Success Stories
Rethinking Product Development: Agile Transformation Through Incremental Improvements During Ongoing Operations
Industry: Automotive OEM | Duration: 9 months | Team size: 5 consultants
In times of disruptive upheaval—from global newcomers and geopolitical volatility to rising sustainability requirements, electric mobility, and software-defined, highly customized products—complexity is reaching new heights. The decisive step: a cultural shift toward agile structures and systematic process optimization. In this way, innovative strength, outstanding quality, and focused customer orientation merge to form a powerful engine for forward-looking solutions—the foundation for a leading position in international competition.
To ensure long-term competitiveness, a premium automaker is realigning its overall vehicle development strategy: The goal is to make it more adaptable, focused, and responsive so that the company can confidently navigate market changes both today and in the future. A unified, agile work model for approximately 3,000 employees—from leadership down to the teams—forms the core of this transformation. Through targeted coaching in agile methods and mindset, a shared understanding is fostered that still leaves room for department-specific requirements. This cultural and methodological shift is having a lasting impact on day-to-day collaboration.
Satisfied customers from small and medium-sized businesses and large corporations
The Challenge
- Breaking Down Historically Developed Silos: Overall vehicle development operates within a highly complex network of different hierarchies and functional areas. Silos that have developed over time and lengthy decision-making processes hinder value stream-oriented collaboration and must be systematically broken down.
- Embedding Change into Day-to-Day Operations: At the same time, the transformation must not slow down day-to-day operations. Changes in work processes must be designed to take effect seamlessly without jeopardizing productivity and time-to-market.
- Building a Shared Understanding of the Vision: A shared understanding of the new methods and tools is essential. Only when the added value of the agile approach is clearly communicated and made tangible will the necessary acceptance and self-motivation emerge within the team.
- Lack of Full Transparency: After all, transparency is the backbone of agile organizations. Open insight into processes, responsibilities, resources, and priorities ensures that all stakeholders work purposefully toward creating value and that innovative capacity is sustainably enhanced.
The Success Journey
01
Co-Creation: Facilitating Knowledge Exchange and Rapid Results
Using the “Lead by Example” approach, we—as external coaches—integrate agile practices, principles, and values directly into the ongoing transformation efforts by modeling them ourselves and ensuring transparency and understanding.
Through close collaboration between internal subject matter experts and external coaches in so-called transformation teams, knowledge was successfully transferred throughout the organization. This made it possible, on the one hand, to achieve initial results quickly and, on the other hand, to foster the growth of an agile mindset organically and sustainably across the entire company.
02
Scale-by-Design: Enabling Sustainable Adoption for Widespread Use
The work model and rollout concept were developed for scalable implementation. Early maturity and environmental analyses yielded quick wins and created immediate benefits. Building on the generic work model and the specific needs of each department, and taking into account the actual conditions on the ground, precise adjustments were made. These adjustments serve to embed the agile work model within the company and ensure the vision’s long-term success. This approach enabled implementation on schedule and within budget, with maximum acceptance and immediately tangible added value.
03
Best Practices: Developing Pilot-Driven Blueprints
The customized work model was then put into practice through targeted pilot projects in production environments. This allowed the tailored work model to be implemented and further developed quickly and with minimal risk. The resulting empirical data set provides valuable insights. Based on these results, precisely tailored blueprints and best practices are developed that can be seamlessly applied to other areas and continuously optimized.
04
Inspect & Adapt: Continuous Optimization
The continuous “Inspect & Adapt” cycle creates a robust framework for agile transformation and far beyond. Individual development stages—based on agile maturity levels—ensure that every step forward integrates seamlessly into the overall organizational structure and enables sustainable success. These stages are worked through in short iterations, and measures for further optimization are immediately implemented based on empirical data. This new way of thinking and approaching problems enables an agile response to changing market and business conditions.
The Impact at Launch
- Higher Throughput – Shorter Time-to-Market
Clearly defined processes, routines, and roles make it possible to manage tasks in an organized manner, set priorities transparently, and allocate resources in a targeted way. This increases throughput, minimizes non-value-adding activities, and noticeably accelerates time-to-market. As a result, the focus remains on value creation at all times, while decision-making processes become leaner. - Streamlined coordination: Minimized reporting effort, maximum focus
The effort required for coordination and reporting decreases significantly when the right experts are always exchanging information at the right time. Endless meetings are eliminated, decisions are reached more quickly, and are immediately comprehensible to all involved. Within just two months, committee time was reduced by 15% – without maintaining the same level of quality. - Real-Time Transparency for Agile Resource Utilization and Risk Minimization
In a volatile market environment, tool-supported transparency ensures optimal resource utilization and maximum flexibility. Everyone knows at all times who is working on which tasks and what tasks are next. Information meetings become unnecessary, direct communication improves, costs decrease, and risks can be effectively minimized.
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