Topic: Employee Engagement

São Paulo State Department of Treasury

“The most significant gain, in my view, is intangible: Today, the relationship between IT and business is peaceful and collaborative. People work with much more ease and face fewer conflicts.”

—Roberto Lopes de Carvalho, Secretaria da Fazenda do Estado de São Paulo

Industry:

Government

Quick Facts:

  • São Paulo State Department of Treasury (SEFAZ-SP) has approximately 8,000 employees.
  • The department manages $230 billion in taxpayer revenue.
  • Its structure includes 18 regional tax units, dozens of tax posts, as well as administrative and service units covering all 645 municipalities in the state.
  • With SAFe Essential chosen as the starting point and with the help of Adaptworks as a trusted partner, the first ARTs (Agile Release Trains) were launched in July 2019.
  • SAFe allowed the department to leverage cutting-edge technologies in electronic systems and digital services.

Outcomes & Lessons Learned:

  • Between 2019 and 2021, the department saw a 296% increase in the number of features delivered or in progress.
  • Teams saw a 12% reduction in the number of incidents to manage.
  • The department reported a 42% increase in infrastructure project delivery rates.
  • They adopted a clearer definition of responsibilities between business and IT.
  • Stakeholders reported stronger alignment between development, security, and infrastructure through DevOps.

Overview

With the challenge of managing 230 billion in revenue collection from taxpayers in the State of São Paulo, SEFAZ-SP followed a path with the help of SAFe to establish new milestones in the public management of its services. 

This journey led to results such as increased efficiency, continuous value delivery, and greater collaboration between the areas involved in the deliveries.

About SEFAZ-SP

The Secretaria da Fazenda do Estado de São Paulo, responsible for the highest ICMS revenue collection among Brazilian states, is headquartered in the capital and operates throughout the state of São Paulo. Its structure includes 18 regional tax units, dozens of tax posts, as well as administrative and service units covering all 645 municipalities in the state.

With a workforce of approximately 8,000 employees, the institution combines the most modern concepts and practices of public management with the continuous improvement of high-quality services for citizens, both in-person and remotely. It leverages cutting-edge technologies in electronic systems and digital services. 

Problem Statement

After an evaluation process that took place in 2017, SEFAZ- SP encountered a scenario typical of organizations that are in the early stages of an Agile transformation.

As a response to the situation it was facing, SEFAZ-SP adopted Scrum as a work process for its teams. The results and benefits of this adoption quickly became evident through increased delivery speed and improved alignment between Product Owners and business areas. 

According to Margarita Gómez, Executive Director of the PeopleGov Lab at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, one of the main challenges of public service in Brazil is aiming for a government that is agile, flexible, and innovative.

And it was precisely in this direction that SEFAZ-SP initially guided its transformation strategy, under the leadership of Roberto Lopes de Carvalho, Deputy Director of the Information Technology Department, responsible for the entire organization, structure, and service delivery related to technology products and services.

“We were facing a problem with incremental and waterfall management models, using PMI techniques for tracking. Essentially, there was a constant state of conflict and contract renegotiation between technology and business areas, which we decided to address by adopting Scrum for team management. We started with a few teams and quickly expanded as the initial experience was excellent,” says Roberto Lopes de Carvalho, Secretaria da Fazenda do Estado de São Paulo

An important step had been taken, but there was still something SEFAZ-SP needed to address to further accelerate its transformation: Scaling all its Agile initiatives across the institution without compromising the quality, efficiency, and value generation that had been individually achieved by the teams up to that point.

The Challenge

Over time, it became clear that although teams were delivering individual results, they still needed better alignment with operations and the institution’s service area. The challenging scenario involved a large number of applications requiring integrations with both internal and external services. Even though development had become faster, it still lacked synchronization and cadence across the various teams.

“For a while, we experienced the phenomenon of a fast car without a rearview mirror. It was common for a team to be developing an application, complete one stage, and then realize that the next stage—handled by another team, sometimes requiring a different integration—was not yet ready,” adds Carvalho.

The lack of synchronization and alignment, along with the loss of knowledge at the end of projects due to the reallocation of professionals, raised a red flag for Roberto.

The Path Forward

In 2019, after an evaluation led by Roberto and supported by market references and data, SEFAZ-SP decided that SAFe could meet their needs.

The process began with a consultation with Scaled Agile, where SEFAZ-SP sought a certified and reliable partner capable of offering the full portfolio of SAFe training, along with the consulting support they needed.

Adaptworks was recommended as the pioneer in bringing SAFe to Brazil in 2014 and for establishing itself as the leading SAFe company in Latin America, recognized for its consulting support to various organizations and for having trained over 5,800 professionals in SAFe.

With SAFe Essential chosen as the starting point, the first ARTs (Agile Release Trains) were launched in July 2019. As the process gained momentum, representatives from all technology areas, agile teams, and key stakeholders from business areas were integrated into the ARTs, assuming roles such as Business Owners, Product Managers, and Product Owners.

One of the initial challenges was skepticism and resistance to the ongoing changes, as well as uncertainty among professionals regarding their roles and responsibilities within the new framework.

This natural adaptation process was mitigated through SAFe alignment ceremonies and coordination meetings with all stakeholders.

“We found a work framework with well-defined roles, which greatly helped in identifying the right people for each role and clarifying their responsibilities. Once we overcame this initial challenge, we had to launch the ARTs and form the teams — each sometimes at different levels of maturity and with varying experiences in agility. However, we always respected these differences and embraced the methods or solutions that each ART discovered for itself,” highlights Carvalho.

Over the course of several months, Adaptworks contributed to the learning journey of Business Owners, RTEs, Product Managers, and agile team members by delivering 100% of the SAFe training offered by Scaled Agile.

Adaptworks also provided support for launching the ARTs, which played a key role in enabling SEFAZ-SP to maintain and offer its 72 digital services to the citizens of São Paulo.

Results

The result of the partnership between SEFAZ-SP and Adaptworks is reflected in the absolute numbers achieved between 2019 and 2021:

In addition to the gains mentioned above, other notable improvements have emerged from SEFAZ-SP’s adoption of SAFe, generating a positive impact across the organization:

  • Clearer definition of responsibilities between business and IT
  • Stronger alignment between development, security, and infrastructure through DevOps
  • A shift in how technology-related matters are perceived, leading to greater alignment with the modernization of strategic planning, which now incorporates quarterly OKRs synchronized with Program Increment (PI) cadences.

Share:

Back to: All Case Studies

Explore more Case Studies

Suggested Case Study: Royal Philips

Read the Case Study

How Fletcher Building Used SAFe to Successfully Drive Digital Transformation and Accelerate Flow of Value

“Our customers have told us they’re getting the products and services they have always wanted. We’re connecting with them to understand and solve their pain points at a pace previously unheard of in Fletcher Building”

—Wayne Armstrong, GM Digital & Marketing at PlaceMakers

Industry:

Construction, Manufacturing, Recycling

Quick Facts:

  • Approximately 150 people trained and practicing SAFe
  • 2 ARTS, 5 Value Streams
  • Fletcher Building followed the full implementation roadmap to ensure all their people (including multiple partners across multiple geographies) were trained and aligned before launching each of the trains.
  • They also focussed on gaining buy-in from executives of the business units as well as IT leadership through a Leading SAFe course. This helped them understand the theory and enabled buy-in to the radical change in approach. 
  • Including the Business Change team in the ART created the organization’s first cross-functional business team with marketing, operations, digital team, and digital support.

Outcomes & Lessons Learned:

  • Improved reliability (~ 94% predictability) and frequency of releases as well as accelerated development into market enabled better comms and created a competitive advantage
  • Creating a cross-functional alignment helped to drive digital adoption. 
  • Following human-centred design and focusing on solving customer pain points was integral to achieving the organization’s goals.
  • They shifted conversations from time/cost/budget to customer experience and prioritisation (fixed capacity) and benefit realisation.
  • They did discovery in parallel to development, which enabled a relentless improvement of products.
  • The transformation resulted in a more  than 90% customer satisfaction in products. Customers are more highly engaged than ever before.
  • Ecommerce revenues jumped from $0 in 2019 to $300+ million in 2022
  • Over time, the teams created strong bonds, took ownership of the objectives, and created their own innovation features, which accelerated development and ensured that Fletcher Building achieved its initial $100m sales target a year ahead of schedule.

Overview

SAFe helped Fletcher Building transform their large, complex portfolio organisation by completely changing how they implement technology solutions. They moved from siloed teams and waterfall technology practices to customer-led cross functional teams aligned around delivering prioritised business outcomes. 

The company faced initial challenges, such as getting buy-in from a decentralized IT department and overcoming the organizational mindset that “going fast” was a problem for IT to solve. Additionally, there was a six to seven hour time difference between Fletcher Building and their software development vendors, which made it more challenging for people to align and communicate. 

“There is always resistance to change,” explains Wayne Armstrong, GM Digital & Marketing at PlaceMakers, the retail trading arm of Fletcher Building. “Initially there was a belief within parts of the organization that this is a nice theory but would never work in our highly complex, fragmented organization with a huge number of disparate systems and vendors.” 

To overcome this, Fletcher Building worked with a dedicated partner, Pretty Agile, and focused on ensuring the culture of the teams was strong with a very engaged leadership who actively addressed some of the risks quickly. Pretty Agile was able to challenge the organization’s thinking and help set them up for success leading up to launch. 

In the end, SAFe helped Fletcher Building to halve the time and cost to implement technology, exponentially increase digital revenue, and make a step change in staff engagement and customer satisfaction.

Share:

Back to: All Case Studies

Explore more Case Studies

Suggested Case Study: Royal Philips

Read the Case Study

The British Council

“I think our story has resonance with lots of other people, probably like myself, who find themselves in positions of leadership in today’s world and maybe don’t have the background in technology particularly. That’s one thing I will say, and I think this is sometimes controversial, but I often get nods when I say it. Technology is not the main event.”

—Saima Satti, Head of Global Exams Business Improvement, British Council

Industry:

Education, English language, and Cultural Sectors

Quick Facts:

  • Founded in 1934, the British Council has focused on building connections for 90 years.
  • It is a UK charity governed by Royal Charter and a UK public body. Most income comes from partnership agreements, contracts, philanthropy, teaching and exams, and they also receive grant-in-aid funding from the UK government.
  • The Council is currently present in 100+ countries.
  • As part of their growth and development, the British Council’s Global Exams Business Improvement team created a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence and embedded a SAFe think tank.
  • Most of the team’s leadership is SAFe certified.

Outcomes & Lessons Learned:

  • It’s not all about technology. The adoption of SAFe enabled the development and delivery of over 150 initiatives including a balanced proportion of both Technology and non-tech improvements that deliver value across the world.
  • SAFe enabled the delivery of value more efficiently and more broadly across the globe.
  • The adoption of LPM and work on multiple portfolios with an overarching Portfolio of Portfolios was game changing for the teams, stakeholders and ultimately the realisation of value. Even though we realised we were already working at portfolio level when we started our SAFe journey we adapted and embedded accordingly ensuring SAFe worked for us .. and it did! Key lesson there is to try and find a way through and not get overly worried that your context is already more complex.
  • With SAFe, they were able to shift their focus to “people, passions, and pivots” and accelerate the flow of value.
  • Critical to success was culture and it was important to foster a culture of safety through communication events, peer support, and sharing vision and strategy across every level.
  • Involve everyone, from the most junior person to leadership. Respect your people and culture.
  • Work toward alignment, transparency, and continuous improvement.
  • If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the business and they will take care of the customer.

Overview

The British Council is an organization that works for a more peaceful and prosperous world by building connections and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide. Working with people in over 200 countries and territories and with presence on the ground in more than 100 countries.


Uniquely combining the UK’s deep expertise in arts and culture, education and the English language, global presence and relationships in over 100 countries with unparalleled access to young people, creatives and educators, and their own creative sparkle, the British council will reach 650 million people this year alone.


One of the focus areas of the organization is administering examinations, helping people gain access to trusted qualifications to support their career and study prospects. About 5 million exams are administered at more than 850 locations worldwide.


The British Council’s Global Exams Business improvement team, dispersed across 23 countries, implemented SAFe to help break down silos and to reduce wasted time in handovers between tech teams, systems teams, process, and implementation. They also wanted to align their culture around a shared strategy and vision and were able to do so with SAFe.

Share:

Back to: All Case Studies

Explore more Case Studies

Suggested Case Study: Royal Philips

Read the Case Study

Chevron – Story of A Successful SAFe Journey

Customer Interview: What Pandemic? Chevron Trades in Stickies and Yarn and Improves Productivity With a Fully-supported Remote Workforce

Share:

In this interview, Chevron’s Popov Konstantin and Rochelle Tan discuss their SAFe journey and how Chevron was able to successfully navigate the challenges of COVID-19 and improve productivity at the same time. They’ll discuss how SAFe improved employee engagement and accelerated the speed of a massive cloud migration initiative, and how they had to quickly transform from an office-centric environment to a fully remote workforce. You’ll hear about their experiences as an early user of SAFe® Collaborate, lessons learned, and why they may never fully return to the office.

Presented at the Global SAFe Summit, October 2020.

Back to: Customer Stories

Explore more Customer Stories

Next: American Express Customer Story

Learn more about American Express

Deutsche Bahn – Lean-Agile Transformation Story

Agile Planning for Transportation

“For Deutsche Bahn Digital Sales, SAFe is the framework for the strategic digitalization program … With it, we are delivering faster and more effectively on our objectives, which drives our ability to compete in the digital age.”

—Matthias Opitz, Senior Program Manager, DB Vertrieb, Deutsche Bahn

Challenge:

After privatizing the company, Deutsche Bahn faced new market forces, along with increasing competition from new transportation players.

Industry:

Transportation

Results:

  • Lead time dropped from 12 months to 3-4 months
  • Coverage of test automation improved from 30% or less to 80-90%
  • Greater collaboration among teams and better results have raised employees’ satisfaction levels

Best Practices:

  • Start ASAP – Begin, even if imperfectly. “It’s more important to give people a chance to work in this environment than to wait until everyone is trained,” said Thorsten Janning, SAFe Fellow, of KEGON.
  • Train extensively – That said, train management and teams as much as possible before the first PI Planning event.
  • Get expert help – DB worked with Scaled Agile Partner, KEGON, from the start and continues to do so for the support and experienced guidance a partner can bring. Progress is a continuous process of asking questions, which a partner can help answer.

The partner that made it happen:

See Partner

Introduction

In recent years, Deutsche Bahn (DB)—one of Europe’s largest railway operators—has faced unprecedented change. In 1994, the two railways of East and West Germany merged after the country’s reunification. While the company was adjusting to the Lean-agile transition, it was also contending with rising costs and greater competition than ever before from other railway operators, long-distance bus services and new, fast-acting players providing ride services and car-sharing.

Agile Planning for Transportation

Within this challenging environment, in 2014 DB embarked on a digital transformation to modernize the way their business units operate, from cargo transport to passenger ticket sales. It was up to each business unit to decide on a path forward to meet those goals.

Initially, the business units implemented Lean-Agile practices at the team level, on a small scope. Yet as they began trying to deliver on objectives, they fell short of targets—especially on larger solutions. The company struggled with lengthy decision cycles; fragmented responsibility; constant design, coordination and estimation; changing requirements; and many, many dependencies.

“In nearly every business unit, the transformation projects struggled to deliver large solutions,” said Matthias Opitz, Senior Program Manager, DB Vertrieb. “We were going around in circles analyzing, and the processes were so complex that the organization was not able to deliver simple minimum viable products.”

It was clear the effort would require a considerable overhaul of its long-established ways of working.

Full-Speed Ahead in DB Cargo

The company looked for a Lean-Agile methodology capable of handling its complex environment on a larger scale and found it in the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®).

Within each segment of the company, at least one business unit rolled SAFe out as part of the digital transformation initiative:

  • DB Cargo: Freight transportation and Logistics
  • DB Netze: Infrastructure/rail network
  • DB Vertrieb: Passenger transport

“For Deutsche Bahn Digital Sales, SAFe is the framework for the strategic digitalization program,” Opitz said. “It brought a continuous delivery process that keeps us on track toward our objectives.”

DB Vertrieb started its Lean-Agile transformation in 2015, when the business unit established an effort named ‘KAI‘ (an acronym for the German words meaning customer centricity, agility, and innovation), which stressed five attributes:

  • Customer excitement over optimization of profits
  • Iteration over perfection
  • Participation over hierarchy and silos
  • Trust and personal responsibility over top-down
  • Active participation instead of business as usual

To ease the transition, the company engaged Scaled Agile Partner KEGON as its primary provider for training and coaching. With KEGON, the DB companies began comprehensive training to prepare everyone who would be joining an Agile Release Train (ART), a team of teams in the Framework.

Lean-Agile leaders at DB Cargo and DB Vertrieb took the Leading SAFe® course, with others taking role-based training such as SAFe® Scrum Master, SAFe® for Teams, and SAFe® Product Owner/Product Manager. At least nine change agents at DB business units also earned SAFe® Program Consultant (SPC) certification in order to teach their colleagues. DB saw training as essential for helping people through the inevitable challenges that would come up, including resistance.

“Training was very important for giving us confidence and answers to questions that came up,” Opitz said. “Because we trained all participants, training also helped open discussions and convince skeptical people that this was the right way to go.”

Delivering on All Commitments

DB Cargo was the first division within the company to kick off the first ART with a Program Increment (PI) planning event. Managers of the other business units attended only to observe.

In that meeting, they accomplished several of their top objectives:

  • Clarified an incremental release strategy
  • Identified business epics regarding end-to-end processes
  • Prioritized business epics with weighted shortest job first (WSJF)
  • Analyzed business epics and identified features
  • Figured out dependencies and planned teams’ work for the coming PI
Agile Planning for Transportation

SAFe practices such as the Program Board gave participants clear insight, for the first time, into the company’s numerous dependencies. With that visual aid, they realized that changes to peripheral systems would affect the critical path of the initiative, allowing teams to coordinate appropriately.

As the PI got underway, leaders and team members alike hit challenges with breaking old habits. The governance and budgeting structures remained in a waterfall construct early on, but began to move toward Lean budgeting as DB Vertrieb kicked off PIs in 2017.

To bridge this gap, Opitz stresses that the business units had to ensure that SAFe and the new approach extended to the broader organization, beyond IT. Therefore, DB Vertrieb decided to establish a ‘Target Operating Model’ (TOM) for the business unit and to perform the transformation activities in a dedicated ART. Shared services departments such as HR, controlling, communication, training
and support, and marketing were brought into the fold.

Any doubt or resistance soon faded away as teams delivered perfectly on target for their first PI. “At first, everyone looked at the committed backlog and said, ‘It’s too much,’” Opitz said. “But by the end of this first PI, we had delivered almost everything, which was a surprise to everyone.”

With SAFe, DB Vertrieb finally implemented a process by which to plan requirements, prioritize, and synchronize the various programs, and to break down the requirements and epics into features and stories. Additionally, automated epic and feature reporting brought critical transparency regarding implementation status.

“Just a year ago, it was a big challenge to do specifications,” Opitz said. “Now we have a process that makes it happen.”

Steps to Success

A number of steps and factors contributed to DB Vertrieb’s SAFe transformation. For one, DB leveraged Agile metrics to manage Portfolios and ARTs, and to help secure funding for them. In turn, management supported the effort by funding standing teams. They also invested in co-located and synchronous PI planning events for all ARTs in 2019.

Agile Planning for Transportation

The company performed a Value Stream analysis, which resulted in four Value Streams covering vertical products and horizontal services.

Toward continuous improvement of testing, teams performed system tests and implemented integrated development test servers.

Starting at the Portfolio level, they switched from a traditional requirements specification process to Agile requirements engineering.

DB Vertrieb found that self-organized teams were empowered to make decisions. In one case, a team detected an incorrect architectural decision when communicating with a stakeholder.

Share:

Back to: All Case Studies

Explore more Case Studies

Suggested Case Study: TomTom

Read the Case Study