“By combining SAP Activate and SAFe, we combine a structured approach with Agile execution. This enables us to drive our SAP S/4HANA transformation forward in a planned, flexible, and effective manner across our complex business processes – in line with the Swiss public transport.”
— Toni Oberhofer, Program Manager at SBB
Overview
Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) is a joint stock company under special law with its registered office in Bern. Its public services include passenger services and rail infrastructure. It transports more than 1,390,000 people and 170,000 tonnes of freight to their destinations every day.
SBB connects people, goods and places, bringing millions of people together and linking up cities, cantons, and rural regions. Day in, day out, its connections are there for Switzerland. More than 35,000 employees make SBB the backbone of the public transport system and ensure that its customers reach their destination safely, reliably and on time.
SBB is facing a significant challenge in harmonizing processes across its employees and multiple value streams while implementing SAP S/4HANA applying a greenfield transformation approach. To tackle this complexity, SBB combines the structured methodology of SAP Activate with the agility and collaboration enabled by the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).
Why SAP Activate and SAFe?
SAP Activate provides a structured delivery model, pre-configured tools for managing requirements, and accelerated delivery through automated regression testing and continuous deployment.
SAFe creates a common language, aligned processes, and fostered collaboration across teams. Its Lean-Agile principles enables SBB to adapt to evolving business needs.
Key Benefits to SBB
Streamlined Delivery: SAP Activate’s delivery model ensured high-quality, efficient deployments. Continuous testing and deployment minimized errors and supported rapid implementation cycles.
Enhanced Agility: SAFe enabled flexibility and faster responses to changing market demands. Teams were empowered to work more autonomously while maintaining alignment with overall goals.
Strategic Alignment: Enterprise Portfolio Management harmonized processes across divisions, reduced resource duplication, and maximized value delivery.
Managed Complexity: Value nodes and a 30-week tactical planning approach optimized decision-making, ensuring smooth collaboration across value streams.
Culture of Collaboration: Foundational training in SAFe and SAP Activate for the whole workforce. Collaboration patterns for planning and execution established across different value streams.
Results of the business transformation with SAP and SAFe
In June 2023, S/4 SBB celebrated its first successful go-live, becoming Switzerland’s largest SAP S/4HANA transformation. In January 2025, two more divisions went live with the new SAP solution. Those milestones highlighted how the integration of SAP Activate and SAFe accelerates value delivery, enhances agility, and ensures seamless system integration.
By leveraging these complementary approaches, SBB not only modernized their ERP systems but also strengthened their ability to navigate complexity, foster innovation, and maintain a competitive edge in the fast-evolving transportation industry.
Co-hosted with Platinum Partner Flow Sphere, this German-language event delves into the use of SAFe® in administrative sectors. Gain valuable insights and practical tips to ensure your transformation journey is a success.
Speakers
Stephan N e c k
SAFe Practice Consultant – T (SPCT6) & Flight Levels Guide | Managing Director | Flow Sphere
This immersive experience in Zürich will be packed with networking opportunities and content focused on pivotal themes, such as: • Agile Leadership • Business Agility • Improve & Accelerate • Measure & Grow
“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.
“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.”
