Console Connect by PCCW Global

“Working for an organization that practices SAFe means employees can be confident that their code will get to production and that their SAFe training will secure them transportable skills that add value to their career paths.”

Paul Gampe, CTO, PCCW Global

Challenge:

Console Connect needed to deliver positive and on-time outcomes for its customers and partners and amplify its ability to attract talented technologists to the business.

Industry:

Telecommunications

Results:

  • Improved business goal setting and ability to measure business value 
  • Achieved 98%+ of the committed PI objectives
  • Reduced the number of lower business value objectives to allow time for innovation
  • Established positive and transparent relationships with partners
  • Attracted and trained new staff in a competitive market

Console Connect by PCCW Global: Improving Business Relationships and Attracting Top Talent with SAFe®

Introduction

PCCW Global is a leading telecommunications provider, offering flexible and scalable next-generation network solutions on a global scale combined with local, on-the-ground knowledge.

A product of PCCW, Console Connect is a platform that allows businesses to easily connect to public and private clouds, applications, and enterprise sites. It makes connecting clouds, networks, and business-critical partners and applications easy and secure. A leader in the Asia-Pacific Region, Console Connect by PCCW Global is globally accessible, offering best-in-class connections in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa.

Breaking out of silos and finding common ground

When CTO Paul Gampe joined PCCW Global overseeing Console Connect in 2017, they had recently acquired several start-ups and development organizations. But they were struggling with a backlog of 50 unfinished projects, some of which had been running for five years and had no expected delivery date. The business was frustrated by the slow progress, and the IT team was overwhelmed.

In December 2017, Gampe toured the Console Connect facilities worldwide to meet the Corporate Services, IT and IP Engineering teams that he would lead. He spotted a trend in the challenges they faced.

“I began to sense the traditional silos and a disconnect between the business and the technical community in the company—issues that the Scaled Agile Framework is often used to identify and dissolve,” Gampe says.

Business agility with SAFe

Having seen the success of an Agile approach in his previous role, Gampe knew the benefits an Agile way of working would bring to the organization. After analyzing various frameworks and with the full support of the executive leadership of Console Connect, Gampe recommended the organization adopt SAFe® in early 2018 and engaged Pretty Agile to assist.

The technical leadership team flew from Greece, the US, Hong Kong and all around the world to Brisbane, Australia for training. 

Pretty Agile CEO and Managing Director, Em Campbell-Pretty, has been impressed by the executive buy-in at PCCW. “When I look back over the organizations we work with, the organizations where I get the CEO and their leadership team in the room for two days for a Leading SAFe® class are the organizations that really get some momentum,” she explains. About six months later, the Console Connect Senior Management Team, including the CEO, gathered in Singapore for a two-day Leading SAFe® class followed by a Value Stream Identification Workshop.

Global communications start with human connection

One of Gampe’s favorite SAFe training memories was when he and Console Connect Head of Product and Innovation, Jordick Wong, hugged each other after a breakthrough moment during PI Plan acceptance. But it wasn’t always like that. 

Console Connect made an early decision during a workshop to identify value streams for product offerings that they would focus on transforming while simultaneously switching to an Agile way of working. This choice presented a lot of challenges. “The biggest challenge that we faced wasn’t just trying to connect an engineering mindset with a network engineering mindset. It was coming up with a common language to help everybody in the organization begin to understand what we’re going to do when we’re going to do it,” says Gampe.

Bringing together the business and technology leadership teams to commit to a plan at each PI Planning session has been a crucial factor in driving this internal alignment and has led to a radical shift in the way the team builds applications.

“The first change we noticed was moving from component teams to feature teams. This shift allowed us to speak more clearly about the resource requirements to deliver a feature,” Gampe says. While it was challenging for the software community to make that transition, it has been very valuable for the business. “The business didn’t need to understand the complexity of our application architecture; they just articulated what they needed to get done. And we couldn’t have done that without a SAFe approach.”

Training partners in SAFe practices

In the past, PCCW would end up in heated debates with partners around the agreed scope of work and delivery times. But that’s no longer a problem. In addition to leveraging SAFe for internal software development, Console Connect now asks all its technology partners to train in SAFe, participate in the PI Planning, and get involved in the Agile Release Trains (ARTs). This approach addresses the challenges around timing and scope for fixed-contract projects. The overall response has been overwhelmingly positive, with increased clarity driven by:

  • Organization-wide discussions—PCCW and their technology partners meet to discuss programming and planning and to map clear objectives, roles, and responsibilities.
  • Ownership and accountability of tasks—Dependencies between PCCW and the partner are mapped out on a Program Board. Where an initiative is dependent on a task outside of the ART, a Release Train Engineer (RTE) owns this risk. 
  • Education—In the early stages of the engagement, there is a lot of restructuring of contractual relationships and discussion of the guidelines for engagement as Console Connect educates their technology partners around SAFe.

Together, these changes have led to increased confidence in the shared ability to deliver the outcomes required.

Accelerating updates to new technology

Today, SAFe helps Console Connect not only work more efficiently with partner companies, but they use the Framework to speed the adoption of new technologies. A recent example is their partnership with BMC Software. Console Connect wanted to work with BMC to update their IT Service Management Suite to the next generation, cloud-based BMC Helix ITSM. Console Connect utilized SAFe to work with BMC more effectively and deliver an outcome which delighted both Console Connect and BMC.  

Gampe explains: “Because many of these on-premises systems have deep integrations and lots of customizations, we asked BMC to become a member of our Agile Release Train and plan and act with us as if they were a feature team.” He says the benefit was that as BMC attended the planning sessions, they saw the resolution of dependencies and the detailed planning activity and could participate in the draft planning. “They saw management accept the plans and prioritize the Program Increment (PI) objectives,” Gampe explains.

“By joining us in our SAFe approach, BMC understood the cadence they’d need to demonstrate at the end of each iteration. As a result, our confidence that the budget would align with the allocation and the delivery would be achieved within the set time frame was completely justified.”

Attracting and retaining top talent with SAFe

Like most organizations that rely heavily on technical expertise, Console Connect is constantly looking for more software development resources. They use SAFe as a means to attract the best talent, with their Agile training and environment ensuring that they have a steady flow of quality job applicants. 

“The Agile way of working contributes to how efficient an employee can be,” says Gampe. “Working for an organization that practices SAFe means employees can be confident that their code will get to production and that their SAFe training will secure them transportable skills that add value to their career paths.”

Gampe calls out several standout SAFe attributes that help Console Connect attract and engage talented resources, specifically the publicly available content and global availability of training and support. “With SAFe,” he says, “I can provide a publicly available link for a product manager’s job description and know that a product manager in Greece or the US can read that content without any paywall or barrier. And the breadth of SAFe’s coverage means I can get people trained irrespective of their geography. These are significant advantages over the other Agile frameworks I considered.”

SAFe has also positively impacted employee retention, with staff able to demonstrate their work and interact with all levels of the organization. “The CRO, the CFO, and other senior executives now participate with our junior developers or senior architects every 90 days. The closed feedback loop has enriched the relationship for the development community and their understanding of the business, and vice versa,” says Gampe. 

Console Connect and SAFe at a glance

  • Six ARTs designed to support the systems associated with the ways that they deliver value
  • An Agile Program Management Office, which is home to their Lean-Agile Centre of Excellence (LACE)
  • An inter-ART dependency process, with a solution manager who coordinates activities across ARTs if required
  • piplanning.io leveraged to plan and execute their PI

Training:

Summary

SAFe has helped Console Connect evolve from its traditional ways of working with employees, partners, and customers. Now, staff attraction and training levels are at an all-time high, relationships with partners and project outcomes are transparent, positive and less stressful, and SAFe is a key selling point for Console Connect initiatives.

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Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG

Lean-Agile 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.

Watch The Full Interview

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March Launch

March 2023 Launch

We’re unveiling the latest evolution of SAFe® in March. New updates will deepen SAFe’s impact and help reshape the way you approach transformation.

When:

March 15, 2023, 12:00 pm – March 15, 2023, 1:00 pm MST

Where:

Remote

Who:

Agile Coach, Consultant, Product Manager, Product Owner, Release Train Engineer, SAFe Program Consultant, Scrum Master

Event Overview

Join our virtual event on Wednesday, March 15, at 12:00 PM MDT/6:00 PM GMT to see the full launch and learn what it means for your organization. Sign up to receive a reminder one hour before the event to ensure you don’t miss it.

Year in Review for Release Train Engineers and Scrum Masters

Events > Webinars > Year in Review for Release Train Engineers and Scrum Masters

Year in Review for Release Train Engineers and Scrum Masters

Review features released in 2022 specifically for Release Train Engineers and Scrum Masters to succeed in 2023.

When:

December 13, 2022, 9:00 am – December 13, 2022, 10:00 am MST

Where:

Zoom

Who:

Release Train Engineer, Scrum Master

Event Overview

This interactive session walks through updates with the Scaled Agile Product team to cover the following releases:
Updated SASM Course
Role-Based Home Page
PI Planning in Collaborate
Collaborate Improvements
PI Event Facilitator Guides (ART & Team Events)

Year in Review for Coaches and SPCs

Events > Webinars > Year in Review for Coaches and SPCs

Year in Review for Coaches and SPCs

See features released specifically for coaches and SPCs in 2022 to help you in 2023.

When:

December 6, 2022, 10:00 am – December 6, 2022, 11:00 am MST

Where:

Zoom

Who:

Agile Coach, Consultant, SAFe Program Consultant

Event Overview

This interactive session walks through updates with the Scaled Agile Product team to cover the following releases:

Ready to Train
5.1.1 Implementing
5.1 Classes
Role-Based Home Page
Collaborate Improvements
Value Stream Mapping workshop

Fred IT Delivers Timely e-Prescription Solution with SAFe®

“e-Prescribing is probably the biggest example of a SAFe outcome for Fred IT. It was a real shake-up, quite transformative for our whole industry. And we were the leaders and able to pull it off!”

Zoe Walters, Product Manager

Challenge:

Siloed development and a need to meet rapidly changing demands proved challenging for a business whose product suite is an end-to-end solution.

Industry:

Pharmaceutical, IT

Results:

  • Faster time-to-market
  • Predictability improved to 82%
  • Bugs decreased by 50%
  • Backlog reduced from 160 support items to under 20
  • Improved top-down engagement with the stakeholders

Best Practices:

  • Train leadership – Fred IT trained the executive leadership team first, which helped drive complete business transformation
  • Train extensively – most people within the company have completed an average of two courses, including everyone in the leadership team, all the way to the CEO
  • Get expert help – Pretty Agile had an engagement with Fred that went beyond initial training. Their consultants were embedded to support continuous improvement and provide team guidance through more advanced practices up to PI6 results

The Partner that Made it Happen


Introduction

Fred IT Group is Australia’s largest provider of pharmacy IT solutions servicing more than 3000 pharmacies. The company was launched out of a deep commitment to the role of technological leadership in improving patient outcomes whilst making it easier and more efficient for health professionals to run their businesses.

Building an end-to-end solution in a siloed work culture

Over the years, Fred IT used a mix of Agile and Waterfall methodologies. However, neither approach addressed the need to respond quickly to continually changing demands or the siloed development approach across their teams.

e-Prescription Solution with SAFe®

“If you were in a team for a specific product, there was limited cross-over and discussion with other teams. Sharing of knowledge across products was ad-hoc and team members were often only expected to be skilled on one product,” says Fred IT product manager, Zoe Walters.

This was a problem for a business whose product suite is an end-to-end solution. “All of the products in our suite are fully integrated,” says Walters. “But our approach made it difficult to do this well. For example, a dispensary and back-office product might have the same reports. But, because they were developed in isolation, they were inconsistent in looks and the data captured and reported on. It was the same company, solution and report—but two different outputs.”

To transform their way of working and harmonize the development of their product suite, Fred decided to adopt SAFe®.

Training leaders first leads to early wins

With the help of Scaled Agile Transformation Partner, Pretty Agile, Fred started training people in 2018 with a goal of launching SAFe in 2019. The new initiative primarily included people from Product and Engineering, with HR, Finance, Security, and Infrastructure teams supporting the operational and strategic work. They decided to train leadership first, and then move to development teams. This approach quickly paid off. “Getting the executive leadership team in a Leading SAFe® class was regarded as a key success factor for Fred and is one of those things that made a difference to them,” says Pretty Agile founder, Em Campbell-Pretty.

“Getting the executive leadership team in a Leading SAFe® class was regarded as a key success factor for Fred and is one of those things that made a difference to them.”

Em Campbell-Pretty, Founder, pretty agile

As soon as the teams began planning and collaborating through SAFe practices, the organization experienced a noticeable difference. “The impact on prioritization was a massive eye-opener,” observed Walters. “It no longer became a matter of who screamed loudest determining what got done first, but making better decisions based on business value and impact based on the effort required. We knew in theory that it would happen, but to see it happen in reality was interesting. It became clear what needed to happen first, and made us examine the business reasoning behind it, and document and capture features and expected outcomes so we had a yardstick to measure what we’d achieved.”

One method that Fred IT uses in this decision-making process is to assess each feature/epic against the strategic investment, tech debt, maintenance, and other costs to the business. They then decide how they want to distribute that work across each PI. These guardrails allow the Lean Portfolio Manager (LPM) to manage the train capacity dedicated to each area.

 Taking the market lead in times of COVID

Adopting SAFe made a business-critical difference for Fred when COVID-19 hit Australia. Due to government mandates, citizens could not visit their doctors, so the pressure was on Fred to quickly deliver an e-Prescription solution

“COVID fast-tracked the forward momentum of the Australian e-Health industry,” says Walters. “Critically, conversations we’d been having about moving from paper prescriptions to electronic scripts for several years became concrete projects that needed to be delivered urgently.”

Already mid-way through launching a new dispense product, Fred needed to pivot its attention to successfully delivering a second product which would result in significant changes in deadlines.

“We had plans and extensive roadmaps for the dispense product in place, and the teams were already locked in,” says Walters. “But with SAFe, we could quickly and effectively change tack to deliver the e-Prescription product, despite the huge list of requirements.”

e-Prescription Solution with SAFe®

“SAFe enabled us to estimate the effort and time required, form teams, align them to the work, show the business how we’d achieve delivery, and then go ahead,” added Walters. “Using our previous approach, we’d have had no capability or ability to manage that. Instead, we would have just had a pile of work to chip away at—and hope for the best.”

“SAFe enabled us to estimate the effort and time required, form teams, align them to the work, show the business how we’d achieve delivery, and then go ahead.”

Zoe Walters, Product Manager

Practicing SAFe, the organization became more efficient and effective. They improved planning and road mapping with the Program Increment (PI) cycles and had transparency across the teams. Walters added, “As a result, they were able to plan and deliver last-minute changes to requirements and meet those fast-tracked milestones. So, it enabled us to get two different sustainable products up and running fast!”

Significant business outcomes

Fred has realized myriad benefits from adopting the SAFe way of working, from product development and delivery to cultural shifts:

  • Faster time-to-market: “e-Prescribing is probably the biggest example of a SAFe outcome for Fred IT,” says Walters. “It was a real shake-up, quite transformative for our whole industry. And we were the leaders and able to pull it off! Perhaps we could have done it without SAFe, but it would have been high risk, and supporting and maintaining the system would have been difficult. But with SAFe, we succeeded.”
  • Predictability: After several PIs, Fred achieved an average of 82% predictability on features and enablers.
  • Improvements in quality: SAFe introduced a big shift in the ownership of quality. Prior to SAFe, one person with a quality assurance title would attempt to address quality issues at the end of the development cycle. With SAFe, the entire team took ownership, and quality became embedded in the process. That approach paid off. Based on customer feedback, the quality of Fred’s products has dramatically improved and introduced bugs have dropped more than 50%.
  • Backlog reduction: Fred’s support backlog has also been significantly impacted. “We had an overall backlog of around 160 support items that needed to be reduced, and that number just never seemed to go down,” says Walters. “After a few PIs, the backlog dropped to under 20. It was a massive reduction.”
  • Cultural Shifts: “Since adopting SAFe, I feel like Fred’s a more collaborative place than before,” says Walters. “Our teams are more integrated, and there are stronger relationships between them because they’re part of every activity and process. We are sharing more, so we all know more about what’s happening across the business – and with more transparency. People are putting up their hands to help get projects across the line. We’ve become more understanding and supportive. That has been a big step forward for us as a company.”

“We’ve become more understanding and supportive. That has been a big step forward for us as a company.”

Zoe Walters, Product Manager

A transformative way of working

The SAFe way of working has significantly impacted the way Fred’s teams communicate, and it has improved their ability to adapt and pivot, manage quality standards, and coordinate the flow of work.

“Every single person at Fred IT who is using the SAFe way of working agrees that the transparency of the work and the ability to adapt quickly to changes in the market and be more agile is certainly tenfold,” says Walters.

“The difference now is that we have regular stand-ups together and can coordinate work across the board. So, for example, if we need a field change on Fred Dispense and the back-office report, the conversation is out in the open and can be planned and coordinated. It’s a massive improvement on past processes.”

The new visibility and transparency are also having an effect on future development work. Many of Fred’s government initiatives involve two different products, and one team might start before the other. With SAFe, the first team now shares all their learnings with the next team before they start. It allows for a much smoother approach and typically helps the teams avoid any potential issues.

“We now have predictability of our estimates,” says Walters. “We know how fast work can be achieved, which we didn’t know before. Previously we could only estimate delivery/release dates and resource requirements.

“SAFe was also a big shift in the team ownership of quality. Rather it being the responsibility of one person who landed the quality assurance title, it became embedded in the process – and has become a focus.

“Having SAFe processes in place means that everyone now knows what will happen each week, each month, and in each cycle.”

Summary

With the help of SAFe, Fred IT successfully overcame the challenges associated with developing a critical, time-sensitive end-to-end ePrescription solution, despite existing commitments. Previously siloed teams worked together with transparency and collaboration, and the product was successfully delivered despite significantly abbreviated timelines and a plethora of on-the-go changes to requirements.

e-Prescription Solution with SAFe®

Training At-a-Glance

Says Walters, “The enthusiasm for SAFe training is such that most people average a minimum of two courses. Tom Boswell, Enterprise Agile Coach and Release Train Engineer, added, “We’re very proud of where we got to with SAFe training. All of our leadership team—right up to the CEO—trained, which is unusual in my experience. It shows that they understood the value of investing in SAFe. We now have the capabilities to provide SAFe training and certification internally but continue to be supported by Pretty Agile for advanced courses.”

PI Planning
PI Planning at Fred IT
PI Planning
Kaizen dragon at Fred IT PI Planning

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Suggested Case Study:

Porsche

Porsche Lean-Agile Transformation Journey

How the legendary automotive brand approached Lean-Agile Transformation by building the Digital Product Organization

Share:

Porsche leverages the power of using one language for roles, routines, and artefacts as they bring Porsche’s experience into the digital age. Porsche experience into the digital age.

In this presentation by Porsche transformation leaders, you will:

  • Get insights about the transformation approach and setup
  • Learn about the critical success factors at the beginning of the transformation
  • Find out more about over one year of a fully remote transformation experience and remote ART Launches
  • Get to know how the LACE Team handles different transformation velocities within the organization
  • Experience “Porsche Takt” as the Heartbeat of the transformation

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

  • Alena Keck, Senior Manager / MHP – A Porsche Company
  • Jan Burchhardt, Director Digital Transformation /Porsche AG

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Next: ZKH Customer Story

Air France-KLM – Accelerating Agile Adoption with SAFe

Air France - Scaled Agile Practices with SAFe

“We wanted to experiment and demonstrate Agile principles and practices across domains. By empowering each business domain, acknowledging specific contexts in domains, fostering sharing, and ‘try and learn,’ SAFe has helped us get on the right track to success.”

Claire Charbit, Program Management NWOW Agile Adoption, Air France-KLM

Challenge:

Air France – KLM sought to scale Agile practices companywide to improve time to market and efficiency, but must contend with specific contexts and regulations in the different businesses of the airlines.

Industry:

Transportation, Aviation

Results:

  • SAFe teams released 17 times in the live environment in seven months compared to every six months previously
  • On average, SAFe teams release 20% more effectively than waterfall teams
  • The company gained 20% market share in the small and medium logistics market alone
  • On one offering, the company exceeded expectation by 25%
  • Air France – KLM is more intimate with its clients

Best Practices:

  • Focus on Transversal Topics for a sustainable adoption – “From day one, make them part of the adoption,” Moreau says. These topics affect all domains.
  • Let domains and teams define objectives – Teams are more committed and empowered if they set their own goals
  • Train continuously – The Core Team regularly holds Agile Booster workshops to help with specific adoption challenges such as how to deal with conflicting priorities from both airlines, and what does it mean to have an Agile mindset?

Introduction

One of Europe’s largest passenger airline groups, Air France – KLM operates up to 2,200 flights daily and carries over 93 million passengers annually. The company’s five airlines—Air France, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Transavia, HOP! Air France and Joon—cover 320 destinations across 114 countries.

Air France - Scaled Agile Practices with SAFe

In a highly competitive industry, where information systems can be strategic competitive assets, Air France – KLM set out to reduce its time-to-market with business applications. To do so, the company decided to improve the business/IT collaboration by breaking down silos and expanding Lean-Agile practices.

“Before, in moving from waterfall to Agile, we were not able to make the leap on a broader scale,” says Edwin Borst, Program Management NWOW #agile Adoption, Air France – KLM.

Achieving its goals would require bringing together diverse cultures at French and Dutch offices, as well as contending with diverse contexts, operational constraints or regulations across the different business domains.

An Agile Adoption Empowering Business Domains and Teams

After the successful launch of three ARTs in the Commercial Digital business domain in the late summer of 2016, the company decided to leverage this success and create a broader-scale adoption. Pieter Bootsma, Executive Vice-President of Commercial Strategy at Air France – KLM, noted: “We can all benefit from Agile in the whole group and not only at Commercial Digital.” So, in late 2016, the company chose to foster and accelerate the adoption and scaling of Agile practices.

Prior to launching the broad SAFe adoption, a small group of transformation leaders spent several months defining the scope of the deployment, the way the adoption would be conducted, and preparing for the adoption of SAFe on a larger scale. The leaders decided to adopt Lean-Agile principles and values in the way the program would be set up and run. The goal: demonstrate the mindset and practices, and see the benefits of this approach in a Change Management context.

  • Empower each business domain via its own self-organized, multidisciplinary, “Agile adoption team”
  • Deliver the change in short cycles, enabling experimentation and quick adaptation
  • Start small with minimum viable products (MVPs)
  • Share and learn from each others’ domains
  • Differentiate and adapt to each domain’s specifications and context
Air France - Scaled Agile Practices with SAFe

In late 2016, the company chose the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) to foster and accelerate the adoption and scaling of Agile practices across the various business domains.

“In order to manage our Agile adoption program across 11 business domains within Air France – KLM, we formed an Agile Release Plane (ARP, modified to fit the industry), inspired by SAFe,” says Didier Lavielle,  Program Management NWOW #agile Adoption, Air France – KLM. “SAFe gives us the framework we have been missing while at the same time empowering each business domain to define their own way to reach their goals.”

Each business domain (Commercial, Cargo, Flight and Ground Operations, Engineering & Maintenance, Finance, Human Resources) joined the ART with its own change team—named Agile Adoption Team—and self-organized as a product team. As a mix of IT and business, the Adoption Team defines the specific objectives, approach, and steps to take in its domain: people to train, Agile product teams to form, coaching needed, communication plan, monitoring progress, and more.

The company formed “Transversal Tracks,” (groups that tie into all business domains), which joined the ART: Human Resources (e.g. role description, training, and coaching), Finance and Portfolio Management (IT investment processes), Tooling and Capabilities, Communication, and “IT Readiness.” This setup brought value to the 11 domains by not having to reinvent the wheel and ensured consistency in harmonized solutions.

Air France – KLM engaged with BlinkLane Consulting for guidance and training. Around 150 team members in the Agile Adoption ART, from the various business domains and Transversal Track teams, attended Introduction to Agile training, with about 50% of them taking the Leading SAFe course.

Some of the Transversal tracks went through specially designed workshops regarding Lean Budgeting, Agile KPIs & Reporting, and Agile HR, for instance. Those supporting the various adoption teams either attended the SAFe Scrum Master training or were already certified SPCs. So far, more than 300 colleagues from the Adoption ART and from the regular ARTs have followed the Leading SAFe training.

Aligning the Stakeholders on a “Definition of Awesome”

Prior to kickoff, all business domains and Transversal Track groups aligned on a common definition of awesome with four themes:

Agile Enterprise – In the Air France – KLM enterprise, the autonomous, stable, and cross-functional teams are the cornerstones of the organization for driving innovation and continuous improvement. The Transversal processes support and stimulate an Agile way of working and mindset at all levels. This allows the company to focus on continuously maximizing quality and delivering value to the customer.

Value Creation – The Agile adoption aims to create more value—for customers and employees. Quality as well as effectiveness go up. The company succeeds by driving down the time-to-market, and increasing the Net Promotor Score.

Leadership – Air France – KLM develops servant leaders who empower Agile teams and value streams. They engender trust, work with a clear purpose, and provide direction to all levels of the Agile Enterprise. They are recognized for their Agile leadership, enabling others to succeed and drive the organization for continuous improvement. They focus on goals instead of tasks.

Employee Engagement – The organization is recognized as a best place to work. As a result, it attracts talented people. It works closely with customers. People feel responsible and autonomous for their products and results. Employee satisfaction is high and demonstrated by EPS (active promotors).

Big-Room Kickoff in Paris: PI Planning Event #1

Air France - Scaled Agile Practices with SAFe

The company officially kicked off the Air France – KLM New Ways of Working #agile ART at the first PI planning event in March 2017 in Paris. The Release Train Engineer (RTE), Odile Moreau from BlinkLane, was part of a small group of transformation leaders called The Core Team. The team, which includes three from Air France – KLM and three from BlinkLane, helps foster the adoption and structure; organize the program and its events; support the domains and the Transversal tracks; and monitor the progress and the results.

The five Transversal tracks, 11 business domain adoption teams, and the Core Team formed the ART, with 150 people. The company’s group CIO, Jean-Christophe Lalanne, and Commercial Strategy EVP, Pieter Bootsma, attended as executive sponsors and set the tone for the importance of the initiative.

At the first PI event, Air France – KLM introduced a logo created specifically for the program, which added strategic emphasis.

Team members from France and the Netherlands came together, bringing distinctive cultures and very diverse states of Agile: some were new to Agile principles and some brought several years of experience

“Although this approach and the PI Planning event was new for most people, everyone was really driven and motivated to share experiences, learn from each other, try and experiment, and work toward results,” Lavielle says.

Yet despite that excitement, many were hesitant to break out of their own groups and talk with those they had never met. Thus transformation leaders requested that anyone adding yarn to the program board—indicating dependencies—discuss it directly with the individuals involved.

As the first PI progressed, teams achieved about 60 percent of their stated objectives, on average. In leading up to the second PI, they applied the lessons learned and set more accurate, quantifiable objectives.

At the start of the second PI, Air France – KLM began a new practice of having each business domain and Transversal Track share its business results with the entire group as a PI begins. At the same time, this served as an opportunity to Inspect and Adapt what worked and what didn’t.

By the third PI, in the fall of 2017, Air France – KLM had grown to 208 product teams and eight ARTs across Commercial Digital, Cargo, Commercial, and AF Flight Ops. The KLM HR division and the AF Ground Services have both organized Value Stream workshops to either launch new trains or reorganize their current Agile teams into an ART. The same applies to Digital Commercial. Following on the continuous Inspect & Adapt, Commercial Digital will also reorganize its current ARPs to allow for more alignment on the business objectives and improve its delivery model.

Lessons Learned and Best Practices

Along the way, they learned a number of lessons to improve their efforts going forward:

  • Have an approach for dealing with the diversity across domains, both in their Agile maturity and in their specific context and constraints (operational, security, and regulations)
  • Establish strong ownership in each business domain via an individual adoption team
  • Since most of the dependencies lie between Transversal Tracks (HR or Finance impediments) and business domains, co-create solutions for Transversal topics that facilitate exchanges and encourage learning from each other
  • Actively address the challenge of changing the managerial mindset and leadership styles
  • Understand that setting realistic goals for the next 15 weeks will be difficult for most, as is learning to set smaller, more realistic goals
  • Encourage individuals to ask for help from someone in a Transversal Track or the Core Team
  • Ensure that the team members who are not 100% dedicated and co-located commit to objectives and organize in a way to still be able to work together and produce results
  • Ask for regular feedback to respond to uncertainties and come up with valuable results
  • Leave personal egos at the door and achieve common objectives

Investing in Role-Based Training

Where it can, the company trains with the SAFe curriculum. All RTEs go through SAFe Release Train Engineer training. Scrum Masters with the PSM certification are offered the SAFe for Scrum Master training and certification when joining an ARP. The same applies for Product Owner. Team members also attend SAFe for Teams when they join an ARP. Additionally, the company developed training and workshops for Lean Budgeting, using the Weighted Shortest Job First, and other practical guidelines.

A community of 40 coaches support the effort at various levels: teams, domain, adoption, and enterprise. This community is growing in maturity and results. In the third PI, the company will focus on internalization and growth of the coaches, ensuring a more sustainable and economical support for the Agile community.

Air France - Scaled Agile Practices with SAFe

Results: 20% More Effective Delivery

Since deploying SAFe, Air France – KLM notes greater collaboration between business domains and Transversal Tracks. Within three months, their efforts began paying off in business results in the Cargo group:

Time-to-market – Each ART team delivers on its promises every three weeks. Since moving to SAFe, the company released 17 times in the live environment in seven months compared to every six months previously.

Quality – Of the 17 releases, the company had to delay just one due to a major incident

Productivity – SAFe teams deliver, on average, more than 20% more effectively than waterfall teams

Adaptability – With a PI cycle of 12 weeks, Air France – KLM has been able to pivot its vision three times in the past year, allowing the company to tap into new business opportunities much more quickly and easily

Market share – The company gained 20% market share in the small and medium logistics market alone with this flexibility

Predictability – The velocity of ARTs builds in more predictability and enables teams to take ownership and show greater craftsmanship. Team stability is also an important success factor in results

Business value – On one offering, the company exceeded expectation by 25%

Employee satisfaction – PI Planning results in better transparency and autonomy for the teams. Seeing the vision in the Cargo group encourages team members to contribute to the business value and increases their work satisfaction, as well as collaboration between business and IT

Customer satisfaction – Air France – KLM is more intimate with its clients. All Product Owners from the business side have a greater understanding of the demand. Going live with small changes and new functionality every three weeks gives them a faster feedback loop and more rapid pivoting, enabling groups to deliver greater value in its IT solutions

Air France - Scaled Agile Practices with SAFe

Air France – KLM looks forward to seeing ever-greater progress as it moves toward DevOps, allowing the ARTs to deliver end-to-end with an integrated team.

“We have started experimenting more with weighted shortest job first (WSJF) in our priority at the Features level,” Moreau says. “We also want to harness the work with Portfolio Management and Lean budgeting.”

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Deutsche Bhan

Standard Bank – Successful SAFe Journey to Agile at Scale

Presented at 2017 SAFe Summit by Alex Keyter, Lean-Agile Coach at Standard Bank

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Standard Bank embarked on a SAFe transformation journey in 2014 with IT initiating approximately 600 projects annually to help keep the bank at the leading edge. Historically, teams completed only a small percentage of projects within the defined timeframe, budget, and scope.

A visit to Silicon Valley’s top technology companies by our IT executives triggered the start of a number of Lean-Agile proofs-of-concept, showcasing the potential of Agility in the enterprise. However, their efforts stalled when they attempted to expand beyond a few development teams working in isolation.

With a clear IT strategy in place, the Standard Bank turned to the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) and gained support from its executives to forge ahead with deploying the Scaled Agile Framework across the organization. Prior to launching the first Agile Release Train, significant time was spent on designing Portfolios, Programs and SAFe Teams. Standard Bank also initiated programs that focused on transforming management and leadership; developing a culture that fosters autonomy mastery and purpose; and re-skilling individuals to return to the heart of IT as software engineers, quality engineers, and user experience analysts.

With a large number of ARTs already in their third and fourth Program Increment, the value of the SAFe transformation is tangible with the motivated staff producing quality, more frequent, predictable delivery. Coupled with the successes, Standard Bank drives continuous improvement through role maturity, enhanced engineering capability and ART optimization.

Read the full case study.

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Capital One – Benefits of SAFe for Financial Services

Capital One - Benefits of SAFe for Financial Services

“The products we’re developing are bigger than one Agile team. For the teams to interact and plan together, we really needed SAFe as the foundation. It brings the practices and methodologies to coordinate multiple teams working on the same product at the same time.”

Mike Eason, CIO, Commercial Banking

Challenge:

Capital One sought to be more responsive to the market, to transform software delivery to an agile framework, and to do it at scale.

Industry:

Financial Services

Results:

  • Raised employee engagement by 15-20%
  • Employed Agile and scaled agile across the enterprise; business and tech.
  • Re-thinking the strategy on outsourced applications led to a drastic shift towards building internally

Best Practices:

  • Establish communities of practice—Peer groups for Scrum Masters, RTEs, and System Teams enable these individuals to learn from each other.
  • Support innovation—Commercial Banking leads Innovation Renovations similar to the Shark Tank TV show, where individuals present ideas for improvement.
  • Recognize accomplishments—Commercial Banking calls out specific individuals for their efforts at PI events, and enhances morale and a sense of fun by requesting that people write what they appreciate about others on “walking billboards” on each other’s’ backs.

Introduction

One of the most widely recognized brands in America, Capital One is a diversified bank that offers a broad array of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses, and commercial clients. The company employs more than 47,000 people, and in 2016, reported revenue of $25 billion.

Benefits of SAFe for Financial Services

Since launching in the mid ‘90s, Capital One has been a disrupter. Smaller and nimbler than its competitors, it could react to market demands quickly. But as it grew, it lost some of that agility.

2010 began a transformation starting with the renaming of the Capital One’s IT groups to Capital One Technology. “This was more than a name change,” Capital One CIO Rob Alexander said.  “It was a declaration that we would no longer be a traditional bank IT shop.  From now that day on, we would be an organization working to transform Capital One into a technology company.”

In 2012, Capital One’s Commercial Banking group set out to be more responsive to customer and market needs.  Knowing the organization relied on a lot of outsourced functions, the team set out on a transformational journey to bring IT development back in-house.

As the transformation picked up steam; it was clear, talent would be the lynchpin to execute against their development goals.  To maximize the transformation, the following was always the question:

“How do we work in a way that allows great talent to do great work?” (Rob Alexander, CIO, Capital One)

The CIO of the company’s Commercial Banking Technology team, Mike Eason, explains the motivation for change.  “Like many companies with outsourced technology, we knew we needed to gain control over our customer experience and become more nimble,” Eason says. “We took a step back and said, ‘we need to build our own technology to respond more rapidly to the market.’”

In 2013, the group began taking steps toward building an Agile workforce, however, Eason describes it as going through the motions. Development was largely still a waterfall approach. And while technology leaders were fully on board, opportunities remained to gain the full support of upper management.

SAFe: ‘A Well-Supported Framework with Clear Guidelines’

For the guidance it needed, Commercial Banking turned to the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®).

“We looked at other frameworks for Agile, but SAFe offered a well-supported framework with clear guidelines, training, and experts to support us throughout the journey,” says Anand Francis, Director of Agile Coaching Services, Capital One Commercial Banking.

“The products we’re developing are bigger than one Agile team,” Eason adds. “For the teams to interact and plan together, we really needed SAFe as the foundation. It brings the practices and methodologies to coordinate multiple teams working on the same product at the same time.”

With the decision to go SAFe, support from the Capital One Commercial Operations Leader was a key factor, helping to influence large scale buy-in from other executives. Moving beyond rhetoric of “business and IT” alignment, Capital One business executives have agile teams dedicated to their products, services, and broader business strategies.

Goal: 100% Training

Prior to the first Program Increment (PI), all team members went through Agile 101 training. Today, half of the Release Train Engineers (RTEs) are SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs). Out of 50 Scrum Master roles, one quarter have achieved SAFe® Scrum Master (SSM) Certification while 10 percent are SPCs.

“Our goal is to have 50 percent of our Scrum Master population SAFe Scrum Master certified and 100% of our RTE population SAFe RTE certified by the end of the year,” Francis says.

Capital One now includes Agile, Design Thinking, and SAFe training courses in its Capital One University. Employees can choose from a number of SAFe courses, including Leading SAFe, SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager, and SAFe Release Train Engineer.

Empowering Teams

SAFe for Financial Services

Capital One held its first Program Increment (PI) Planning meeting in 2013. In-house Agile coaches provided continuous guidance to Scrum Masters, RTEs, and Product Owners.

As Commercial Banking kicked off its first PI, a mindset shift was necessary for associates and to continue to move forward on two big themes: one, we as an organization needed to be great at delivering software; and two, we needed to be great at delivering data solutions that support how we make decisions for customers, how we interact with them, and how we make decisions internally. Christy Gurkin, the RTE on the first Agile Release Train (ART), found that while teams were initially resistant to the change, they soon began embracing the new approach.

“I noticed that people who normally would not have talked together were initiating conversations on their own, without me having to push it,” she says.

Eason also notes that, early on, teams lacked the autonomy to deliver independently because too many outside dependencies slowed down the process. Capital One addressed this by changing team structure. Instead of teams that focused on a single aspect, such as building an API, they transitioned to full-feature teams—equipping an entire team to deliver working software independently in a two-week sprint.

With this shift in team composition, and a greater focus on DevOps and continuous integration/continuous development, the company gained momentum.

Capital One additionally reduced team sizes down to seven or eight people. “By reducing team sizes, we improved team chemistry, which left them feeling like they had the autonomy to solve issues themselves,” Eason says.

Commercial Banking also took a major step in moving from project-centric budgeting to team-centric budgeting. “Before, no one wanted the project to end because then the resources would be distributed somewhere else,” Eason says. “Leadership and teams are now aligned to products, and make decisions on how much to invest in the products themselves instead of justifying every single project.”

As a result, teams are more nimble to ‘turn on a dime’ as needed, without the pressure of having to see a specific project to the end.

“Teams feel more beholden to the product they’re working on versus moving from project to project,” Francis adds.

A Transformation Guided by Teams

In addition to performing Inspect and Adapt after every PI, Commercial Banking designed and developed an Agile maturity assessment to help trains and teams understand where they are on their transformation journey. Once a quarter, they ask individuals to react anonymously to neutral statements across five areas: sustainability, value delivery, scaled agile, culture, and technical health.

“A lot of companies think they’re in one place, but they’re really in another,” says Greg Jaeger, Agile Coach. “Our goal was honest opinions and honest assessment because that’s the only way to help each member of the team, each team, each train, and each program get better—not only in being Agile or SAFe but in actual product delivery.”

Areas with low scores indicate the need for a discussion. In response, individuals at the Team and Program levels identify areas to improve for the next six sprints. Based on items chosen at those levels, Agile coaches formulate an Agile transformation path for every value stream.

Faster Delivery, Happier People

Benefits of SAFe for Financial Services

Today, Commercial Banking has 13 ARTs and seven Value Streams. Since deploying SAFe, the group has seen gains that benefit employees, partners, customers, and the organization as a whole:

Time-to-market— As we build out our physical campus, we have tried to create work spaces that enable that collaboration at the agile scrum team level, but also, we operate what is called the scaled agile framework.  That implies that we need to be able to be effective in collaborating at both the individual team level, but also across multiple teams.

Taking an iterative approach to frequently deliver to production brought about efficiency and speed not previously seen.  “We’re truly able to deliver working software into production at the end of every sprint,” Eason says. “What took us six months to complete before, now we might complete in a couple of months. And by bringing development in-house, we have working solutions much faster than any vendor partnership could deliver.”

Commercial Banking turned the ratio of vendor-created applications to those built in-house upside down.

Engagement—With employee engagement up 15-20 percent overall, morale and retention have improved.

Predictability—With each PI, Commercial Banking sees greater predictability in what it can deliver. PI planning plays a major role in setting expectations and encouraging follow-through.

Customer satisfaction—Eason says business partners prefer the new approach and would not want to go back to the old way of working. Likewise, the businesses that Commercial Banking serve have responded positively to the opportunity to see demos and progress along the way, rather than only having insight into fully completed projects.

“It’s been great to have clients with us on the design and test aspects of development,” Eason says.

The journey continues at Capital One, with Commercial Banking continuously refining after every PI. Success so far, aided by SAFe, greatly fuels that momentum.

“SAFe has enabled us to go to production in a safer and more scalable way more often than we would have normally,” Anand says.

“We are in that journey, and it is important that as the leadership team in technology,” says Capital One CIO Rob Alexander, “we are communicating to our whole organization that this is what excellence in software delivery looks like.”

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