IMB 981

ABHOY K. OJHA

TRANSPORT SOLUTIONS: TCS HELPS ITS TRANSFORMATION TO AN AGILE

ENTERPRISE
Hillary Kristen, Head of Transformation, Enterprise Transformation Office of Transport Solutions Worldwide Limited
had been invited to address a group of Master of Business Administration (MBA) students on adopting Agile
methodologies in organizations. She decided to have an online meeting with Karen Summers, Program Director,
Enterprise Transformation Office at Transport Solutions and Praveena Ponnambalam, Delivery Manager and Agile
Coach, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Limited — Transport Solutions Engagement. Both were closely involved with
Kristen during the transformation at Transport Solutions, and the latter wanted to recollect and reflect on the major
events and challenges they had experienced when they collaborated to transform a siloed organization into an Agile
enterprise. Based on the discussions, Kristen made notes, organized her thoughts, and decided to focus her address
on the practical aspects of implementing Agile methodologies in a traditional setup with a matrix organization
design. After the meeting, she began the process of preparing her address to the MBA students.

TRANSPORT SOLUTIONS WORLDWIDE LIMITED

Transport Solutions was a global travel services company with headquarters in the United Kingdom (UK). Its
operations were spread across the globe, but the bulk of its businesses and workforce were in the United States of
America (USA). The company provided distribution, technology, and payment solutions for the travel and
tourism industry. It also provided IT services, such as shopping, ticketing, and departure control to airlines. The firm
had business partners (B2B), who were the direct clients to whom products and services were delivered, and
individuals as indirect customers (B4C), who were beneficiaries of the successful implementation of the projects and
services delivered to the clients. Since the concerns of business partners were often different from those of individual
customers who frequently used Transport Solutions’ products and services, the company often had a challenging
task of meeting their contradictory requirements.

Transport Solutions had evolved through acquisitions. The origins of the company could be traced to 2001, when
Cedar Corporation acquired Travel GDS and Premium Tickets to form one organization. Over the next few years,
Cedar acquired a few other smaller entities in the travel solutions industry to become a large player. During the same
period, some portions of the businesses that did not fit the future strategy of the organization were divested. In
2014, Transport Solutions became a public company via an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange.

Transport Solutions had a matrix organization design with 5 lines of businesses (LOBs or verticals) supported by 5
different business units (BUs or horizontals) as shown in Figure 1. The LOBs included Platform Services, Air
Commerce, Agency Commerce, Hospitality, and Enterprise Corporate Services (ECS), while the 3 BUs namely
Products, Technology Solutions (TS), and Technology and Infrastructure (T&I) catered to specific customer product
and service needs supported by the other 2 BUs namely Commercial and Sales (C&S) and Finance and Legal (F&L)

Abhoy K. Ojha, Professor (OB), Indian Institute of Management Bangalore prepared this case for class discussion. This case is not
intended to serve as an endorsement, source of primary data, or to show effective or inefficient handling of decision or business
processes.

Travel Solutions is a pseudonym for a TCS client. The names of the managers of Travel Solutions have been disguised. The author
acknowledges and thanks Manikandan Balasubramanian, Mohammed Musthafa Soukath Ali, Praveena Ponnambalam, Arun
Prasad, and Gayathri Ekambaram of TCS who have provided their inputs and support in the writing of this case.

Copyright © 2023 by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. No part of the publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (including internet) – without the permission of Indian Institute of
Management Bangalore.
Transport Solutions: TCS Helps its Transformation to an Agile Enterprise

under the overall guidance on the Corporate Leadership. Each LOB operated quite independently, with its own
priorities, funding, core leadership, people, and processes. The core leadership team of individual LOBs engaged
with the clients and customers to ensure that the delivery teams, largely staffed by members drawn from the various
BUs, delivered quality products and services on schedule. Each BU had its own leadership team that coordinated
with the LOBs and other BUs to ensure adequate staff planning to support the goals of the delivery units.

At the surface level, the organization design looked very appropriate. Each LOB had a range of products and services
and catered to the needs of clients located in different geographies. The product and services were delivered through
teams of various sizes over different delivery cycles. The BUs consisted of professionals with different specialized
skills, who were deployed on projects of different LOBs. The matrix organization allowed, with some prior planning
across LOBs and BUs, an economical means of allocating professionals to projects across the LOBs. These members
were drawn from a common pool of professions from the BUs. On occasion, some key professionals worked on
multiple projects and sometimes were even assigned to projects across LOBs. However, since the organization had
experienced so many mergers and demergers over the years, its processes were not well-aligned, with different
parts of the current organization displaying the characteristics of the organizations from which they originated. As a
result, different parts of a BU often had different standards and processes. For example, even within the Technology
Solutions BU, there was no one team culture shared among the employees, which impacted their relationships
within the BU, and with other BUs and third-party vendors, such as TCS, who assisted them in their product or service
deliveries. Despite these challenges, Transport Solutions was able to grow in terms of revenues and profits as the
demand in the market was healthy.

However, with the entry of smaller and Agile new players in the market around 2015, the company started
experiencing further challenges. The real problem with Transport Solutions’ organization design was the time taken
for a new business concept or a novel idea to improve client performance, as the established processes moved
through different departments and functions. The organization followed a ‘waterfall’ model of software
development with teams from different BUs, contributing to the development in a systematic stage-by-stage
process. This helped ensure high quality products and services. However, the downside was that the minimum time
to market (cycle time from concept to reality) was 26 to 33 weeks depending on the complexity of the product.
Everyone was busy doing the work as expeditiously as possible and there was no reason to believe that the cycle
time could be reduced further. Summers, who had then managed a project, recalled that as part of a delivery team,
she never realized that the cycle time was a matter of concern. She commented, “We were in the trenches doing
our part of the development according to our planned schedules and rarely contributed to delays unless
requirements changed, which happened quite often.”

The project managers were aware that the ‘waterfall’ model of software development had its challenges, but they
were doing the best they could. However, customer complaints had increased, and many had threatened to
discontinue existing commitments and explore other options for future projects. The C&S teams were not able to
convince clients that Transport Solutions was doing its best. The members of the C&S BU were frustrated with the
inability to communicate deliverables to customers with any confidence and then meet commitments. There was no
predictability in the systems and not all teams were performing at the same level of productivity. At the same time,
the level of frustration among members of the Product and TS teams was going beyond control. Due to the failed
commitments in the market, the customer interactions were strained which created internal conflicts. There was
frustration and distrust among the different LOBs and BUs within the organization as well as in the interactions with
the third-party suppliers. The leadership at Transport Solutions was also getting annoyed because they were aware
of the matter but had been unable to address the challenges. Since it appeared that most complaints were related
to issues from the Product and TS BUs, the leadership decided to transform them first.

This is when Kristen came on board. She was hired for a role in one of the LOBs but was requested to head the
Enterprise Transformation Team, as she had several years of prior experience leading transformation efforts in a
variety of other organizations. She recalled her first meeting:

The stress and tension between members of the TS team and the C&S team were clearly visible. There were
no smiles or greetings to lighten things up. The C&S team members complained that the clients and

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Transport Solutions: TCS Helps its Transformation to an Agile Enterprise

customers had developed distrust with the organization due to quality issues and repeated schedule
slippages. At the same time, T&S team members countered by indicating that none of the quality problems
or schedule delays could be attributed to them. On the other hand, the representative of the corporate
leadership, who seemed upset with customer complaints and threats of project cancellations, pounded the
desk with his fist and insisted that the mess be sorted out immediately.

In the first meeting it became apparent to her that everyone was working very hard, and sincerely wanted to
overcome the quality and schedule challenges. The inability to do so was indeed frustrating.

TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED

TCS was an IT services, consulting, and business solutions organization that had been partnering with many of the
world’s largest businesses in their transformation journeys for over 50 years. A part of the Tata group, India's largest
multinational business group, TCS had over 606,000 of the world’s best-trained consultants in 55 countries. In 2017,
TCS embarked on its vision of becoming “Enterprise Agile by 2020”. Through an unprecedented organizational
paradigm shift, using the home grown SAFe® framework, 1 TCS embraced the Agile way of working, not only in the IT
services segment but across all service lines and functions. This was the largest Agile transformation in corporate
history.2 What it meant was, a transformation in the mindset of employees from viewing their work as 'a set of work
items to be delivered' to 'delivering business value to customers faster and better in iterations'.

The newfound agility mindset and the small self-organizing Agile teams allowed TCS consultants to quickly resolve
emerging dependencies and issues, increasing the deliverable release frequency to customers and accelerating the
average cycle for projects by a minimum of 70%. In 2021, TCS had more than 12,000 Agile projects with 85% of its IT
revenues coming from these projects and services. TCS’s transformation had won 3 awards including the TATA
Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Award for “Largest Organizational Development” project. Based on its experience
in transforming itself, TCS had helped many clients and customers become Agile. The transformation at Transport
Solutions was one such engagement.

THE CHALLENGE AT TRANSPORT SOLUTIONS

The decision by the Corporate Leadership team to transform Transport Solutions was the relatively easier part of
the decision. The real challenge was understanding what different stakeholders meant when they sought
transformation, and then implementing a program that would address the concerns of all stakeholders. There was
an acceptance among corporate leaders that the existing way of working was not delivering expected outcomes.
However, it was more difficult to arrive at a consensus on the way forward. A few top executives were aware of Agile
concepts, based on some earlier attempts to adopt Agile methodologies that were not very successful. For several
others, transformation meant outsourcing many of the technology roles to offshore locations that might allow to
increase staffing at lower or same costs and ensure quick delivery time. This created a lot of apprehension among
the old-time employees of Transport Solutions who feared loss of jobs, further contributing to the confusion that
prevailed. There were some who thought that adding younger members to the existing team or replacing older
members with younger members might speed up things. However, there was significant tension between new
members of the workforce, many joining with an Agile background, and existing experienced employees, who had
tremendous domain knowledge but with no or limited Agile exposure. This also created avoidable conflicts which
hindered smooth flow of work. Hence, Kristen realized that there was a need to first onboard the top leadership on
what was feasible and what should be the focus if Agile concepts were to be used to inform the transformation. She
also realized that she needed a strategy to get other levels of the organization to onboard the transformation
journey.

1
®SAFe® stands for Scaled Agile Framework, which provides principles, practices, and competencies for implementing business agility.
2
More details about TCS Agile transformation can be found at: https://videos.itrevolution.com/watch/707352024/ and
https://www.tcs.com/tcs-way/tcs-agile-transformation-journey-enterprise-agility Last accessed in August, 2023

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Transport Solutions: TCS Helps its Transformation to an Agile Enterprise

GETTING DIFFERENT LAYERS OF THE ORGANIZATION ONBOARD

Based on her prior experience with implementing Agile, Kristen developed different strategies for different levels of
the organization, as they tended to respond differently to Agile initiatives. The corporate leadership was driven by
strategic pressures from external stakeholders, while the VPs, directors, senior managers, and managers at the
middle had operational orientations and the project team members and leads at the bottom reacted to Agile
requirements differently. Summers, from her own experience as a senior manager getting onboarded for the
transformation journey at Transport Solutions, indicated:

When it came to Agile transformation, we were not clear about how to perform our roles. In Agile
transformation, the middle layer plays a key role in removing the roadblocks, impediments, and in enabling
the team to perform seamlessly. Hence, it is essential to start the conversation with the middle layer to get
their buy-in and then trickle-down and trickle-up effect can be achieved.

Accordingly, after getting a high-level approval from corporate leadership, the focus of the transformation team
shifted to creating awareness among middle managers about the changes they needed to make to facilitate Agile
principles. Praveena recalled:

An attempt at implementing Agile practices had already been made earlier, and except for small pockets,
the organization had reverted to the old ways due to lack of adequate change management. This made the
conversation more difficult. However, the TCS team was able to use their prior experience with the SAFe®
framework and learning modules to onboard the middle managers.

After getting the buy-in from the middle, there was a choice to either extend the transformational changes to the
project teams or first convince the top leadership team that they should champion the process of transformation.
Kristen indicated that getting the corporate leadership fully aligned with the transformation before the rollout was
important. However, she believed that the messaging to the top team to convince them to visibly advocate the
implementation of Agile Enterprise had to be different from the messaging to the middle management. She noted:

Getting the language right is one key aspect. They don’t understand Agile terminologies such as velocity,
sprint, minimum viable product, etc. Using business language like value delivery, client satisfaction,
revenues, etc. helps to get faster buy-in. Once there is a buy-in, then adapting to Agile terminologies and
ceremonies comes naturally.

She was able to persuade the corporate leaders that the transformation from the traditional siloed organization to
an Agile organization may not require employee replacement if it was managed well. They were also convinced that
while there may be a need to hire professionals with Agile experience to start the process, the existing employees
would be able to make the transition to become partners in the Agile transformation. This reduced some of the
tension. Finally, the transformation process was rolled out to the rest of the organization. The leadership team
strongly supported the transformation, the middle managers were better prepared for the eventualities, and the
people in the trenches experienced a cohesive transformation journey with their concerns adequately addressed by
the top and middle management.

INTRODUCING THE SAFe® FRAMEWORK

In the past, Transport Solutions had more than 20 IT service vendors, TCS being one among them. TCS, based on its
prior experience, proposed the SAFe® framework for Transport Solutions’ enterprise-wide Agile transformation.
Kristen and the TCS representatives together convinced the leadership team to adopt the framework. As she put it,
“While senior management accepted the concepts of Agile and supported and sponsored the transformation, they
were not familiar with SAFe® as a transformation methodology and their specific role in it. The transformation team
educated and onboarded the senior management on the SAFe® framework.”

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Transport Solutions: TCS Helps its Transformation to an Agile Enterprise

With the approval of Transport Solutions’ leadership team, a central transformation team was formed at TCS to
strategize, design, execute, and govern the transformation. At first, the corporate leadership at Transport Solutions
had a desire to roll out the transformation program across the organization, but they had to make adjustments based
on the pace at which Agile could be implemented across units. Of the five BUs, Product, TS, and T&I played a crucial
role in the delivery of value to customers. These BUs were selected first for the transformation as they required
more significant structural changes compared to the others. The BUs were re-structured in the form of pillars, Agile
Release Trains (ARTs), and value streams based on the SAFe® framework. The LOBs and BUs continued to exist, and
reporting lines did not change, but the context and terms of reference changed with the implementation of SAFe®
(see Figure 2).

The latest version of the evolving SAFe® framework emphasized seven core competencies:
(i) Lean-Agile Leadership
(ii) Team and Technical Agility
(iii) Agile Product Delivery
(iv) Enterprise Solution Delivery
(v) Lean Portfolio Management
(vi) Organizational Agility
(vii) Continuous Learning Culture

The five pillars selected for Transport Solutions were based on these competencies. An ART is a team of teams that
incrementally delivers the solution through a combination of value streams. A value stream is a sequence of
activities required to convert an idea into a solution, where the focus is on value as seen by customers. The ARTs
and value streams were designed based on these principles. The leadership of each ART comprised stakeholders
from multiple LOBs, who set the priorities based on the value, criticality, and return on investment. The ARTs
became the secondary operating network having final control over the planning and execution.

In order to facilitate the transformation to SAFe®, the Product BU streamlined its backlogs across product lines. The
organization was completely embedded within the ARTs, reflecting the revised deliverables. At the same time, the
TS BU enhanced the technical focus, and expertise across value streams (be it the ‘Point of Sale’ systems/API
platforms, the core system, or other systems) had dramatically increased due to the Scaled Agile adoption. The
response of the T&I BU was a little slower than the other two, as the teams responsible for hardware and
infrastructure along with the inhouse IT support teams were slower adopters of agility. As a result, other teams from
Networking, Servers & Storage, Cyber Security, etc. operated with a different priority, which sometimes introduced
bottlenecks in the pace and speed adopted by the others in the enterprise.

The customer map and revenue flow of Transport Solutions were analyzed in detail before arriving at the value
streams for the restructuring. After the mapping activity was completed, it was decided that Transport Solutions will
be structured as a few operational value streams and a few development value streams. The structure further
evolved continuously during the journey. The Product and TS Bus, which together account for approximately half of
the workforce, realigned themselves into the value stream structure and oriented the product areas as Agile Release
Trains (ART), with each ART comprising multiple Scrum teams. The roles were rationalized with well-defined
responsibilities. All the ARTs had ceremonies to synchronize and to follow the same cadence of Program Increment
(PI)—a timebox during which solutions were to be delivered incrementally. The fast-moving teams were expected
to deliver multiple times during the PI, whereas the slow-moving teams or products that did not require frequent
releases were expected to deliver once in every one or two PIs. This flexibility allowed both the fast- and slow-moving
teams to embrace agility based on their business needs and did not mandate frequent releases. Working software
were required to be demonstrated at the end of every two weeks, and the feedback was to be incorporated in the
next PI, with integration happening multiple times during the PI to detect failures early. Thus, the teams developed
the capacity to build on a common cadence and release on demand.

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Transport Solutions: TCS Helps its Transformation to an Agile Enterprise

TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY

The transformation team designed the strategy to address the challenges and shaped up an Agile working model. It
adopted a structured change management process starting with engaging the employees in a transparent manner
by addressing their questions and providing them with tools for the new ways of working, coaching along the job,
and creating trust. The workforce was provided inputs on the SAFe® mindset, one team culture, Agile team structure,
etc. Training on topics such as how to deal with the dysfunctions of a team, conflict management or how to have
healthy conflicts, understanding assertiveness versus cooperativeness, understanding how to manoeuvre difficult
situations, and be collaborative.

Since the needs of the various LOBs were different, it led to competing and conflicting requirements, which made
cross-LOB collaboration the hardest part of the transformation. The transformation team established peer-to-peer
relationships across the LOBs and created a common backlog for them to work as one team. Myers & Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI) was used to help individuals understand themselves and others, and this information was used for
team formation at every level to help team members understand the needs of other LOBs and facilitate information
flow across siloes. The members were taught decision making, the managers were trained to make decisions
differently, and the C-suite was groomed to allow decision making without them controlling it.

The TS BU was the earliest adopter of SAFe®. The impression that the BU was not delivering, based on experience
before the Agile transformation, had to be broken first. This is why the Transformation team started with the TS BU.
But the TS employees were not used to business-oriented conversation and could not influence the LOBs to buy into
the new Agile transformation. So, Agile-based delivery was implemented only in pockets. The TCS teams, that were
assigned the role of Agile implementation, were familiar with SAFe® but were less familiar with the complexity of
the Transport Solutions businesses. They had to start implementing without enough time to learn about the
intricacies of the operations that they were helping to move to Agile. This created its own challenges as it allowed
old time Transport Solutions employees who were domain experts to oppose many of the suggested changes even
without processing the relevant information. However, over a period of time, the TCS team was able to overcome
the resistance, and TCS became the single-most important strategic partner for the transformation at Transport
Solutions. TCS had 1000+ consultants in the TS BU, supporting the transformation at Transport Solutions. Agile
transformation was relatively easy for these consultants as they were already trained by TCS to be ‘Agile Ready’
under its Enterprise Agile Initiative program. The transformation team formed Agile teams comprising developers,
QA testers, and people from operations across geographies. These Agile teams started to prove that technology was
delivering in a shorter time and with demonstrable business outcomes. Exhibit 1 indicates the activities TCS
undertook in the three stages of implementation and the challenges it faced at each stage.

The leadership team had initially decided to implement common Agile practices across the enterprise. Soon, the
transformation team found out they could not enforce a single template of Agile way of working for all the business
functions. Insistence on adhering to fixed processes around reviews and artefacts and signoff in the Product and
Technology Solutions BUs also impacted the rest of the enterprise. While a few teams were able to deliver the
business value quickly, other teams often could not deliver fast due to various reasons such as nature of the systems,
processes, dependencies across BUs or LOBs, etc. The time taken to realize the value kept increasing, and
predictability became a challenge. As a result, meeting the commitment to end customer based on Agile
expectations was often at risk. The transformation brought in a larger Agile operating model that realigned the
business functions so the value flow from concept to reality could be accelerated while accommodating the different
Agility needs of fast-moving versus slow-moving businesses. For example, the pricing function needed to implement
business changes as fast as possible (in days and weeks) whereas the scheduling function involved structural changes
(such as introduction of new airline route) and had good lead time for changes (in months). Hence, the pricing
portfolio operated with a development cycle time of 2 weeks (delivering the incremental solution every 2 weeks),
whereas the scheduling portfolio operated with a development cycle time of 6 weeks. Both the teams had a common
cadence (mutual meeting instances) of 12 weeks. Accordingly, Transport Solutions was successfully able to
implement Agile at enterprise scale, meeting the needs of different businesses and thereby increasing the value
throughput to the customer by 4 - 6 times.

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Transport Solutions: TCS Helps its Transformation to an Agile Enterprise

After Agile practices had reached a level of maturity in the Product, TS, and T&I BUs, the transformation focused on
the other BUs. Since the C&S BU teams interfaced with customers—both existing ones who were largely aligned with
the traditional way and the new ones who had expectations of Agile delivery—they had some difficulties in aligning
with the rest of the enterprise. In the transition period, Agile implementation was slower in this BU. As a result, some
problems did arise. One notable impact of this situation was that while the Product team had the product features
ready and available on production in ‘dark mode’, the turnaround time for opening these up for customers remained
long as it needed additional time and effort from the C&S team. However, over time, this was rectified. The F&L BU
also had similar challenges. While members from the BU were enthusiastic participants in the early stages of
transformation (taking up trainings etc.), they were less responsive in adopting Agile. The nature of their work,
commitments, and deliverables made it tough for them to adopt to the changes in the process and maintain the
pace of implementation with the rest of the enterprise. A lot of tooling and automation work was required to enable
them to align better. The C&S and F&L units continued to operate as per the original reporting structure. There was
increased collaboration between the entities and close alignment with the plan and targets of the value streams,
albeit with certain bottlenecks.

THE BENEFITS OF AGILE ORGANIZATION

The leaders of the Product and TS BUs had been instrumental for the success of the Agile transformation at Transport
Solutions. The thought leadership while formulating strategy, the speed and commitment to decision making, ‘Boots
on the Ground’ approach by being part of all planning events, and the leadership’s nimbleness in adopting Agile
methods had helped in setting the focus and pace. Observing the success of the initial drive, the other leaders started
supporting the initiative in their respective areas. The CEO’s new year message in 2019 highlighted the ongoing drive
and was able to carry the message across the organization.

An assessment of the transformation at Transport Solutions due to the adoption of Agile organization clearly
suggested that the organization had improved on various parameters of interest. It had obtained better business
outcomes, employee engagement levels, and better collaboration among members of its LOBs, BUs, and business
partners. Table 1 indicates improvements on some parametes of interest. The frequency of releases to the customer
increased by about 6 times, allowing the client to benefit from the developments faster. There was a significant
improvement in meeting scheduled commitments with more than 90% of the deliverables made on time. The level
of automation of unit test had improved from 70% to 98%. After the implemenation of Agile and short sprints, the
changes in scope were minimized to less than 15% as the required changes were built into the future sprints. As a
result, the employee morale moved from high levels of frustration to high levels of engagement. Further, as a
consequence of the transformation, the entire team was more focused on creating value for the customer instead
of being focused on the IT requirements of the projects.

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Transport Solutions: TCS Helps its Transformation to an Agile Enterprise

Figure 1
Organizational Structure at Transport Solutions
Corporate Leadership

Commercial Finance and

and Sales Legal

Platform Air Agency Enterprise

Services Hospitality
Commerce Commerce Corp. Services

Products

Technology
Solutions

Technology &
Infrastructure

Source: As described by interviewees from TCS and Transport Solutions

Figure 2
Organizational Structure at Transport Solutions after Agile Transformation 3

Corporate Leadership

Platform Air Agency Enterprise Corp.

Finance and Services Commerce Commerce Hospitality Services
Legal
Architecture Platform
Order Management.
Point of Sale Cloud

Commercial
New Dist. Capacity

Agile
Mobile Products

and Sales
Cust. Fulfilment
ATPCO Content

Release
Hotel and Car
API Platform

MyTransport
Point of Sale

Trains
Exchanges

Retail

Pillars
Products Pillar 1
V. S. 1

V. S. 1
V. S. 1
V. S. 1

V. S. 1
V. S. 1

V. S. 1

Pillar 2
Value Stream 1
Value Stream 1

Value Stream 1
Value Stream 1

V. S. 2

Technology
V. S. 3

Solutions Pillar 3
V. S. 4

Pillar 4
V. S. 4
V. S. 3
V. S. 4
V. S.3

V. S. 3

Technology &
Infrastructure Pillar 5

Source: As described by interviewees from TCS and Transport Solutions

3
The labels of the pillars and value streams have not been revealed for confidentiality reasons, and the labels for ARTs are indicative.

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Transport Solutions: TCS Helps its Transformation to an Agile Enterprise

Table 1
Performance Comparison Before and After Agile Transformation

Metrics Before Transformation After Transformation

Releases to customer 1 6+
Meeting commitments to deliver No data, but delays common 90+%
Unit Test Automation 70% 98%
Business Value Delivered No data 90+%
Change in Scope for Teams No data <15%
Team Morale Frustrated Engaged

Source: As described by interviewees from TCS and Transport Solutions

Exhibit 1
Agile Transformation Journey

Stage 1
Activities Challenges
• Defining transformation strategy and approach • Losing contextual knowledge
• Obtaining top leadership commitment and sponsorship and expertise due to employee
• Selecting Scaled Agile (SAFe®) framework movement
• Training 2000+ employees on SAFe® • Not everyone complied with
• Defining new organization structure with value streams, and designing the decision to adopt SAFe®
and launching Agile Release Trains (ARTs) • Lack of interest and motivation
• Implementing new roles & job families across the organization to change, among segments of
• Requirements gathering and dissemination practices in alignment employees
with Business/Product model • Speed and capacity slowdown
• Defining a common cadence across the enterprise due to new team structure,
• Begin initial Communities of Practice processes, and people
Stage 2
Activities Challenges
• Corporate Leadership: Defining new market expansion strategies, • More rigor on process
financial commitments, etc. introduced bottleneck(s)
• F&L BU: Financial planning following Lean Agile Budgeting • Technology delivery has really
• C&S BU: Focusing on diversifying the market segments, differentiated scaled up in speed but is
deals with existing and new customers commercial/business able to
• P&TS BU: Strengthening the portfolio and product backlogs with new keep up with rolling it out to the
product features and next-gen architectural runway market?
• Improving Kanban flow efficiencies • Is the competition better
• Continued focus on transforming mindsets with holistic and positioned and nimble?
differentiated behavioral training approach
• Metrics & Measurement: Deploying holistic metrics dashboard to
improve cycle time etc.
• Leveraging contextual knowledge of technology partners
• Celebrating every small success; showcasing benefits

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Transport Solutions: TCS Helps its Transformation to an Agile Enterprise

Exhibit 1 (Continued)

Stage 3
Activities Challenges
• Impact of global pandemic on the travel industry: Adjusting the • Significant attrition in the IT
employee base, financials, outlook, etc. industry impacting roadmap
• Massive branding initiative commitments.
• Tweaking the product & technology strategy: Signing of strategic • Retaining intellectual property.
partnership with Amazon Web Services • Stepping into uncharted
• Accelerating the product implementation roadmap and market rollout territories such as legacy
• Onboarding additional capacity and skills to meet the revised strategic retirement and sustaining the
targets interest during retirement and
onboarding into new platform.

Source: As described by interviewees from TCS and Transport Solutions

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