“SAFe provides us with a frame of reference that facilitates the cadence of work, principles and values that allow us to concentrate in an organized manner on providing the best service to the Administration of Justice and to the more than 80,000 users who use the Justice management system Avantius for the electronic processing of judicial files.
The collaboration, communication and learning that we obtain through its [SAFe’s] practice guarantees that with each Planning Increment, our product is more robust, more innovative and closer to the needs of our users, leading the digitalization of Justice in Spain.
Our team enjoys and is proud of the results obtained with this way of working.”
—Javier Laínez, Avantius SAFe Release Train Engineer, Tracasa Instrumental
Challenge:
Design, build, maintain and evolve Avantius, the best digital solution for electronic judicial files, which makes judicial processes more efficient every day, offering an immediate benefit to society.
Industry:
Government, IT
Results:
- Increased predictability of releases with a cadence of 3 per year. “Before using SAFe we were not predictable,” explains Laínez. “It was usually one or two releases per year, but we couldn’t make it at the planned dates.”
- Improved product quality as measured by a 47% decrease in bugs from 2020 to 2022
- Increased engagement of team members by 25% as demonstrated by Employee Net Promoter Scores (eNPS) and engagement surveys.
- Boosted customer satisfaction ratings by 30% based on Net Promoter Scores
- Improved flow and efficiency: As a result of the digital transformation with SAFe, the judicial system saw improvement in pending cases and congestion rate (registered/resolved matters) across all regions.
- Reduced time for cases in process: The system also saw improvements in duration of cases, with the estimated average time of civil matters in process dropping by as much as 3.9 months, according to a Report of the General Council of the Judiciary CGPJ.
Best Practices:
- Share PIP backlog preparation to increase transparency and buy-in
- Allow teams and ARTs to self-manage
- Always look for innovation opportunities to increase iteration effectiveness
- Focus on the development of Agile culture in the ARTs
Overview
In the justice sector, the relationship between the authorities and the citizens they serve is crucial. Improving transparency, accountability, responsiveness, service accessibility, and the user experience has direct impacts on citizens’ quality of life.
Digitalization of judicial systems not only has important benefits for the justice system, but it also drives economic and social progress. Electronic file management systems grease the wheels of justice. Clerks no longer have to perform tedious manual searches for documents or wade through warehouses full of file boxes. The technology allows for e-signatures, saving people unnecessary trips to sign documents in person. Background documents are centralized and encrypted for security. Citizens no longer have to languish in the system while lawyers and court officers manually gather discovery documents. Legal officers and staff are able to do their jobs more efficiently, improving the flow of cases through the system. Historic records are better organized and more secure.
Tracasa Instrumental (the technology company of the Government of Navarra) experienced this all firsthand when they built Avantius, a digital legal process management system and put it to use in the autonomous communities of Navarra, Cantabria, Aragon, the Basque Country and the country of Andorra.
With the help of SAFe, Avantius became the common vehicle for the modernization of justice in the North of Spain.
About Tracasa
Tracasa Instrumental has a staff of more than 600 qualified professionals who develop technological solutions and services, mainly for the public sector (Government of Navarra and Local Corporations). Of them, 89 people make up the high-performance team that maintains and evolves Avantius, organizing around value in 12 Agile teams with a high degree of maturity.
About Avantius
Avantius is Spain’s Procedural Management System used daily by more than 7,000 users of the Justice administration and more than 77,500 professionals and external collaborators who take advantage of its facilities for the digital processing of files and its integration capabilities with state services.
In total, more than 4,700,000 citizens benefit from the digital services provided by Avantius to accelerate faster and more efficient procedural management every day.
Avantius allows comprehensive management of judicial files, with maximum security and within a single electronic judicial file, facilitating the work of all operators participating in a judicial process.
In April 2019, Avantius was certified by the General Council of the Judiciary of Spain as the only valid procedural management system that is mandatory for judges to work with the Electronic Judicial File.
The Path to SAFe: A Timeline
“Tracasa has incorporated Agile methods into the way its teams work since 2012,” says Roberto Clerigué, Director of Operations at Tracasa Instrumental and Product Owner of Tracasa’s SAFe LACE. “In 2018, due to alignment and synchronization needs with the growth in the number of autonomous communities and users that used the Avantius justice management system, we began to study what the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) proposed. In 2019, we saw that we needed a partner that could help guide the implementation of SAFe in an orderly manner and based on experiences.”
Tracasa then contracted with Estratecno, a Scaled Agile Gold Transformation Partner, and began training and SPC support for the implementation of SAFe in Avantius and other management areas of the organization.
“Furthermore, in February 2020, we learned more about the SAFe proposal with a meeting in Madrid in which Chris James, CEO of Scaled Agile, participated,” Clerigué recalls. “We were able to learn more about the SAFe proposal, which led us to promote, in a more decisive way, the implementation of SAFe in our company. Although the pandemic slowed down some initiatives, during that year Leading SAFe, SAFe POPM, SAFe SSM and SAFe RTE trainings were completed.”
In 2021, Avantius’ first PI Planning was launched following the SAFe implementation roadmap along with an implementation of portfolio management for the company’s four-year strategic plan. “We are very proud of the results obtained so far.”
Now the Avantius team is made up of more than 89 professionals distributed across 12 teams. These teams have an Agile Release Train (ART) structure following a SAFe Essential configuration that supports a clearly defined development Value Stream for Avantius based on the operational Value Stream of legal processes supported by the different Avantius components.
Ready for the Future
With the advancements from Avantius’ way of working based on the SAFe framework, the justice area of Tracasa Instrumental is ready to scale its contribution and face new challenges with confidence.
“The contribution of an Agile scaling framework, as consistent and proven as SAFe provides us, allows us to focus on growing clients, users and new areas of action at a pace that a few years ago we could not dream of,” says Javier Amézqueta, director of the Justice area of Tracasa Instrumental and fundamental promoter in the Lean Agile evolution of the Avantius team.
Amézqueta also credits SAFe with allowing Tracasa to attract more talent and enjoy a more aligned and productive work environment. “It allows us to incorporate the great professionals that we want to grow with us to face the challenges that we must face in the coming years,” he adds.
Of course, there are direct business benefits too, he notes: “SAFe provides us with greater predictability in the delivery of value, increases the satisfaction of team members associated with intrinsic motivation factors and helps us prioritize demand to plan without exceeding the capacity of the train equipment.”
Learn More
Tracasa Instrumental – Avantius – Justice Management System: PIP (Program Increment Planning) on YouTube.
Navarra, recognized as an international success story for the methodology used by Tracasa Instrumental in the Avantius judicial management system. This company of the Government of Navarra is the first Spanish public entity to obtain this recognition worldwide. News article.
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