Schneider Electric Scales
Agile Development with Hansoft
Summary
• The Buildings division of Schneider Electric develops systems for
energy management of large buildings, integrating subsystems
such as lighting, access control, cooling and electricity distribution.
• This industry is increasingly software driven, and products need
to be released faster and match changing customer demands. To
respond, the division started a migration to an agile methodology
based on SAFe™ and LeSS™ (“Scaled Agile Framework” and “Large Scale Scrum“), which meets the needs of its complex product projects.
• Schneider evaluated 13 project management tools, including Microsoft TFS, Atlassian Jira, Rally and VersionOne. Schneider Electric
chose Hansoft because of the ability to handle its tailored agile
implementation as well as the scale of its projects, while also being
user-friendly, effective and flexible.
• Development has become more flexible as a result of the migration. It is now easy to modify and redirect projects and lead times have
been shortened considerably.
From Equipment Manufacturer to Software Company
Schneider Electric (EPA: SU) is a French multinational company whose
products and services help its customers improve the energy efficiency
in their own homes and businesses. The company has 150,000 employees.
One of its five main divisions, Buildings, develops systems for energy
management of large buildings, integrating subsystems such as lighting,
access control, cooling and electricity distribution.
The energy management industry is increasingly software driven and
Schneider Electric finds itself competing with very different companies,
“Our development has
become more flexible. It is easy to modify and
redirect and lead times
have been shortened
considerably.”
Henrik Olsson,
VP Operations,
Schneider Electric Buildings
“SAFe and LeSS provided
a direction once we got
started in the tool, but
reality required us to
tweak it to some extent.
Hansoft could easily be
configured for that. The
other tools we looked at
would not have allowed
us to do that.”
Patrik Hartlén,
Software Development Manager
such as Google’s Nest division. To adjust, the Building division decided
to move to a more flexible approach to manage its complex portfolio
of software projects and enable itself to release products faster and
match customer demands better.
The new approach is based on agile methodologies, with elements of
SAFe - Scaled Agile Framework – and LeSS – Large Scale Scrum, an
approach that fits the complex software development at Schneider. But
the company needed to find a project management tool that could
implement its framework across its “teams of teams” and be happily
adopted by all product leaders, project managers and developers.
www.hansoft.com
Choosing the right tool
– Let the teams decide
Schneider-Electric evaluated 13 candidate tools, including
Microsoft TFS, VersionOne and Atlassian Jira, judging
them on many aspects. Finally they chose two of them
for an in-depth, hands-on review: Rally and Hansoft.
Teams were asked to work on projects with one of the
and software teams to work together, in the same tool,
towards their joint releases. That, together with the
superior ability to restructure a backlog and support
continuous improvement, has made us really happy
with the selection,” concludes Henrik Olsson, VP Operations, Schneider Electric Buildings. “This is a tool
I gladly take to the rest of my organization. The whole
company benefits from working the way we can.”
tools and then switch to the other for their next project.
In this way they could look at both soft and hard were satisfied users, general usability and performance.
Increased flexibility and
shortened lead times as a result
Hard criteria included SAFe support, ability to support
“Our development has become more flexible. It is easy
both hardware and software teams and access to the
to modify and redirect and lead times have been shortened
data inside the tool.
considerably,” continued Henrik Olsson. “What has
(functionality) aspects in the evaluation. The soft targets
been the biggest challenge? - It’s the big change. We
The votes are in
have spent a lot of time creating understanding across
the organization.”
Twelve users were selected to do an in depth test of
the two finalists. Hansoft was new to the company,
Three out of these four preferred Hansoft and so did all
Fast facts about the Schneider
Electric – Hansoft implementation
the remaining testers.
• Primarily used by software teams applying agile
“We were really surprised about the strong developer
practices, but it is now starting to get rolled out to
support,” said Patrik Hartlén - Software Development
hardware teams as well
Manager. “We expected stronger support for the familiar
• Allows all users to see all projects for transparency tool among existing users.”
“Implementing SAFe and LeSS is a challenge in any
• Uses the SDK to run some data synchronization solution and all the ones we were looking at had
while four of the testers had prior experience with Rally.
strengths and weaknesses. But looking back, I realize
that the flexibility Hansoft gives us makes it the only
tool that could do the job. With any other, we would
and collaboration
tasks that supports the last details of SAFe
• 30 development projects are run simultaneously in the tool
most probably have ended up throwing our first set-up
• Upgraded recently to version 8 and is starting to
away to start over from scratch. I cannot say how much
make use of the business intelligence capabilities
that saved us, but it isn’t hard to figure out that our original
objective of having strong buy-in by all employees would
have failed.”
Mixing methods for a smooth transition
“When testing the tools in real projects, it became
clear that the ability to support mixed methods was
essential. It allowed a smooth transition from waterfall
to agile methods and still provided a way for hardware
“This is a tool I gladly take to the
rest of my organization. The whole
company benefits from working
the way we can.”
Henrik Olsson,
VP Operations, Schneider Electric Buildings
www.hansoft.com