The word from Finland, Agile development at Siemens
The Finnish magazine Tekniikka & Talous has published a great article by Tero Lehto on the agile advancements at the electronic giant Siemens. The article describes how agile development is becoming more common in the industrial equipment sector. It also tells about the benefits Siemens is reaping after investing into agility.
Siemens Motion Control deployed agile methods end-to-end from product management to developers. Through targeted pilots involving multiple teams, they grew and are now continuously improving their own just-in-time portfolio management system that fits and supports their strategy. Thanks to a much faster time to market, they have now cut the development time from 2–3 years down to one year. This reduces the inventory of committed work and allows them to react quickly to feedback and change requests.
Coaches and trainers from agile42 Finland participated in the early stages of the transition at Siemens. agile42 has extensive experience of agility in embedded software and hardware development. We have covered the topic before.