Southwest Airlines is famous for its employee-first culture, dedication to customer service, and sense of warmth, friendliness, and fun. And when it comes to meeting the urgent demands of technology development in a highly complex logistical environment, a thriving culture is just the start to meeting the challenge.
To live up to Southwest’s purpose of connecting people to what’s important in their lives through reliable, low-cost air travel, Southwest began its Agile transformation in 2018 in operations. The fantastic results led to SAFe® adoption throughout Southwest.
Now four-plus years into their Agile transformation, more than 2,000 Southwest employees collaborate cross-functionally across the organization.
Quick Facts:
Operates at more than 120 airports across 11 countries worldwide
Carried 126 million customers in 2022
Operates more than 4,000 flights per day during peak season
Started SAFe transformation in 2018
More than 2,000 employees involved in SAFe across reservations, customer experience, crews, scheduling, training, aircrafts, ground operations, maintenance, and more
Key Outcomes:
Streamlined the number of steps and handoffs between business and technology and made them more predictable, saving time and money.
By adopting SAFe at the portfolio level, Southwest went from 7–9 months of planning in 2017, plus variable building, testing, and deploying timeframes (see timeline below) to releasing every iteration in 2020
From 2018–2020, they saw increased deployment success and 5x faster time to market (28 releases with 45% deployment success in 2018, to 349 releases and 93% deployment success in 2020)
Experienced better alignment around business value while measuring greater than 80% of business value delivered
The LPM in Practice series returns with an exciting view of Portfolio prioritization and Participatory Budgeting in SAFe organizations. In today’s business climate, organizations are continuously seeking innovative approaches to improve their responsiveness, and overall business outcomes. Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) has emerged as SAFe’s key strategy for achieving these goals. However, traditional funding models pose a challenge to realizing the promise of LPM and SAFe. Participatory budgeting is a collaborative portfolio event for allocating the portfolio budget to its value streams, and it’s adoption is increasing SAFe portfolios.
This panel discussion explores the integration of Participatory Budgeting and SAFe’s new application, SAFe CoFund, to advance LPM and enable focus on the right portfolio investments to achieve the strategy. The panelists feature industry experts from Cprime who have successfully implemented the shift and were the early adopters of CoFund.
Speakers
Neru Obhrai
Principal Consultant at Radtac, SAFe SPCT at Cprime, Inc.
Neru is a certified SPCT and experienced Transformation Coach, who has lead and delivered a range of large scale, complex business transformation programmes. After 3 decades of delivery of business solutions in the airline sector, Neru has also led multiple transformation initiatives within the finance and telco sectors. As a principal consultant with Cprime, Neru takes pride in establishing high performance diverse departments to deliver quality solutions and services and championing the drive for excellence
Ken France
VP, Enterprise Agility Practice and SAFe Fellow at Cprime, Inc.
Ken France is an executive enterprise coach cultivating transformational organizations, a recognized and highly-rated trainer, and one of the first US minted SPCT and a SAFe Fellow. Ken France has worked with SAFe since its inception, contributing actively to the framework, including SAFe LSE/4.0. With 25+ years’ experience in Information Technology, Ken has successfully supported multiple Fortune 100 enterprises tackling large and complex scaled agile transformations across numerous verticals.
Isaac Montgomery
SAFe Fellow and SPCT at Cprime, Inc.
I’ve spent the past 25 years working with organizations across the spectrum of sizes and industries seeking to realize the promises of business agility – responsiveness, productivity, quality, predictability, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. By helping leaders understand how their operating model and leadership practices drive the culture and performance of the organization, we’ve been able to realize lasting change and measurable improvements. Through these experiences I’ve become recognized as a thought leader in the areas of lean portfolio management (LPM), agile product management (APM), and organizational change management (OCM). While I regularly speak and teach at conferences around the world, and am a contributor to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), my passion remains working in the field, helping organizations achieve sustainable competitive advantage and business agility.
Deema Dajani
SAFe Fellow and Product Manager at Scaled Agile, Inc.
A SAFe Fellow, Deema helps large institutions create the environment to shape disruption like a startup with business agility and Lean Portfolio Management (LPM). Deema currently serves as a Scaled Agile Product Management Director focused on enabling sustainable SAFe transformations at scale. Co-founder of Women in Agile, a non-profit organization focused on breaking barriers and inclusivity in the agile community.
Join SAFe Chief Methodologist, Andrew Sales, as he walks through the Applying SAFe 6.0 for Business Agility workshop and provides helpful tips for facilitating this workshop in your organization.
When:
September 28, 2023, 8:00 am – September 28, 2023, 9:00 am
Where:
Zoom
Who:
LACE Members, Release Train Engineer, SAFe Program Consultant
This one-day workshop will facilitate the development of a backlog of items to implement SAFe 6.0 guidance. Using the modules most relevant to their organization, attendees will have the opportunity to consider their own context and design a backlog of items to implement SAFe 6.0 guidance across the enterprise.
Struggling with PI Planning? Join us for a thoughtful exploration of strategies that enhance real-time collaboration and minimize cognitive load in PI Planning.
This session is designed to be interactive and focused on providing value to participants, with an emphasis on learning and growth. Whether you’re new to the field or an experienced RTE, we invite you to join us in this informative webinar.
Highlights include:
Real-Time Synchronization: Explore how bi-directional sync with ALM tools can eliminate delays, fostering efficient communication and information sharing.
Effortless Planning to Execution: An exploration of methodologies that ensure a smooth transition from planning stages to actionable execution, keeping aligned with overall objectives.
Collaboration Beyond Boundaries: Insights into tools and practices that enable effective collaboration, regardless of location.
Smart Visualization: Get insights into optimal planning through visual aids that guide, rather than dictate, the planning process.
With a focus on customer success and a user-first approach, I leverage my expertise in product/market strategy and execution to deliver tangible results that delight end-users and propel the business forward. Whether it’s identifying pain points, uncovering unmet needs, or discover hidden opportunities, I thrive on the challenge of creating innovative and impactful products that customers love.
Rosana Johnson
SPCT Candidate / SAFe Strategic Advisor
Rosana has twenty-five years of experience and is a successful result driven leader. She has an extensive background in transforming people, systems, tools and processes. Her expertise ranges from creating deliverables for complex tooling deployments to transforming teams to agile ways of working to drive productivity while delivering a solid customer/employee experience by accelerating time to market and ensuring quality and business agility.
The Implementing SAFe® Exemplar course, offered by Scaled Agile, Inc., stands out as a distinctive learning experience. It is taught by the world’s most seasoned SAFe® Fellows and members of the Scaled Agile Framework team. This is your golden chance to learn directly from the architects of the framework, those at the cutting edge of pressing business challenges. Bring your toughest questions and get insights straight from the experts. You won’t want to miss this unparalleled opportunity with the Implementing SAFe® Exemplar.
Be sure to check out additional course offerings provided by our Partner Community on the Training Calendar.
Want to become SPCT certified? Learn more about the SAFe® Practice Consultant-T (SPCT) certification here.
What makes this an Exemplar?
Taught by SAFe Framework team members and SAFe Fellows
Testbed for new IP
SPCT Immersion week
Event Overview
Ready to lead a Lean-Agile transformation?
Need a deeper understanding of the Scaled Agile Framework?
Looking to teach SAFe courses yourself?
Implementing SAFe® offers attendees the broadest level of insight into each layer of a SAFe implementation. This course is for those who want to be a leader in a Lean-Agile transformation. This course and resulting certification will help you understand the roles of each person in SAFe organization and then plan and guide a SAFe transformation.
You’ll learn how to identify value streams, launch agile release trains, optimize flow, and apply OKRs to Strategic Themes that define the targeted outcomes for the SAFe transformation. You’ll also practice the principles of Agile product management and product delivery. If you’re looking for a comprehensive and practical understanding of how to help an organization achieve business agility effectively, Implementing SAFe® is the right course for you.
Instructors
Dean Leffingwell Co-Founder and Chief Methodologist (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on Lean-Agile best practices, Dean Leffingwell is an author, entrepreneur, and software and systems development methodologist. His two best-selling books, Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise and Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises, form much of the basis of modern thinking on Lean-Agile practices and principles. Founder of several successful startups, including Requisite, Inc., makers of RequisitePro (acquired by Rational), Mr. Leffingwell also served as Chief Methodologist to Rally Software, and prior to that, as a Sr. Vice President at Rational Software (now part of IBM). He currently serves as Chief Methodologist to Scaled Agile, Inc., which he co-founded in 2011.
Andrew Sales Chief Methodologist and SAFe Fellow (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Andrew Sales is an experienced Agile Consultant and previously led the Agile Services Practice across EMEA for CA Technologies (formerly Rally). Drawing on his diverse range of skills and experiences from project management, software development, product management and sales, Andrew has worked with many organizations to help them successfully establish better ways of working. He is passionate about continuous improvement and provides coaching to teams and leaders, supporting them in achieving improved outcomes for their business and their customers.
Rebecca Davis SAFe Methodologist and SAFe Fellow (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Rebecca Davis has been leading Agile teams, trains, and leaders for over 15 years within startups, mid-size, and Fortune 100 enterprises. Davis brings her experience as a former Release Train Engineer, Scrum Master, Portfolio Lead, Quality Director, and LACE Director into her current activities. Rebecca is a SAFe Fellow, Methodologist, and SPCT on the Scaled Agile Framework Team who highlights joy and energy within her work. Most recently, Rebecca led the Agile Transformation as Director of Scaled Agile Practices and Leader of the Digital LACE within the Fortune 4 and Global 7, where over 4 years, she expanded Scaled Agile Practices from 300 to over 10k working within a Scaled Agile model across the organization, including IT, Marketing, Digital experiences, and Retail business
When your CEO sponsors a strategic initiative to replace a core system in just two years, the pressure to deliver is enormous.
When your CEO sponsors a strategic initiative to rip and replace a core system in just two years, the pressure to deliver is enormous. To add to the challenge, the migration would have to be a hard cutover from the old system to the new; there was just no way to run two systems simultaneously.
This is what the teams at Oracle’s Application Labs (OAL) were faced with when they were tasked with migrating their entire Order-to-Revenue system from on-premise to the Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP. It’s well known that only a fraction of cloud migrations get completed on time, and even fewer deliver all the value that was hoped for. The Oracle teams were determined that this wasn’t going to be their story.
SAFe was adopted to handle the scale and complexity of the work and to provide an engagement model that would help keep the teams connected, engaged, and aligned with each other and with the business. SAFe would also help Oracle’s thinking evolve from a project to product mindset.
The goals were ambitious, and with the addition of a new way of working, there was no shortage of skeptics. Transformation leaders took a light-handed approach to help people get comfortable with the process and slowly build trust. They’d say, “Hey, try this out, we are only going to use it for two weeks, then we can adjust.” This approach ultimately paid off in big ways.
The migration took place as planned over a summer weekend in 2021, which was, by itself, an enormous win for the OAL teams. There were bonus benefits as well. The product was better than anticipated with improvements in order productivity, velocity, data quality, and usability, as well as automation.
Perhaps the most profound effect is that their sense of identity has changed. It’s no longer IT vs. the business; it’s all one organization. From the CEO’s office to the EVP of Fusion Product Development to OAL’s leadership, there is alignment from strategy to execution. As Oracle’s VP of Global Quote to Order Operations, Maninder Bedi said, “We are working together. We became one.”
Presented at the 2022 SAFe Summit
About Oracle:
Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit oracle.com.
Business agility requires close synchronization across the organization. In this webinar, learn how value stream management (VSM) aligns people and teams across functions to shared principles, practices, and tools that enable their businesses to sense and respond quickly to changing market conditions.
When:
July 18, 2023, 9:00 am – July 18, 2023, 10:00 am MST
Derek leads the Enterprise Agility Solutions Engineering Guild at Atlassian, where they help the largest and most complex organizations reach better outcomes. Prior to Atlassian, Derek helped transform how people work at companies such as Walmart, GEICO, and Capital One and federal agencies like National Archives and National Institutes of Health. He has authored 2 books and over 600 articles.
Marc Rix
SAFe® Fellow (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Marc helps large enterprises leverage the game-changing power of Lean, Agile, and DevOps at scale. He has been practicing Agile for over 20 years and is an internationally recognized thought leader, consultant, trainer, adviser, and speaker. Marc is a SAFe Fellow and member of the Framework team at Scaled Agile.
