How Mobio Aligned the Business World and Technical World with SAFe

“Adopting SAFe has been an incredible and proud journey for us. The collective commitment and determination from leadership to Agile teams enabled us to overcome periods of uncertainty and challenges, leading to our first significant achievements. By bridging the gap between the business and technical worlds and fostering alignment across the entire organization, SAFe has proven to be an indispensable framework… for sustainable growth and long-term success.”

— Trang Duong, COO of Mobio


Overview

Mobio offers an all-in-one Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Data Platform (CDP) that serves more than 50 organizations worldwide. They pride themselves on being more than just a technology provider. They are a strategic partner assisting in digital transformations. Mobio’s goal is to empower marketing, sales, and service teams to work in harmony and build deeper customer relationships–all from a single, unified platform. Read on to learn more about how Mobio was able to align business and technical teams with the Scaled Agile Framework.

The Challenge: Finding Alignment Between Business and Technical

The greatest challenge Mobio faced before transitioning to SAFe was the lack of alignment between the business world and the technical world. Business objectives and customer pain points could not effectively reach the product development teams due to a missing feedback loop, which resulted in outputs lacking empathy and difficulties for users in adoption.

At the same time, as our product grew into a more comprehensive solution, the fragmentation among Agile teams and between different solution components became increasingly evident, making integration and scale-up efforts highly challenging.

Previously, Mobio had applied Scrum, which was suitable in the early stage when the product scale was small and focused on a single product line. However, as Mobio expanded into three parallel product lines with strong interdependencies, Scrum began to show its limitations. Overlaps in collaboration created difficulties in maintaining alignment, transparency, and ensuring both speed and quality — critical factors for the company’s long-term goals.

These challenges ultimately drove Mobio to adopt SAFe — a framework designed to scale, orchestrate cross-team and multi-product collaboration, while preserving agility. With SAFe, Mobio has been able to establish a synchronized and sustainable development process, bringing our solutions closer to customers.

Why use SAFe?

When facing these challenges, Mobio’s leadership team proactively sought solutions and explored several methodologies and frameworks, including Scrum of Scrums, LeSS, and Scaled Agile. After carefully comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each, Mobio chose SAFe for these key reasons:

  1. First, when mapping against their biggest pain point, Mobio recognized that SAFe’s mindset, core values, and principles are oriented toward outcomes rather than outputs. This ensures top-down strategic alignment, connecting the objectives of the entire organization with each Agile team’s objectives.
  2. Second, SAFe strongly supports customer-centricity and the economic view at every level and role across the enterprise.
  3. Third, while the framework is inherently complex, this very characteristic brings clarity in roles and responsibilities, along with detailed guidance on how the system should operate. This makes communication, training, and implementation significantly more effective.
  4. Above all, SAFe is designed for building complex solutions with a product-development mindset, rather than just creating simple tools within a project-based approach. “This is precisely what we were looking for, and so far, it has proven to be the right decision,” says Duong.

Results and Business Outcomes with SAFe

Since implementing SAFe, Mobio has observed significant improvements across process, Agile teams, and business outcomes:

How SAFe led to process improvements and helped teams align:

Thanks to PI Planning, IT Planning, and regular sync sessions, transparency and collaboration among Agile teams have been markedly enhanced.

Backlogs, progress, and risks are now better managed, with survey results averaging 4/5.

Although PI Objective completion rates fluctuated in some periods, the overall trend has improved due to better dependency identification and stronger delivery discipline. Average completion rates increased from 60% to 82%.

Predictability rose from 65% to 85%, making product planning and releases more accurate.

Mobio’s first PI Planning
Mobio’s second PI Planning

Agile team performance:

  • Teams are more seamlessly connected through Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and PI Objectives.
  • Survey results show that most members feel their daily work directly contributes to the company’s overall goals.
  • Team responsibility and cohesion improved significantly, with average scores rising from 3.4/5 before SAFe to 4.1/5.
  • Blocker resolution time was reduced from 2 days to 0.5–1 day.
  • Team satisfaction increased by 15–20% after 4 PIs, reflecting higher ownership and stronger team engagement.

Achieving business and customer outcomes with SAFe:

  • Release cycles are now consistently maintained every two weeks, delivering value to customers faster.
  • Bug counts decreased by over 30% after 4 PIs, demonstrating continuous product quality improvements.
  • The ratio of post-release bugs to total development bugs dropped from 8% to 3%, making the product more stable and reducing customer issues after releases.
  • The percentage of features delivering measurable business value rose from 75% to 90%, showing clear improvement in prioritization and feature selection.

Beyond Business: How SAFe Improved Company Culture

“Beyond the business benefits, what impressed us most about adopting SAFe were the positive impacts on people and culture at Mobio. SAFe’s mindset naturally aligns with and reinforces the core values Mobio embraces even before adopting SAFe: Ownership, Respect, and Growth-Oriented.” -– Trang Duong,  COO of Mobio

Through SAFe practices that connect daily work with ultimate outcomes, every team member now experiences greater clarity, meaning, and ownership in their roles, Mobio reports. The company culture has become more open and transparent, as SAFe events encourage participation, facilitation, and the sharing of fresh ideas and perspectives. This has fostered stronger collaboration, mutual support, and alignment toward common goals.

At the same time, a culture of continuous learning and improvement has taken root, enabling the organization to become more proactive, cohesive, and mature with each Sprint and PI. Most importantly, individuals feel their voices are heard, team cohesion has grown, and satisfaction with the work environment has improved significantly — with survey scores rising from an average of 4/5 to 5/5.

In summary, SAFe has helped Mobio become more transparent, aligned, and adaptive in delivering value to customers. This has built a strong foundation for scaling Agile further and achieving even greater business results in the future.

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Suggested Case Study: Royal Philips

Nokia Software – Improving Predictability and Team Collaboration Using SAFe

Customer Interview: SAFe Improves Predictability and Team Collaboration at Nokia Software

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Dean Leffingwell sits down with Juha Rossi and Johanna Reunanen to talk about leading an agile transformation inside one of the world’s most recognizable technology brands. In this candid interview, they share the story behind Nokia Software’s SAFe transformation, and what it’s like implementing and practicing SAFe in such a large and complex organization. They also describe the agility challenges of aligning 40+ ARTs and many solution trains, and how agile practices bring improvements in productivity, customer experience, and quality.

Presented at the Global SAFe Summit, October, 2020

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Censhare – Adopting SAFe for Business Agility Transformation

censhare - Adopting SAFe for Agility

“Having a clear methodology and training in place has been very helpful when hiring people: Good developers expect a modern methodology. Being able to tell candidates that we take Agile principles seriously, by mentioning that we have trained and certified product owners and Scrum masters, and that we follow a clear Agile path-definitely makes a difference.”

Walter Bauer, CTO, censhare

Challenge:

As the company reached 150 people, locally developed variations of Scrum were no longer effective.

Industry:

Software

Results:

  • Faster time to market of the company’s latest product version
  • Greater alignment between product management and development
  • More team spirit
  • Enhanced employee satisfaction and an edge when hiring

Best Practices:

  • Prepare thoroughly for PI events – Before the first real PI planning meeting, Improuv organized a training session that simulated the event-leading to very successful early PIs.
  • Train product managers – Product owners and the Chief Product Owner attended the SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (PMPO) two-day workshop, to help prepare the overall backlog.
  • Show the Program Board – The program board hangs in an area of the office seen by all, and provides a focal point for Scrum of Scrum meetings and PO/PM meetings.

Introduction

Munich-based censhare is an international software firm deploying innovative technologies that enable companies to master the next generation of digital communication. For more than 20 years, the company has offered comprehensive digital platforms geared to creating, shaping, and designing engaging customer experiences.

While censhare was not new to Agile principles, their experience was limited to locally developed interpretations of Scrum. That Agile approach worked to an extent when the company was small, but not as well when it reached 150 people.

“I used to have regular personal contact with all people in the company, but now it’s even hard to keep this up within my own department,” explains Walter Bauer, censhare CTO.

Shot of a young programmer using a digital tablet in an office at night

Train, then Launch the Train

Bauer and a product manager attended Leading SAFe® training, where they discovered the thinking and practices behind scaling Agile via the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®). Bauer saw how censhare could adapt the SAFe “Big Picture” to provide a flexible and scalable Agile way of working that would help not just development, but the organization as a whole.

Following training, the CTO decided to bring SAFe to censhare. The goal: solidify Agile across the organization and prepare it for future expansion.

With the support of Scaled Agile partner, Improuv, censhare followed the concept of “train everyone, then launch an Agile Release Train:”

  • Management
    Executive leadership attended a one-day workshop to discuss agility, scaling Agile, and to set and manage expectations. The leadership team bought into the approach and gave the green light to introduce scaled Lean-Agile practices.
  • Scrum teams
    Before focusing on scaling, censhare decided to further develop the core Agile strengths of their development teams. Scrum teams received training and coaching on Scrum and SAFe to help develop team potential and prepare them for working together at scale. All Scrum Masters received Certified Scrum Master training (CSM).
  • Product management
    Product owners and the Chief Product Owner attended the SAFe Product Manager Product Owner (PMPO) two-day workshop, becoming certified as SAFe PMPOs. This, along with coaching, helped product management prepare the overall backlog.

Kicking Off

In SAFe, the Program Increment (PI) planning meeting sets the objectives for the coming 10-week increment. To bring the organization up-to-speed before the first real PI planning meeting, Improuv organized a training session that simulated the event. This turned out to be key to the eventual success of the first planning sessions.

censhare then formed an Agile Release Train (ART) and launched it on a 10-week planning and alignment cadence. Within the 10 weeks, Scrum teams work in synchronized two-week sprints. The kickoff PI planning event followed the SAFe model.

The company introduced Scaled Agile portfolio management, aided by Portfolio-level Kanban, to add transparency to the Portfolio backlog and match demand with capacity. However, censhare is still implementing this level since there is currently a clear demand process—which is now matched to the capacity of the ART.

Improving Time to Market, Morale

The CTO points to a number of positive outcomes resulting from SAFe:

  • Faster time to market-censhare released a new version of its product to the market (something that would have been challenging had the company not adopted SAFe). The development and release of the product was significantly faster than previous releases.
  • Greater alignment—SAFe succeeded in improving alignment between product management and development teams. Cross-team dependencies are better managed and made transparent.
  • Common vision—The Agile Release Train and 10-week cadence helped the teams develop a product globally, rather than local team deliverables.
  • More team spirit—The “we are a censhare team” spirit improved through the development team-of-teams thinking. Teams feel more empowered and involved.
  • Enhanced employee satisfaction—An employee survey revealed that employees appreciate that censhare now has a more professional way of developing products.
Adopting SAFe for Agility

“Having a clear methodology and training in place has been very helpful when hiring people: Good developers expect a modern methodology. Being able to tell candidates that we take Agile principles seriously—by mentioning that we have trained and certified Product Owners and Scrum Masters, and that we follow a clear Agile path—definitely makes a difference,” Bauer says

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PlayStation Network

Amdocs – Applying Lean and Agile Practices by Adopting SAFe

Our time-to-value has gone down using the SAFe® process. If reaching production would normally take 1½ years, now it could be eight months with the new processes and approach.

Hrishikesh Karekar, Lead Agile Coach, Amdocs

Challenge:

Long scoping and development times failed to keep pace with the rate of change happening within Amdocs’ client organizations.

Industry:

Software, Telecommunications

Results:

  • More frequent deliveries to production
  • 30% faster delivery for user acceptance testing
  • Monthly demos to customers, enabling early feedback and better alignment with customer expectations
  • System stabilization time down from six weeks to less than a week

Best Practices:

  • Follow SAFe Closely—Instead of modifying the approach for the company, Amdocs chose to follow the Scaled Agile Framework as closely as possible.
  • Leverage Gamification—Gamification, and early successes, motivated teams to push on and commit to the change.

The partner that made it happen:


Introduction

In the complex and competitive communications industry, many of the world’s largest telecom and entertainment players turn to Amdocs for customer care, billing and order management systems. At the $3.6 billion company, more than 24,000 employees serve customers in over 90 countries.

Telecommunication mast with microwave link and TV transmitter antennas in night sky . long exposure about 2-3 minutes

The Amdocs portfolio includes a full set of BSS/OSS capabilities on a variety of platforms and technologies to support communication service providers. Projects can take anywhere from a few months to a few years to complete, requiring close collaboration across widely distributed teams. The Amdocs Delivery organization comprises approximately 5,000 professionals around the world.

In this challenging environment, Amdocs sought ways to improve quality and delivery times. The time from initial scoping to delivery simply stretched too long for the rate of change happening for Amdocs’ customers. Amdocs Delivery had been experimenting with ways to be Agile; however the need for a more structured approach was evident given projects’ scale and complexity.

“We were working in big blocks,” says Levana Barkai, a Lead of Center of Excellence in the Amdocs Israeli office. “Even scoping requirements with the customer could take a year. Only after we closed in on the bits and bytes of customer requirements (long phase of ~8 months) we started the next phases of design, development and testing. But then we would realize that the customer already has new requirements we needed to address. We needed to be more flexible to customers’ changing needs.”

Choosing a Proven, Enterprise-Level Framework

After evaluating several options to scale Agile, Amdocs Delivery decided to adopt the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) for a number of reasons. For one, the Framework offered a proven, public-facing method of applying Lean and Agile practices at an enterprise level. The Framework also offered the level of detail the company needed to truly roll out the practices at every level of the organization, and to do so quickly.

In late 2014, executives, managers and leaders began SAFe certification training, followed by teams. As they began applying Agile practices to real projects, the Delivery Transformation team, comprised of Agile Coaches, guided the SAFe implementation and execution. Unlike previous efforts at applying Agile methods, this time the company took a more disciplined approach to more closely align the implementation to the framework to reap the benefits of industry learnings.

Barkai said, “This time we’re doing it differently. We’re taking industry best practices and not modifying them for Amdocs. We set the expectation that we are implementing SAFe as is.”

Upping Adoption through Gamification

Gamification played a big role in the change management strategy, especially to drive the adoption of new practices at the Team level. One of the successful gamification techniques included “FLIP,” a game that requires teams to check items off a checklist to ensure Scrum ceremonies are done in the true spirit. Teams earn points based on how quickly they complete the checklists.

FLIP stands for:

Finish–The team finished the current iteration fully

Learn–Teams performed a retrospective to learn for the future

Improve–The retrospective resulted in specific items that teams can focus on to improve in the next iteration

Plan–Teams completed the iteration planning ceremony and are ready to begin execution for the next iteration

Implementing SAFe in Telecommunications

As teams “FLIP-ed,” they took selfie photos and posted them on physical boards with their marked checklists. Only the teams themselves checked whether criteria were really achieved—to prevent the game from being perceived as a monitoring tool.

The FLIP game drove several successful outcomes:

  • Deeper understanding–To win, teams had to review the checklist, encouraging them to delve into the details of the process broadening the number of people with a detailed understanding of the new process.
  • More discipline–More teams began following Scrum in a disciplined way, helping Amdocs Delivery achieve the new status quo much faster.

“Using gamification for Scrum adoption resulted in better outcomes,” says Hrishikesh Karekar, Lead Agile Coach. “It helped us boost motivation, better the engagement and drive positive behavioral change in teams. Most important of all, the teams loved the process and had fun.”

Delighted Customers

Team members also found reward in seeing the new process produce customer satisfaction and real results. After initial hesitance to share early and frequent demos with customers, team members were pleasantly surprised by customer reactions.

“Customers were really delighted,” Barkai says. “They have been giving us great feedback about seeing the system in such an early state. Now teams understand that this is the key to success.”

“We reduced the time to take an idea to production,” adds Karekar. “Our time to value has gone down using the SAFe process. If reaching production would normally take 1½ years, now it could be eight months with the new processes and approach.”

On average, the company has quantified delivery for user acceptance testing 30 percent faster—a major indication of value for Amdocs. Demos take place every two weeks to two months, instead of the previous four months at a minimum.

Likewise, system stabilization time has shortened in step with quality improvements, from six weeks to less than a week. And with more stability comes greater predictability in the early stages.

Next Steps

Word has spread quickly about early teams’ success, with many initiatives now running on SAFe. And management is encouraging company-wide rollout of the Framework, a goal coaches expect to reach by early next year.

“It’s not theory anymore,” Barkai says. “Now we have a lot of evidence that SAFe works. The success with SAFe implementation has generated a lot of interest in raising the bar for excellence, and laid a great foundation for the DevOps journey.”

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Suggested Case Study: Telstra

NAPA Group – Achieving Business Agility Using SAFe and Scrum

NAPA Group is a leading software house providing solutions for ship design and operation with the mission to improve safety and eco-efficiency of the global maritime industry. Headquartered in Finland, NAPA and NAPA for Operations (Onboard-NAPA) have established themselves as the de facto standard for ship design. They are used by shipyards, owners, designers, classification societies, research institutes, authorities, consultancies and universities around the world.

Industry:

Software, Maritime


The partner that made it happen:


Overview

In 2012, with nearly 400 user organizations for design application and 2,000 installations onboard, they found themselves suffering from growth pains stemming from major annual releases, a large volume of projects, variable scope and schedules, and lack of a framework of best practices needed to support their fast-paced expansion and development. In other words, release schedules were slipping, and it was becoming difficult to get software out.

“95% of ships built annually are designed by our customers using NAPA.”

With the guidance provided by Scaled Agile Gold Partner, Nitor Delta, NAPA embarked upon a 2-year journey of dramatic organizational change that included a combination of Scrum integrated with a full-scale SAFe implementation that ultimately led to their first Release Planning event in 2014.

The results from their 2-year journey are impressive:

• Transparency increased on all levels
• Delivery cycle time down from >12 months to 3 months
• Increased predictability (2014 92% successful releases)
• Need for patches decreased
• Less defects in main branch
• Good basis for further growth

The NAPA experience is a classic example of how the principles of SAFe and Scrum can work in harmony for successful business agility to produce measurable business results. They have demonstrated that the strategic planning enabled by the Portfolio level in SAFe in no way diminishes the value of Scrum, but in fact, illustrates the complementary aspects of both practices.

Many thanks to Toivo Vaje, SA, of NAPA Group for sharing your Lean-Agile experience, and to Maarit Laanti of Nitor Delta for your role in this successful SAFe implementation.

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Suggested Case Study: HPE Software