As many companies struggle to implement Agile at scale in distributed environments, this case study describes Accentureโs experience enabling faster delivery and speed-to-market by implementing scaled Agile programs using SAFe, along with the adoption of DevOps principles.
Accenture is a $30 billion global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 336,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, named by Fortune magazine as one of the top 100 companies to work for from 2009-2015. As part of their effort to accelerate software delivery, Accenture has adopted Agile and DevOps on a large scale across its Global Delivery Network, leveraging the Scaled Agile Frameworkยฎ (SAFeยฎ) with a range of tools. In addition, Accenture helps its clients successfully shift to Agile development using SAFe along with DevOps to drive high performance.
In the provided case study, Accenture shares its insights on addressing process, organization, and tool challenges, including:
Solution misalignment between teams
Integration of Agile with Waterfall
Different timezones, customs, and cross-team activities
Different DevOps tools between teams
Early Quantitative Benefits
The early benefits are compelling:
50% improvement in merge and retrofit (based on the actual effort tracked)
63% improvement in software configuration management (effort to support SCM activities)
59% improvement in quality costs (percentage of defects attributed to SCM and deployment)
90% improvement in build and deployment (process and effort to raise deployment requests)
Early Qualitative Benefits
Improved demand management and traceability from portfolio through to Agile delivery teams
Granular configuration management and traceability
Integration with Agile lifecycle tools to allow story-based, configuration management driven from meta data
Real-time traceability of status for build and deployment
Automated build and deployments, including โone-button deploymentโ
Developer efficiencies as a consequence of improved tool interaction times and processes
Many thanks to Accentureโs Mirco Hering, APAC lead for DevOps and Agile, Andrew Ball, senior manager, and Ajay Nair, APAC Agile lead for Accenture Digital, for taking the time to share their insights and learnings. Their story is an inspiration to all of us in the SAFe community.
Elekta is a human care company pioneering clinical solutions for treating cancer and brain disorders. They develop sophisticated, state-of-the-art tools and treatment planning systems for radiation therapy, radiosurgery and brachytherapy, as well as workflow enhancing software systems across the spectrum of cancer care. Headquartered in Stockholm, Elekta employs around 3,800 employees globally in 30 countries.
Industry:
Software
Overview
Every day 100,000 patients receive diagnosis, treatment or follow-up by an Elekta solution
Elektaโs development goal is to enhance patient and customer value by providing solutions that improve, prolong and save lives better and faster. With teams working in several time zones, and individual members having different backgrounds and history working on separate products, their challenge was to create an environment where teams could better align with global priorities and with each other.
In 2007, Elekta adopted Scrum, but in their attempt to scale up, they saw that the Scrum teams were operating in silos which created issues with dependency, integration, and visibility of the big picture, all causing lack of clarity on overall objectives and plan. Wanting to address all areas of the enterprise, Elekta took a holistic view and introduced SAFe to their Scrum teams, launching their first Agile Release Train (ART) in 2013. Soon thereafter, they expanded to the Program level and trained all of their teams.
Today, Elekta is running 4 ARTs with 20 teams across three continents. Their SAFe journey has delivered significant gains and improvements in several areas, provided valuable lessons learned, as well as a roadmap to refine their value streams, and tackle ongoing challenges, including a deeper integration of Lean-Agile practices at the Portfolio level. Here are the highlights:
Introduction of SAFe Led to Key Changes in the Organization
Introduced Rally for Agile project management
Adopted organization and roles for SAFe (RTE, PM/PO, UX, EA, Agile coaches)
Streamlined development tooling and processes
Updated the Quality System for Agile development
Simplified project time reporting
Gains Made Through Introduction of SAFe
Improved quality
Cross site and cross functional collaboration
PI Planning provides both vertical and horizontal alignment
Transparency through Rally, reports, and SAFe ceremonies
Agile Portfolio estimation & planning drives realistic Portfolio plan
Elektaโs Top 3 Tips for Starting up SAFe
Get buy-in from managementโthis is not isolated to development
Plan for a lot of training and exchange of practices to ensure an understanding of the principles behind (the mechanics are easy to learn). Bring in consultants/experts!
Use Agile to introduce it (donโt wait until everything is planned and in control, just start!)
Take a moment to read the Speaker notes in the PowerPoint; youโll see that Elekta has been generous with sharing some of the context and nuance that can be especially helpful for anyone going through a SAFe transformation.
Many thanks to Elektaโs Director of Engineering, Petrine Herbai, Manager of Engineering, Lars Gusch, and our Gold Partner, Rally Software; we appreciate all the great information you have shared, and look forward to hearing more about your continuing journey of SAFe transformation.
Many thanks to Elektaโs Director of Engineering, Petrine Herbai, Manager of Engineering, Lars Gusch, and our Gold Partner, Rally Software; we appreciate all the great information you have shared, and look forward to hearing more about your continuing journey of transformation.
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