business Agility Using SAFe for Digital Savings Marketplace

Valpak - Using SAFe for Digital Savings Marketplace

Industry:

Advertising & Marketing

Overview

Valpak’s IT group builds and supports technology for a wide variety of stakeholders and audiences including Consumers that are focused on saving money with coupons, Valpak Franchises that need systems to run their business and sales operations, Merchants interested in tracking and maximizing their
returns on investment, and traditional internal corporate stakeholders that need to run the core business operations.

Read the full Valpak case study to learn how they leveraged SAFe to compete in the quickly changing Digital savings marketplace.

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CSG International – Achieving Lean-Agile Transformation Using SAFe

Lean-Agile Transformation Using SAFe

Sometime after the publication of Scaling Software Agility in 2007, Dean Leffingwell started working with Mauricio Zamora, Scott Prugh (and later Mark Fuller) in a Lean-Agile transformation using SAFe at CSG International. More than 90,000 customer service agents rely on CSG (NASDAQ: CSGS ) customer care and billing solutions each day to support more than 48 million North American video, voice, and data subscribers. The company has been around for over 30 years, and the solutions have evolved during that period such that there are now more than 10 separate technology platforms at work and a significant amount of legacy code. It’s a demanding, extremely complex environment, hosting millions of transactions per day.

Industry:

Information Technology, Customer Service

We began before SAFe was codified into the framework it is today, so at CSG we truly learned together, with Mauricio, Scott, and Mark, all adding value to the conceptualization of SAFe 1.0-2.0 and on.

As SAFe evolved, CSG trained a number of internal SPCs who eventually trained over 2,000 employees using Leading SAFe.

As development practices improved, the system started putting more and more pressure on faster delivery, not just faster development, and Scott Prugh, and others, turned their minds to the DevOps challenge. Along the way, Scott became a contributor to SAFe, as the author of the Continuous Delivery Guidance article.

Fast forward to 2014. At DevOps Enterprise Summit 2014, Scott describes how they have applied SAFe, and more importantly, the Lean and Flow principles that underlie it, to substantially improve productivity and throughput from development through deployment.

If you have ever wondered how, specifically, Lean-Agile principles—like cadence and synchronization, cross-functional teams, visualizing work, backlog management, reducing batch size, synchronized release planning, and more—can increase the quality, throughput, and delivery of large scale software in a seriously complex legacy environment, you have to watch this 20-minute video!

After all, until it’s deployed, all that cool new software doesn’t provide any real value to anyone.

Mauricio helped start Scaled Agile, Inc., and was a principal developer of SAFe

Mauricio “Mo” Zamora
July 23, 1969—November 24, 2011

Mauricio helped start Scaled Agile, Inc., and was a principal developer of SAFe, but tragically, he passed away on Thanksgiving, 2011. His work lives on inside SAFe, where it improves the lives of practitioners every day; that was Mo’s personal mission. We think about Mauricio most every day, and his professionalism, knowledge, passion and integrity still set the standard we all try to adhere to.

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