Large Enterprise – Page 5

Intel – Implementing SAFe for Information Technology

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made a stunning observation: The number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every 18 months since their invention. He predicted the trend would continue into the foreseeable future—and it generally has. A billion transistors now fit on a chip the size of a pea.

Challenge:

In a complex, fast-growth industry, Intel must continuously innovate while controlling costs and maintaining quality.

Industry:

Information Technology

Solution:

SAFe®, Agile and Lean

Results:

MVE delivered 65% more products with the same capacity.
Improved Commit-to-Accept ratios from 74% to +90%.
Everything is visible to everyone.
Scope change reduced to less than 5%.

Best Practices:

Choose the right RTEs – Intel found that effective RTEs have a combination of technical background and a deeper Agile mindset/experience
Train the Leaders – Business owners and Train Management should be required to attend SAFe training. It is critical that the leaders speak for the transformation, act as role models, and reinforce direction within the organization. Leverage advocates in the organization whenever possible.
Always end with Inspect & Adapt – Just get started and then learn and adapt. Favor “progress over perfection.”
Keep it Simple – Don’t overcomplicate the process, and bring things back to the basics of Agile and Lean.

Introduction

Intel has been integral in pushing that pace of growth in the marketplace. Today, the company employs more than 100,000 people globally and reports net revenue of $59.4 billion.

But like most enterprises, as it continuously innovates and expands, Intel must balance cost control while maintaining high quality.

“With the complexity and number of the products skyrocketing, if we didn’t adjust or adapt, other than adding more people, Moore’s Law would crush us,” says Allen Ringel, Lean & Agile Transformation Leader, Intel.

Agile at Enterprise Scale

Intel’s Manufacturing Development Organization (MDO) division tests and validates Intel solutions, producing over two million lines of code every two weeks. In an effort to deliver more value, MDO began to adopt Lean-Agile practices in 2005, and by 2012 had small pockets of Scrum and a homegrown solution for scaling Scrum.

“We found the Agile approach attractive because it turns the Iron Triangle on its head,” Ringel says. “Features are negotiable but time, cost, and quality are not.”

Yet as more people and divisions were folded into MDO, Intel found it increasingly difficult to scale Scrum. Thus, a team of about 15 people tasked with driving Lean-Agile at Intel looked at industry frameworks for ways to scale more effectively.

In 2013, MDO discovered the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®), which provided clear structure and roles for taking the company into the next phase of Agile. SAFe also aligned well with the company’s broader Lean approach as a learning organization focused on continuous improvement and waste elimination.

“In an organization as large as MDO we needed to standardize the planning and execution process we use to work together to deliver value,” Ringel says. “When we encountered SAFe it provided a proven, public framework, with well-defined roles and artifacts for applying Lean and Agile at the enterprise level.”

Those 15 Lean-Agile leaders prepared for the implementation by attending the SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) Certification training. After mapping the roles, principles, practices & tools to back to what currently existed in the organization, they had essentially created a trail through the forest with a visible plan for implementation. Then they jumped in with both feet.

Leading up to the first Program Increment (PI) planning event, Intel trained more than 1,500 people. Over the course of eight weeks, they launched eight Agile Release Trains (ARTs) with 170 Scrum teams—with Christmas and New Year’s in the middle. To ease the transition, the 15 Intel Lean-Agile coaches were embedded at the 14 different sites with MDO teams to answer questions and provide guidance.

At Intel, executive backing proved critical to the success of the rollout. Mohsen Fazlian, General Manager of the division, created a shared vision by communicating clearly about the reasons for adopting SAFe and scaling Agile. Intel also reinforced Scrum rules for teams to be properly sized, co-located, 100% committed, and cross-functional. Where co-location was not possible & budgets allowed, Intel brought together people in person for at least the first planning event.

That first PI, admittedly, demanded considerably more effort than subsequent events. Yet, the ability to see immediate value spurred momentum. “The planning events were essential for teams to align at the train level while highlighting dependencies and allowing risk mitigation early on,” Ringel says.

Intel made a few enhancements to the typical SAFe deployment. They digitized the program board so they could see everything on a dashboard at all times and identify efforts quickly as progressing normally or abnormally. Lean-Agile leaders guided managers in looking at abnormal areas from a new perspective. If something turned red on the virtual program board, instead of managers saying, “Fix this,” they ask, “How can I help?”

Training 2,000 Over Three Months

Fast forward to 2017. Intel has grown Lean-Agile practices at a pace that rivals Moore’s Law. The well-defined roles and terminology within SAFe serve as essential signposts for those new to the Framework.

The structure has kept the trains on track as the organization continuously expands. A merger with another group—now combined under the name Manufacturing Value Engineering (MVE)—nearly doubled the size of the organization.

To fold in the new division, MVE trained nearly 2,000 people over three months and immediately organized them into trains. While the change came as a bit of a shock to some, the rapid integration enabled people to participate in the Agile system while trainers consistently communicated the value of the change, helping people experience it first hand and embrace their roles with the new way of working.

“We all feel part of a bigger thing and speak a common language that everyone understands,” Ringel says. “There’s clarity in the model we work in, which has definitely been something people latch on to.”

Ringel says that Intel has settled on an acceptable ratio of coaches to employees: 1:200-250. “We have shown management that we can deliver value with half a percent of the organization as transformation leaders,” he says.

One of the Largest Reported SAFe Deployment

Today, MVE has over 440 Scrums organized into 35 ARTs, including software and hardware engineers. MVE continues to widen the circle and is frequently consulted by organizations throughout Intel. Adjacent organizations at Intel interested in MVE’s success have enlisted MVE to help with scaling Agile, leading to eight additional ARTs in partner organizations. In fact, Intel’s effort is one of the largest publicly reported SAFe deployment based on number of ARTs.

While scaling has not been easy, it has been worth it. The impact of these efforts ripples across the company.

Increased Product Variants

Helped MVE to delivered 65% more product variants

Strong Performance-to-Schedule Discipline

Capacity-based planning and cadence provides a heartbeat and prevents schedule slips
Customers and upper management are changing their behaviors to protect the cadence set by Program Increments
Commit-to-Accept ratios improved from 74% to +90%
MVE minimized scope change in Program Increments to less than 5%

Increased Transparency & Visibility

The company identified bugs, impediments, weak tools and poor engineering habits
Transparency is invaluable and everything is visible to everyone
Communication & conversations are more valuable than tracking indicators in a tool
MVE now has a strong community with a common language

Institutionalized Process

Teams have demanded adherence when the environment becomes chaotic

Ultimately, Intel’s Lean-Agile efforts help it maintain the industry’s rapid rate of growth.

“Lean & Agile help us deliver more products without adding more people, so we can stay competitive and keep up with Moore’s Law,” Ringel says.

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Fitbit – Benefits of Using 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

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.

“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.

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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PlayStation Network – SAFe: Enabling Value Delivery

“I personally believe we have delivered more in the two years we’ve been using SAFe than we did in the four years prior-not in raw code, but in value. Our downtime went down and that saved the company about 30 million over the course of the year. That’s real money and a really positive outcome.”

—Tripp Meister, Director of Technology, PlayStation Network

Challenge:

Co-located teams across eight different cities found Waterfall and Agile Scrum fell short in bringing together members cohesively.

Industry:

Media and Entertainment, Consumer Products

Solution:

SAFe®

Results:

Delivered double the value compared to before practicing SAFe
Cut initial planning time by 28 percent
700 team members across 60 Scrum teams actively using SAFe
In two years, launched six trains globally, shipped more than 350 production releases, completed 22 PSIs, over 125 sprints and 250 features

Best Practices:

Work toward a common theme—”We base our milestones on an objective set that goes across all thousand people doing this, giving them a common theme to work toward,” Meister says.
Decentralize decision-making—Empower individuals to negotiate decisions together, at all levels.
Gain full buy-in—”SAFe worked because everyone bought into it, top to bottom,” Meister says.

Introduction

Since 1994, millions around the world have chosen to game with PlayStation. Today, the gaming console made by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) continues to lead with more than 150 million users globally. And most recently, it took the top spot among competing consoles in holiday sales.

PlayStation customers eagerly await new releases. Delivering a quality product on time requires tight collaboration across more than 1,000 SIE engineering team members. Co-located teams reside in eight different cities.

In meeting its targets, the SIE engineering organization found Waterfall and Agile Scrum fell short in bringing together hundreds of team members cohesively. These approaches failed to address the many dependencies across the organization and resulted in less than desirable business results. What’s more, disparate teams were able to plan only one or two iterations in advance.

“It can take 700 people to make one screen available,” explains Tripp Meister, Director Technology, PlayStation Network. “Coordinating this work and having it well organized so the company can release new features and updates is critical to success. If we just follow processes like Scrum and Agile, things can fall through the cracks, especially with the highly connected systems we build at PlayStation.”

SAFe®: Enabling Value Delivery

In early 2014, SIE leadership chose to deploy the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) to bring greater organization and collaboration to development.

“SAFe gives us top-down prioritization based on senior management direction, pulls disparate groups together into common timeframes, and enables us to manage dependencies much better,” Meister says.

SIE engaged a SAFe coach and began with the 2-day Leading SAFe® training for managers. By February of 2014, the company launched its first Agile Release Train (ART), and then followed that with ART launches every 12 weeks.

For every launch, team members come together in person. “Every 12 weeks, about 500 people coalesce in San Diego,” Meister says. “While it’s not cheap to bring everyone together, it’s what allows us to deliver value because you walk out of there and know you can get your work done. For 12 weeks, you are unimpeded.”

Prior to adopting SAFe, cadence varied across groups. Some iterated daily, while others did so weekly or bi-monthly. Now, SIE consistently adheres to a cadence of two weeks with 12-week iterations or PSIs, potentially shippable increments (identified now as Program Increments (PIs) in SAFe 4.0). They run six or seven iterations at a time, which comprise a major release.

SIE program managers serve as Release Train Engineers (RTE), which Meister refers to as the “ringmasters.” They oversee designers, user experience developers, systems architects, systems engineers, and product managers in executing on work in manageable increments and in adhering to the vision.

With the move to SAFe, the company made demos optional for developers. And when they do attend, demos remain high-level and limited to just 5-10 minutes—compared to all-day demos presented previously. “If developers do attend demos, it’s an opportunity to read the face of the product manager they delivered to,” Meister says.

Clearer Vision, Predictability and Priorities

At SEI, SAFe has fundamentally changed the culture of the engineering organization:

Greater visibility/transparency—Developers have more insight into broader company initiatives and activities. “Now, every planning session we do, every single employee practicing SAFe knows our financial results,” Meister says. “The work we do isn’t usually visible, so when you see that you impact the bottom line, it resonates better.”

Better coordination—Prior to SAFe, collaboration wasn’t necessarily constructive. Now, from Tokyo to San Diego, everyone speaks a common language when it comes to Agile. Disparate groups work together more cohesively, and SEI has enhanced coordination between Portfolio and Program management activities.

Dependency management—In an environment with many dependencies, SAFe serves as a dependency management system, improving predictability.

Clearer priorities—With weighted shortest job first (WSJF), SAFe brought a new approach to prioritizing. “SAFe has really allowed us to work on the most valuable thing at the moment,” Meister says.

$30 Million in Savings

Today, approximately 700 team members across 60 Scrum teams actively use SAFe. Since 2014, the company has launched six trains globally, shipped more than 350 production releases, completed 22 PSIs, over 125 sprints and 250 features. With the Framework, SEI also cut initial planning time by 28 percent. Instead of 1550 man-days to plan, it now takes 1125.

“I personally believe we have delivered more in the two years we’ve been using SAFe than we did in the four years prior—not in raw code, but in value,” Meister says. “Our downtime went down and that saved the company about 30 million over the course of the year. Before, we had done similar things, but they were not nearly as effective as SAFe.”

The following summary is based on a public presentation by Tripp Meister of PlayStation Network.

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Royal Philips – Adopting SAFe for Agile Transition

“Philips is continuously driving to develop high-quality software in a predictable, fast and Agile way. SAFe addresses this primary goal, as well as offering these further benefits: reduced time to market and improved quality, stronger alignment across geographically distributed multi-disciplinary teams, and collaboration across teams to deliver meaningful value to customers with reduced cycle time.”

—Sundaresan Jagadeesan, Program Manager – I2M Excellence SW Development Program

Challenge:

Philips sought to transition from traditional development to Agile, as well as bring an Agile mindset to business units beyond software to address the needs of a dynamic customer environment.

Industry:

Information Technology, Healthcare

Solution:

SAFe®

Results:

Average release cycle time down from 18 months to 6 months
Feature cycle time reduced from >240 to <100 days
Sprint and PI deliveries on time, leading to “release on demand”
Quality improvements—zero regressions in some business units
5 major releases per train per year on demand

Best Practices:

Philips recommends a straightforward, 4-step approach for any organization aiming to transition to Agile

Develop products in the Agile way with focus on basic Agile practices (Scrum)
Establish product ownership with a focus on enabling scaling aspects (SAFe practices)
Establish a release pipeline with continuous integration (supported by automation)
Adopt a DevOps culture with focus on continuous delivery (to production environment)

Introduction

Netherlands-based Royal Philips is a $26 billion medical technology company committed to making the world healthier and more sustainable through innovation. Their goal is to improve the lives of 3 billion people a year by 2025, so being able to achieve faster time to market has a direct impact not just on bottom line, but on millions of lives as well.

Royal Philip’s Agile Transformation Journey

In 2014, the company began exploring the use of Agile methods to improve processes and increase efficiency across the organization. With a traditional, project-based approach to software development, release cycle time averaged 18 months. Philips had to accelerate delivery to meet market demands.

“Changing customer expectations and the tremendous pace of market disruptions require a framework and processes that are quick, scalable and responsive,” says Sundaresan Jagadeesan, Program Manager at Philips Electronic India Limited. “The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) with its non-linear approach and adaptability, is the way of the future.”

Vigorously Deploying SAFe

At Philips, the SAFe initiative fell within a program called I2M Excellence Idea to Market. The program is part of Accelerate!, a multi-year, worldwide business-transformation program designed to change the way the company does business and unlock its full potential. To that end, the company formed a foundational core of Scrum, upon which it could build SAFe practices.

“We chose SAFe to meet our goals of reducing time to market, improving quality, strengthening alignment across geographically distributed multi-disciplinary teams, and collaborating across teams to deliver meaningful value to customers with reduced cycle time,” says Jagadeesan.

Philips is now vigorously deploying SAFe in its software businesses and is piloting its use in complex systems environments (hardware, software, mechanical engineering, customer support and electrical teams). What’s more, the company has brought SAFe beyond software development to the R&D activities of a number of businesses, particularly in the Business Group, Healthcare Informatics, Solutions & Services (BG HISS).

Driving Feature Cycle Time Down 58%

To date, Philips has 42 ARTs running across various business units, making this one of the larger-scale SAFe implementations. With a focus on the systems business, the company has launched multiple ARTs there as well, including the first ART in Philips China.

The results:

Average release cycle time down from 18 months to 6 months
A greater focus on the customer mindset
Feature cycle time reduced from >240 to <100 days
Sprint and PI deliveries on time, leading to “release on demand”
Quality improvements—zero regressions in some business units
5 major releases per train per year on demand, each catering to multiple products
3700+ people engaged in a SAFe way of working
Around 1300+ trained and formally certified in Agile and SAFe
Process and tooling alignment

The results from the original pilots caught the attention of and acted as catalyst for many other business units in Philips.

Offering Key Learnings

Through this process, transition leaders at Royal Philips learned what worked most effectively. They found it important to embed the Agile mindset and approach in other crucial areas of work—not just R&D, but in areas such as HR, Finance and Q&R—to ensure streamlined, efficient processes and quicker turnaround times.

Philips also found it critical to involve the senior management and leadership team of the organization in this SAFe transitional journey.

“Finally, to ensure an effective move to Agile, it is critical to change mindsets within the organization,” Jagadeesan says. “Agile implies continuous learning as enterprise behavior, decentralized decision-making, quick adaptiveness and more.”

“Any transformation program will be successful if you actively seek and solve business problems,” he adds.

Philips Royal recommends a number of organizational and cultural changes for any company making this transformation:

Create an environment that encourages proactive, feedback-seeking behavior
Motivate teams and give them the autonomy they need to function well
Engage in courageous conversations
Enable cultural change in the organization
Focus on building teams for the long run with emphasis on stability
Trust the team to solve problems by “teaching them to fish” instead of fishing for them
Enable teams and support them by removing impediments
Differentiate between outcome (value generated) and output (velocity-productivity improvements)
Identify value streams and optimize around value to help the alignment and effective collaboration across the team
Gain stakeholder alignment, and leadership commitment and support
Train and coach based on roles
Have a deployment strategy and change leaders’ coalition to help accelerate scaled Agile transformation

“Our Agile transformation journey is successfully underway,” says Jagadeesan. “It has been a tremendous learning experience, and we continue to deliver value to all our stakeholders and customers. Agile learning is an enriching and fun-filled journey!”

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pôle emploi – Benefits of Using SAFe in an Employment Agency

Pôle emploi is the French national employment agency tasked with providing and processing benefits for the unemployed and seniors, helping the unemployed find jobs, and providing employers with recruitment resources. They employ over 54,000 civil servants through 900+ agencies, and publish more than 4 million job offers annually.

Industry:

Government

Overview

In 2014, the agency processed 8 million requests for financial aid, distributing $31.7 billion euros in benefits.

In early 2015, pôle emploi was asked to develop a new process for job seekers, no small feat given that the organization was operating in a legacy environment which included a 1600-member IT Department comprised of Scrum and waterfall teams, working with new technology as well as COBOL systems, and integrating work from several external suppliers

They first met with key stakeholders to create the program context and agree on realistic scope, then explored options to fulfill the commitment, and sought a solution to meet the needs of these key areas:

What can we do to meet our commitments ?
What can we do to stay in sync?
What can we do to increase team collaboration?
What can we do to reduce integration risks on such a large scope ?
How can we maintain a good vision of the product?
How can we track the progress of so many teams?

Benefits of Using SAFe in Employment Agency

In early 2015, pôle emploi launched a SAFe pilot program to see how the Framework would work within their unique context. As part of this effort, they launched an Agile Release Train (ART) with 5 Scrum teams running on 3-week sprints, managing five cross-functional initiatives. Through Program Increment planning, they brought together all the key actors in the same room to identify key features that needed to be integrated, and dependencies between the different software components. pôle emploi created a new role, Delivery Manager, to track overall progress, and used IBM’s Rational Team Concert (RTC) to track team progress.

After the first few months, they were able to identify where the Framework mapped easily to their context, where it didn’t, and how to reconcile some of those differences. For instance, they opted to move from the Delivery Manager role to a Release Train Engineer (RTE) role, as defined in SAFe and began using SAFe-recommended templates to increase the visibility of the new business requirements. They also decided to align ART with their business program.

Today, the IT organization operates with both agile and non-agile teams collaborating, and is transitioning the non-agile teams to agile practices through their participation in the SAFe ART. They are working within the Framework to identify areas for continuous improvement and address questions such as:

How do we manage to take the business further within Agility?
Could WSJF help our prioritization process?
Who should assume the Product Management role in our organization?
How can we move forward with the system team?
Should we organize PO sync?
Who can be assigned the System Architect role?
Who should deal with the enablers and stories?
Will we be able to dissociate PI from our quarterly IT releases?
What do we need to do to move more teams to an agile cycle?

Get the rest of the story—including the update—below.

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Download the Update

Many thanks to the team at pôle emploi for providing the study, and sharing your experience with the SAFe Community: Cécile Auret (SPC4), Methods Engineer, Jerome Froville (SPC4), Methods Engineer, and Michel Levaslot, Manager.

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LEGO Digital Solutions – Business Agility Transformation Using SAFe

“ … this has improved the motivation of the team members. Going to work is more fun when there’s less confusion and less waste. And motivated people do better work, so it’s a positive cycle! Another impact we’ve seen is that other parts of LEGO visit the meeting, get super inspired, and start exploring how to implement some of these principles and practices in their own department. In fact, agile is spreading like a virus within the company, and the highly visible nature of the PI planning event is like a a catalyst.”

—Henrik Kniberg and Eik Thyrsted

Update:

January, 2017 : A year after Henrik Kniberg and Eik Thyrsted shared the first phase of LEGO’s SAFe journey, they are back with the next chapter of their story. Their efforts to nip and tuck SAFe for optimal results run the gamut from large edits to small tweaks, and their learnings and outcomes are captured in a 36-page in-depth summary that is full of candid commentary and describes the thought process behind each decision. You can download it below.

Industry:

Consumer Products

Introduction

One of the world’s leading manufacturers of play materials, The LEGO Group is still owned by the Kirk Kristiansen family who founded it in 1932. With headquarters in Billund, Denmark, and main offices in Enfield, USA, London, UK, Shanghai, China, and Singapore, the company employs more than 15,000 people worldwide.

In 2014, LEGO Digital Solutions turned to SAFe to improve their collaboration model and seek out what they like to refer to as the “Land of Awesome.” Their story of business agility transformation was presented at LKCE (Lean Kanban Central Europe) by LEGO’s Head of Project Management, Eik Thyrsted Brandsgård and Lean/Kanban Coach, Mattias Skarin from Crisp.

Much like creating something from LEGO^® bricks, they built their transformation one piece at a time, starting with inviting 20 managers to a 2-day Leading SAFe class. From there, they began training the teams; first one, then another until they had 20 teams trained in SAFe. They approached every step as a learning journey, allowing for creativity along the way. When something didn’t seem like a good fit, they weren’t afraid to experiment. Taking results from Inspect and Adapt, they tweaked SAFe to their needs with a simple guiding principle, “Keep the stuff that generates energy.”

“The combination of a structured system, logic and unlimited creativity encourages the child to learn through play in a wholly unique LEGO fashion.” —The LEGO Group

Their first PI Planning event—which they now refer to as their “center of gravity”—went better than expected, with the teams eager to take what they learned and apply it.

“You just can’t replace face-to-face communication, and PI planning is just a fantastic way to do that.”

Their presentation includes insights and lessons learned, such as:

You need critical mass
They can now better manage expectations
Don’t be afraid to experiment
To become good at something you need to practice it
Experimenting your way forward matters more than your selection of path

SAFe’s creator, Dean Leffingwell, calls their presentation, “One of the most insightful applications and presentations that I’ve yet seen on SAFe.” You can view their 45-minute video below.

Many thanks to Mattias and Eik for sharing their inspiring story!

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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.”

Sleeping baby clenches his parent's fingers; Soft focus and blurry

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.

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.

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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AstraZeneca – Using SAFe for Agile Adoption

“We’re delivering faster with greater quality and less manpower—resulting in substantial financial benefits from the teams that have adopted Agile to date. We expect to double our adoption of Agile this year.”

—Patty Sheehan, AZ Agile Cultural Change Lead and Coach

Challenge:

Scale Agile practices across a large global change portfolio

Industry:

Pharmaceutical

Results:

Substantial financial benefits delivered in the first year
Significantly faster time-to-value delivery
Reduced team sizes
Improved quality of outputs over previous solutions

Best Practices:

Address culture change – AZ focused on the culture shift required to support Agile by creating Culture Leaders.
Align governance and procurement – AZ aligned funding and governance approval with Agile ways of working, enabling teams to make progress quickly and benefit from Agile delivery.
Consider face-to-face ARTs – AZ required face-to-face planning at the launch of a new Agile Release Train (ART).
Stay organized – AZ used task tracking and collaboration tools extensively.

Introduction

AstraZeneca (AZ) is a global, science-led biopharmaceutical business employing 61,500 employees worldwide. Millions of patients around the globe use its innovative medicines. AZ activities span the entire life cycle of a medicine, from research and development to manufacturing and supply to the global sales and marketing of primary care and speciality care medicines that transform lives.

AZ teams are pushing the boundaries of science to make a difference through medicine for patients, their families, our stakeholders, and society in general. AZ believes that scientific research and applying leading technology are key to achieving cutting-edge innovation and at the heart of what we do.

In AZ, IT is helping to push the boundaries of science to deliver life-changing medicines by continuously improving the IT environment and working with business teams to innovate for competitive advantage.

Enterprise-wide Alignment with Agile

AZ has made use of Agile practices for a number of years at a small scale, but up to 2014 had continued to deliver the majority of its programs using traditional SAFe approaches. A decision was taken to adopt Agile methods more broadly across its IT change portfolio in order to bring about a step change in delivery performance. PA Consulting was selected by AZ to support this agile transformation effort, providing organizational change management expertise, Agile transformation strategy, training and coaching. AstraZeneca and PA Consulting selected the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) in late 2014 as the framework to be applied to support the adoption of Agile.

“We needed the ability to scale Agile quickly because we run large, complex programs at AstraZeneca,” says Patty Sheehan, AZ Agile Cultural Change Lead and Coach. “SAFe is a flexible yet robust framework that has already been proven successful. It has been the right fit for us.”

The SAFe Agile adoption approach focused on organization and culture change, supporting Agile teams directly and ensuring that processes such as procurement and regulatory approval were aligned with Agile. The Agile adoption has so far been extremely successful with teams reporting significantly faster time to value delivery (40-60%), reduced team sizes (cost reduction of 25-40%) and improved quality. Financially, we rigorously monetized a large proportion of benefits from just a small subset of teams.

The AZ team, supported by PA Consulting, rolled out SAFe in the first year to tackle the larger scale programs in its portfolio, focusing on three key areas:

Organization and culture change:
The transition to Agile ways of working can be a substantial break with traditional corporate culture. AZ defined five key organizational values: customer focus, technical leadership, operational excellence, collaboration and simplicity. By becoming Agile, AZ people would not only know these values but practice them in a methodical way.AZ tied this message into an Agile vision statement and marketing, making the change feel more personal and organic. The culture change approach included creating an extensive network of Agile Culture Leaders across the organization, focused on executive-level buy-in. The company also dedicated additional time at the end of each SAFe training course to the discussion and diagnosis of immediate actions to change culture.

Alignment of governance, procurement and regulatory processes with SAFe:
AZ replaced its traditional project governance framework with a new Adaptive Delivery Framework that was easy to use, lightweight, and crucially, supported both Scrum and Scaled Agile approaches out of the box. With this change, funding and governance approval were aligned with Agile ways of working, enabling teams to make progress quickly and benefit from Agile delivery. As a regulated pharmaceutical organization, AZ also has many regulatory obligations on its systems and processes. Defining an approach with the internal Quality Management group was a key success criteria, allowing the AZ Agile teams to deliver validated software solutions that supported regulatory requirements.

Outsourced and offshore teams:
AZ teams are typically made up of a number of different third-party suppliers working in collaboration with AZ from a variety of sites around the world. We overcame the challenges inherent in this arrangement, building on key elements of SAFe to support this way of working. The PI Planning event was crucial to the alignment and co-ordination of large, off-shore teams. These events were carried out using a mixture of on-site and video conferencing facilities, with a requirement for face-to-face planning at the launch of a new ART. Similarly, iteration alignment and system demos helped the teams to maintain visible synchronization throughout increments. The Legal and Procurement teams at AZ are revising the contractual arrangements and procurement processes to align with SAFe. Task tracking and collaboration tools were used extensively. Following the success of the Agile adoption in the first year, AstraZeneca is now creating a number of internal ARTs to deliver change, again utilizing a multi-site model.

Value Delivered in Year One

AstraZeneca is 18 months into a multi-year transition to Agile ways of working, but with the adoption of the Scaled Agile Framework and the support of PA Consulting, a substantial transformation has already occurred. Twenty large teams have adopted Agile, and over 1000 staff have been trained and supported through a robust coaching regime. More importantly, Agile maturity has increased rapidly over the year with strong adoption in each area of the business. The teams adopting SAFe have observed significantly increased time to value delivery with improved quality of the outputs over previous solutions. This has been achieved more efficiently with reduced team sizes

“We’re delivering faster with greater quality and less manpower—resulting in substantial financial benefits from the teams that have adopted Agile to date,” Sheehan says. “We expect to double our adoption of Agile this year.”

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Swisscom – Proper Agility Transformation Using Agile Development Practices with SAFe

“It usually takes about 36 months to bring a new TV platform to market but we had a minimally viable product in 8-10 months and brought the full product to market in 18 months. SAFe helped our relatively small team build and run a world-class product and guided us when in doubt, showing us the way toward Agile product development flow.”

—Simon Berg, Agile Program Manager, Swisscom Entertainment Projects

Challenge:

Swisscom had to move quickly to bring a new IPTV product to market since a competitor had already begun a similar effort.

Industry:

Telecommunications

Solution:

SAFe®
Rally® Unlimited Edition (now CA Agile Central)

Results:

Swisscom brought TV 2.0 to market in about half the time of comparable projects, ahead of the competition.
The company decreased the time from code-ready to mass rollout from 9-12 months to no longer than six weeks.
The product won a coveted industry award for “Best multi-screen experience.”
Last year, IPTV signups grew by nearly 14 percent.
PI Planning recommendation score from participants: 8.3/10

Best Practices:

Test Automation—Swisscom reduced end-to-end test team size from dozens to just three, while maintaining quality – and deployed those individuals to other value-producing functions.
Program Increment Planning—Planning with SAFe led to new alignment and momentum.
Most Valuable Feature First—WSJF Abstract (Weighted Shortest Job First) helped prioritize features and quantify the cost of delay.

Introduction

Across the globe, consumers are increasingly choosing IPTV over cable. In Switzerland, more than 1.37 million customers now subscribe to Swisscom’s cloud-based service, Swisscom TV 2.0.

While the growth of Swisscom TV 2.0 is a success story in itself, so too is the company’s journey to bring the product to market in a highly competitive industry where speed can make the difference between success and failure.

Thanks to Agile development practices with SAFe and a new level of collaboration between business and IT, the Engineering group at Swisscom Entertainment achieved the feat in half the time of typical projects, with a small but nimble team that helps proper agility transformation.

“It usually takes about 36 months to bring a new TV platform to market but we had a minimally viable product in 8-10 months and brought the full product to market in 18 months,” says Simon Berg, Agile Program Manager, Swisscom Entertainment Projects. “SAFe helped our relatively small team build and run a world-class product and guided us when in doubt, showing us the way toward Agile product development flow.”

SAFe: The Blueprint Swisscom Sought

In 2012, Swisscom initiated plans to bring a new IPTV offering to the market, to go beyond the basic product currently available.

This time, Swisscom wanted to add features that newly available technology would make possible. Adding urgency, the company’s largest competitor had reportedly already begun work on a similar product.

At the time, Swisscom ran what Berg describes as a PMI-style, waterfall, multi-project environment that was transitioning into a home-grown, scaled Scrum approach. A year prior, Swisscom had taken steps to realize a product house model by moving “business” and “IT development” groups into one organization.

Now, the Engineering group sought to scale Agile in earnest, leading it to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

“Many things we tried to come up with on our own were already defined in a structured manner in SAFe,” Berg says. “It clicked with us, and we began transitioning to SAFe almost immediately after discovering it. With SAFe, we were able to take incremental transformation steps, profiting from the vast body of knowledge it represents.”

Finally: Big-Room Success

The team had already implemented three-month program increments with teams structured along program lines. However, they had not yet tried cross-functional, big-room planning meetings.

After diving into SAFe, the Engineering group held its first Program Increment (PI) planning session with approximately 70 people across multiple functions, including product owners, IT operations, business operations, product management and experience development.

“I was pleased to see which people were talking to each other, people who had not talked before,” Berg says. “Business owners and IT ops engineers talked about what they do and their priorities. They were giving each other their part of the vision and could finally align and work together.”

“We came out of the first PI planning session with a decent plan that lasted for the PI, except for one other small planning session,” Berg adds.

Today, PI planning has become standard practice. Noted one product manager after the group’s ninth PI planning meeting: “It’s challenging, but I don’t want to work differently ever again.”

More Flexible in a Fast-Changing Market

In total, about 120 people ultimately worked on Swisscom TV 2.0, in more than 10 teams of teams, spanning from pure software development to video streaming, building up the data center capabilities and working to design the TV set-top box and remote control hardware. When you count non-Agile suppliers, the project included approximately 20 teams.

SAFe’s focus on alignment and shared vision kept diverse stakeholders in sync, accelerating progress and enhancing quality. “The focus on showing your work and releasing often for feedback helped us build a better product,” Berg says.

Likewise, SAFe provided flexibility when it mattered most. Mid-project, Swisscom decided to improve the product by removing time limits on the storage of recordings—a major product enhancement.

Berg also stresses the value of the WSJF concept (Weighted Shortest Job First) in helping prioritize features. “Quantifying the cost of delay was perhaps the most impactful learning of SAFe,” Berg says. “It was the first formula that really helped us have the right discussion about our priorities and what to build, aligned around the benefits to the customer.”

Such agility in business also helped the company become one of the first IPTV providers globally to launch Ultra HD Video on Demand, as well as Ultra HD live TV in early 2016.

Code Ready in Six Weeks

On the Swisscom TV 2.0 release, the company decreased the time from code-ready to mass rollout from 9-12 months to no longer than six weeks. “We don’t know of a comparable case in the industry,” Berg says.

Swisscom also did it more efficiently. Where test team size was once dozens of people, now with test automation, testing requires just three people while still maintaining product quality. Those testers now focus on other value-generating functions, ensuring that quality gets built into the process.

Beyond internal success, the industry took notice as well. The product went on to win a coveted award for “Best multi-screen experience”—an honor not usually bestowed on telecommunications companies.

Perhaps the greatest rewards: strong customer satisfaction scores and product sales. Last year, IPTV signups grew by nearly 14 percent.

Next Steps

Swisscom now deepens its SAFe adoption, with newly set priorities for elaborating on the economic framework concept and the solution intent concept, along with improving DevOps. Other Swisscom product units have also taken interest in adopting SAFe.

“For Swisscom TV, this has become a new way of doing business,” Berg says. “Others are looking into how we work because they see it drives us forward.”

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Suggested Case Study: Amdocs

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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.

Telecommunication mast with microwave link and TV transmitter antennas in night sky . long exposure about 2-3 minutes

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

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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Introduction

Agile at Enterprise Scale

Training 2,000 Over Three Months

One of the Largest Reported SAFe Deployment

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Challenge: Delivering for Consumer Shopping Seasons

Always Planning, Always Delivering

A Big Picture—for the First Time

100% Delivery on Objectives

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Introduction

SAFe®: Enabling Value Delivery

Clearer Vision, Predictability and Priorities

$30 Million in Savings

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Introduction

Vigorously Deploying SAFe

Driving Feature Cycle Time Down 58%

Offering Key Learnings

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Overview

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Update:

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Introduction

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Solution:

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Introduction

300-Day Cycles

A Second Attempt at Agile

The Missing Piece

The First Program Increment (PI)

Transformation Railway Station

Cycle Time Improvement

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Introduction

Enterprise-wide Alignment with Agile

Value Delivered in Year One

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SAFe: The Blueprint Swisscom Sought

Finally: Big-Room Success

More Flexible in a Fast-Changing Market

Code Ready in Six Weeks

Next Steps

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