Business Size: Large Enterprise

Philips

“The Lean Portfolio Management is really unique for our business and now it’s being requested all over the place, because it really was a game changer. We outperformed in 2023 financially. We achieved our OKRs. The strategy was super clear. We had improved our quality significantly. So we didn’t have any major noncompliance… and most importantly we gained back the trust from the markets and the customers first.”

—Ruti Avitan, VMO Leader, EMR & CM, Philips

Industry:

Healthcare, Medical Devices, Technology

Quick Facts:

  • Philips Global has 18 businesses across multiple continents, including 5 informatics businesses, which have adopted SAFe
  • In 2021, Philips Global invested 1.8 billion euros in research and development across all its business units
  • The Philips EMR & CM informatics products alone improve the lives of 95 million patients every year
  • Informatics customers include more than 9,000 hospitals across 70 countries

Lessons Learned:

  • Transformation is possible in a highly regulated environment like healthcare. Philips EMR & CM assigned a person to each team who was dedicated to documentation and validation in order to reduce delays and meet the more than 27 different compliance requirements they faced.
  • By moving away from an endless backlog of service tickets and managing defects to developing new tools and services, teams create more room for growth and innovation. They do this by defining epics, MVPs, and understanding value streams.
  • People-centric innovation: Philips asked themselves, what do people (in this case, patients and clinicians, nurses and technicians, consumers) really need? And how can they best support healthcare professionals with their workflow?
  • Sometimes focusing on fewer projects allows for greater scale, more innovation, better quality, and better flow of value to the customer.

Overview

In the past decade, Philips has transformed from a household products company to a focused leader in healthcare technology. The company offers medical devices such as CT and MRI machines, healthcare devices for personal use such as toothbrushes, and informatic systems for hospitals. 

Philips has five informatics or software business units ranging from electronic medical records (EMR) and care management to clinical informatics, radiology, cardiovascular, and more. They began their SAFe transformation within informatics. “When I joined, this business specifically was fully waterfall, very hierarchical, especially in the R&D organization,” says Ruti Avitan, VMO Leader of the EMR & CM informatics business at Philips. “It was a business in trouble. We had a lot of red projects because of delays. We have more than 25 projects running in parallel. Each one had a different delivery date. We had escalation from customers on quality, and so on. So the motivation to do something was really high.” 

Beginning in 2022, SAFe allowed the organization to define a Lean-Agile way of working and move from the traditional hierarchy to cross-functional teams. They shifted from project to product centricity, enhanced their knowledge, reduced the backlog, and made room for innovation. The result is an enterprise that is people- and patient-centric, focused on scalable innovations that prioritize safety, patient outcomes, supply chain resilience, and quality.

“When I joined, this business specifically was fully waterfall, very hierarchical, especially in the R&D organization… It was a business in trouble. We had a lot of red projects because of delays. We have more than 25 projects running in parallel. Each one has a different delivery date. We had escalation from customers on quality and so on. So the motivation to do something was really high.”

—Ruti Avitan, VMO Leader, EMR & CM, Philips

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Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG: Global Transformation with SAFe

Quick Facts:

  • 34 global markets
  • 10,000 employees worldwide
  • Started using SAFe in 2017 with customer-facing domains, then scaled and expanded to the portfolio level
  • Has 1,000 tech experts worldwide working in 6 tech hubs, producing 169 global products

Key Outcomes:

  • Six years ago, they had one or two product rollouts a year in just a couple of markets. In 2022, they were able to introduce roughly 40 products in 34 markets.
  • In 2022, reached €130 billion portfolio: €58 billion in new business and €27 billion in revenue
  • Faster application-to-payout times: Reduced time for customers applying for financing from several days to minutes. In China, for example, customers can apply and receive payment in 2.3 minutes. 
  • Moving away from waterfall methods and adopting SAFe, they were able to launch better technology, better operating systems, AI and face recognition, integrate different data sources, and utilize better risk models. 
  • Customer focus: Responded to customer apprehension about electric cars and fear of not having enough range by introducing rental and subscription models. This way, customers can become more familiar with the electric offerings and the charging ecosystem before buying.
  • Increased digitization and automation rate to 90 percent. SAFe allowed Mercedes-Benz to achieve the shift from hardware to software, master the electrification of vehicles, meet requirements for zero emission, and adapt to environmental, geopolitical, and consumer demands. 
  • Created a culture of collaboration. Instead of relying solely on roles like RTE, Scrum Master, and Product Owner, Mercedes-Benz Mobility fosters a culture that prioritizes diversity and uses the best skill sets.

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Oracle Boosts Order Velocity and Productivity with SAFe

Oracle is a tech company with a long history of providing software products and services. They operate in a few main business segments — cloud and license, hardware, and services — selling cloud-engineering services, systems, and database management solutions to customers around the world. Oracle’s overarching mission is “to help people see data in new ways, discover insights, and unlock endless possibilities.”

One thing that makes Oracle unique is their in-house Oracle Labs, where researchers look for novel approaches and methodologies to solve complex technical problems. Oracle Labs are known for taking on projects with high risk and uncertainty that are difficult to tackle within a product-development organization. This is where agility is crucial to success, and where Oracle began its SAFe® journey.

Quick Facts:

  • 170,000 employees worldwide; 48,000 developers and engineers
  • Industry’s broadest and deepest suite of cloud applications
  • Serves 2 million customers in 175 countries
  • The Oracle Applications Lab started SAFe with 8 teams and less than 100 people. By the second PI, the teams doubled to 16. By the fourth PI, they grew to 34 teams.
  • Oracle tailored SAFe to their unique needs and challenges using “sub-ARTs” and arrays, or groupings of people to accelerate flow

Key Outcomes:

  • Saw significant improvement in order velocity: Oracle reported a 15% increase in touchless orders. More than 80% of all orders became automated and 95% of cloud orders became automated.
  • Saw a 10% increase in employee productivity due to reliable data capture, an intuitive UI, and simplified validations
  • 54% of manual accounting was eliminated across the organization
  • Oracle’s books closed and earnings were reported to shareholders in less than 10 days (21 days faster than the average Fortune 500 company)

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An Oracle Success Story: How a Mission-critical Cloud Migration Brought the Business and IT Together

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.

S&P Global: Implementing LPM—5 Things to Know Before you Start

Navigating the resistance, culture issues, and product strategy transparency challenges when adopting Lean Portfolio Management

Does your organization have trouble prioritizing? Does your organization understand how much investment they are making into certain product and technology areas? Are your C-levels aligned around the current year goals? Do they have common incentives? Do you have the right tooling to support this process?

All these questions were asked at the beginning of our Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) transition at a division within S&P Global and not all the answers were clear.

After training our C-levels in a Leading SAFe® class, the consensus was that we needed to implement LPM NOW!

In this story, we share the resistance, culture issues, and product strategy transparency challenges that we navigated when adopting LPM. We will also dive into the outcomes that made the implementation worth it. By the end of this talk, you will leave with five things that might help you with an easier LPM implementation journey.

About S&P Global:

S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) provides essential intelligence. We enable governments, businesses and individuals with the right data, expertise and connected technology so that they can make decisions with conviction. From helping our customers assess new investments to guiding them through ESG and energy transition across supply chains, we unlock new opportunities, solve challenges and accelerate progress for the world.

Presented at the 2022 SAFe Summit by:

Mary Thorn
Vice President IT Strategy and Transformation, S&P Global

Business Agility Takes Off at Southwest Airlines

How the world’s largest low-cost carrier leverages SAFe as a business operating model to live up to its mantra of “Better, Faster, More Efficient”

Southwest Airlines is famous for its employee-first culture and “Fun-LUVing” Attitude. 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 friendly, 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 years (and counting) into their Agile transformation, more than 2,000 Southwest Employees collaborate cross-functionally across the organization. View this rare keynote interview to learn how the world’s largest low-cost air carrier is breaking ground in the airline industry by leveraging SAFe to deliver business value to its customers.

Presented at the 2022 SAFe Summit by: 

  • Katie Morris, Director IT Transformation, Southwest Airlines
  • Marty Garza, Vice President, Air Operations Technology, Southwest Airlines
  • Moderator: Michael Clarkin, Chief Marketing Officer, Scaled Agile, Inc. 

Designing the Digital Future at Porsche

Learn how the separate worlds of vehicle engineering and IT came together at Porsche to reimagine the sports car of the future

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Revolutionary things can happen when pizza is being served. You’ll find out why when you join Porsche visionaries Mattias Ulbrich and Dr. Oliver Seifert for a candid discussion about transforming one of the world’s most iconic motoring brands into a digital-first pacesetter.

As huge technological advances usher in an automotive renaissance, Porsche is moving at top speed to meet the evolving needs of its customers. They are fully focused on making their cars a central element of their buyers’ lifestyles through digitalization, connectivity, and electromobility. This requires total business agility throughout the enterprise, a new mindset, and a new way of working together closely. It also requires vehicle engineering and software teams to collaborate closely and harmonize the differing speeds at which they traditionally work. This might have been daunting for any company that is as storied and successful as Porsche.

“The most important thing is that you shouldn’t underestimate that the digital world is totally different from the physical world,” says Ulbrich.

But Porsche didn’t let this slow them down. To build bridges between the groups, the company created new opportunities for people to talk, learn, and understand each other with the help of SAFe. They created the Porsche “Takt,” the heartbeat that synchronizes the teams. They focus on results and communicate the vision in a way that motivates people to visualize opportunities for change.

Says Ulbrich, “If you look right now in a team, you couldn’t distinguish whether a person is from R&D, IT, sales, or marketing. They work together.”

Presented at the 2021 Global SAFe Summit, October 2021 by:

  • Mattias Ulbrich, Chief Information Officer of Porsche AG and CEO of Porsche Digital
  • Dr. Oliver Seifert, Vice President R&D Electric/Electronics /Porsche AG
  • Interviewer: Michael Clarkin, Chief Marketing Officer, Scaled Agile, Inc.SHOW LESS

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CVS Health Tackles COVID Response by Adopting SAFe – SAFe for Healthcare

When empowerment and urgency come together, anything is possible.

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Join four Agile leaders from CVS Health to learn how they banded together to form teams out of existing trains in order to tackle their monumental, and ever-evolving COVID response with the help of SAFe.

What does it look like when all roles across an operational value stream truly come together without the usual complexity and roadblocks that come with being in a large organization? How did they show up, lead with heart, and truly live their values? And what lessons were learned that other organizations can take away from this extraordinary experience?

“Having scaled Agile in place already prior to this happening helps create a lot of clarity and transparency on where we should identify people who already had all the skill sets that we needed to really achieve this. And then it set up like a common language to talk about things like priority and how to sequence work. And honestly just really live the values of SAFe even more so than the process of SAFe which I think is just a beautiful place to be.”

Presented at the 2021 Global SAFe Summit, October 2021 by:

  • Caitlin Clifford, Senior Director of Digital Health Services /CVS Health
  • Rebecca Davis, CVS Health Digital Lean Agile Practice Leader /CVS Health
  • Matthew Huang, Senior Product Manager of Immunizations /CVS Health
  • Randy Kendel, Release Train Engineer of Immunizations /CVS Health
  • Interviewer: Michael Clarkin, CMO, Scaled Agile Inc.

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TV Globo – Adopting SAFe for Enterprise Agility Transformation

How Enterprise Agility Is Transforming the Largest Media Company in Latin America

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TV Globo is Brazil’s largest TV network serving 100 million viewers in 130 countries.

Like many other media companies, Globo needed to accelerate its digital transformation journey. Their waterfall project approach did not support the speed that was needed to meet this challenge. They needed an Agile approach! But how do you implement Agile in a highly complex environment with hundreds of legacy solutions and a silo-based culture?

Both culture and technology had to be transformed. After some small Agile initiatives, TV Globo decided to adopt SAFe. They started bottom-up. The IT Director sponsored their first implementation of SAFe in two main business areas: Commercial and Content Production. The results after the first year of SAFe implementation were impressive. Leaving behind their “who is right” or “who is guilty” approach, business and technology areas were able to work more closely with a value-driven approach. The empowerment and engagement that resulted from aligning business and tech around the same purpose and company priorities resulted in significant improvements:

  • 20% cost reduction
  • 24% improvement in employee engagement
  • 86% improvement in customer satisfaction

Inspired by these early results, Globo expanded its practice of SAFe. New Value Streams were implemented in other areas, this time sponsored by the C-level, and Globo is designing its roadmap to expand the implementation throughout the company. It has been an exciting, challenging, and rewarding journey so far!

Presented at the 2021 Global SAFe Summit, October 2021 by:

  • Luciana Povoa, Head of Content Production Solutions /Globo

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Deutsche Telekom: Mission Possible – Story of a Successful SAFe Journey

The Ongoing Story of SAFe at a Major European Telco

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Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies, with some 242 million mobile customers, 27 million fixed-network lines, and 22 million broadband lines.

Deutsche Telekom IT has moved from 0 to 130 ARTs in less than three years. Now a new phase is beginning. Here, alignment, consolidation, and relentless improvement take center stage. In this session, Agile coaches Richard Butler and Manfred Becking take you on this SAFe journey of highs and lows, what helped or hindered them, and what they learned along the way. Topics include:

  • The results to date around collaboration, speed, transparency, and focus
  • Going forward: fusing and consolidating
  • Transformation learnings:
    • Understanding and Cognition
    • Growing realization of things that need to be done
    • Relativity
    • No speed fits all
    • Need for KnowYou can’t travel to the stars SAFely unless you know how It’s a complex and unique universe – things don’t fit together by chance.
    • Mindset – Agile behavior doesn’t just happen
  • Black Holes:
    • Methodology Disconnects
    • “Resilofication” will occur without alignment
    • No Value-Stream, No Agility
    • If it’s not E2E there won’t be smooth flow
    • Inertia – Where the inertia is the highest, so is the gravity
    • Mirage – You might call it SAFe but it doesn’t mean that it is SAFe
    • It’s the Mindset
    • Linear solutions don’t solve dynamically complex problems

Presented at the 2021 Global SAFe Summit, October 2021 by:

  • Manfred Becking, Agile Coach, SAFe Consultant /Deutsche Telekom
  • Richard Butler, Agile Coach, SAFe Consultant /Deutsche Telekom

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