Hello, everyone. I hope you can hear me well with my mask. Welcome, and thank you for being here, and for your participation tonight. First of all, I’ll let us introduce ourselves. We’re actually in the same room; you probably see Patrice and Nathalie here, but we’ll each say a few words.
I’m Soumbane, and I’ll be your main facilitator. I’m the Agile Coach here – managing the Agile Center and Digital Forum, in charge of AQ development within Renault Engineering. Stefan Gedo will be the second facilitator when we split into breakout groups at the end of this session. He’s a chapter leader for vehicle development and works with Patrice, but not in the digital area.
So, after introductions, we’ll go through agility at ISIT (Information Systems & IT at Renault). Then we’ll get to the heart of the matter: how we are scaling agile across Renault. We’ll also share a few innovative initiatives we’re trying to implement at the Renault Group level. After some conclusions, we’ll have a breakout session during which we’d love your input on two questions. So, let’s get started. Nathalie, the floor is yours.
Renault Digital
I’ll start by introducing Renault Digital. We are a Renault subsidiary created in January 2017, with over 350 professionals organized around five centers of excellence: Agile (we three belong to it), UX/UI, Technology, Data, and Architecture. Our main missions are to transform Renault on these topics at scale and to deliver digital products with innovation. We’re also a certified training organization, and from the beginning, we set up a global steering approach for the digital transformation, from the executive committee all the way down to each product team, managing value creation, priorities, and so on.
Why Agility?
We didn’t pick agility just because it’s trendy. We needed a transformation for three main drivers: business, people, and adaptability. For business, Renault is undergoing a major shift, with big ambitions for time-to-market, customer satisfaction, and performance. We had to transform. Second, on the people side, performance comes from people. We needed to empower them, give them more sense of purpose, and free up energies. The last driver is adaptability. We face a rapidly changing environment—crises, regulation changes, technology changes. The automotive industry is radically shifting, so we must be capable of pivoting. All of this led us to agility as a strong solution.
A Short History of Our Agile Journey
We’re a large company, so we can illustrate our agile journey in phases:
- Pre-Season (2015): Early adopters at ISIT, leading to the creation of Renault Digital in 2017.
- 2018: We decided to generalize agility throughout ISIT, changing the organization drastically and moving towards scaling agile. Beyond IT, we tested large agile programs at the group level, for instance reducing the time to solve customer issues in multimedia services by half, using cross-functional teams.
- Season 2 (2019–2020): We introduced product portfolio management and began to scale agility in bigger ways—vehicle development, quality, “resolution teams” across many countries, and even purchasing.
- Season 3 (2021–): In a frugal environment, we focus on products and services, and we start embedding HR more deeply.
One slide we use frequently is the famous quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It’s a call to action for everyone. Transformation isn’t just top-down, it must involve all of us. It’s a massive opportunity to bring agile into our company and beyond.
Agility at ISIT
At ISIT, we had two main pillars for our agile transformation. One was more process-oriented, i.e., we introduced a 100% agile product development framework focused on value. That, combined with strong leadership sponsorship, let us generate over a billion euros of value in about three years instead of four. In parallel, we defined an operating model (inspired by the Spotify model and some SAFe practices, adapted to our context) around six key principles. The transformation approach used four steps, adapted to each direction’s uniqueness, and eventually we introduced product portfolio management. In 2019, we trained over 600 people across business and ISIT, and in 2020 we started deploying more bottom-up, focusing on five product areas, with domain-based product organizations and dedicated product teams. We used “Release Planning Extended” events, reminiscent of PI Planning. This year, we’re continuing that deployment, hooking it into the strategic layer with OKRs at the group level.
Summarizing the entire ISIT transformation from 2015 to now: strong executive support and big investments in coaching initially were key. Our HR team was heavily engaged in creating new roles, upskilling, and reskilling. We reorganized widely—80% of managers changed roles, fueling a transformation mindset. ISIT has now reached a decent maturity in agile mindset and practice. Still, challenges remain, such as linking up with the newly formed business units, the need for deeper synergy with leaders, and focusing on bigger synergy across the group. We’ll keep pushing to embed business leaders and expand adoption across the entire organization.
Vehicle Development and Agile
Now let’s shift to vehicle development. This domain is huge: body, platform, E&E, etc. We have around 170 agile teams, and the big question is: how do we synchronize so many squads? We approach it by linking “Vehicle” with “E&E and software” and a dedicated “delivery team” that ensures synchronization. We wouldn’t just copy/paste a ready-made framework like SAFe; we needed to find an approach that fits our context. We started with the agile manifesto as a foundation, then we discovered some references from scaling frameworks, but we customized them to our environment in a co-design process with the people who do the work.
In simple terms, we revolve each team (or “squad”) around specific deliverables from the customer’s perspective. That means cross-functional squads with all relevant competences. We treat vehicle development more like an ecosystem. A single new car model might have 20-40 squads. Each squad has about 10-14 people, all necessary for that chunk of value. The squads get real empowerment. We also use well-known agile fundamentals like fail fast, learn fast, advanced synchronization across squads, and heavy investment in T-shaped competences. It’s a stepwise journey: we talk about “Step 1,” “Step 2,” etc., so we can refine the approach each time we do a new vehicle project.
Some quick highlights: we introduced physical plateau spaces for squads (though COVID forced a partial pivot to remote). We rely on the mindset of servant leaders. We do extensive system-level synchronization with a hybrid structure. We’re also bringing in suppliers so they can be part of these squads.
Where do we stand? We began two years ago, so it’s still ongoing. Some success factors: strong sponsorship at every level, progressive deployment, constantly aligning engineering processes with agile, working from a reference model that each domain or project adjusts to their unique context. Because each new car project or engineering domain can differ significantly, it’s crucial that we give them freedom to adapt within the model. People remain highly motivated, and we see fewer, more purposeful meetings and better decision-making power at the squad level. We still have challenges with global synergy, multi-national cultures, and continuing to refine the model. We’re only at the beginning, but so far it’s promising.
Enterprise-Wide Agile: Key Initiatives
To spread agility at scale, a single coach per team is impossible in such a huge company, so we run big top-level support with a corporate site containing references, definitions, and case studies from different directions. We have a “flying squad” that visits teams with short-term coaching needs. We’ve created many communities of practice that feed a “community of communities.” We also launched specialized self-assessment tools for teams to refine their maturity. On the individual side, we do training, but also a strong focus on “certify agile roles and relays” where each participant must do actual agile practice with real knowledge. And we also introduced open badges for recognition of these agile roles.
Wrapping up: the challenges for 2021 and beyond revolve around “how do we keep synergy with the new business units and the rest of Renault’s organization?” Another is we must maintain leadership sponsorship for a global transformation, something that's not trivial. Next, we need HR to fully adopt this transformation for it to succeed. And we need synergy across the entire group in an international environment, which is tricky. Finally, we keep searching for new, practical ways to keep building agile momentum. This is where we invite your input, especially around getting management mindset, scaling agile globally, ensuring synergy across countries, and other innovative ideas. We can share experiences in a second breakout session next.
Breakout Session and Q&A
We’ll head into a second breakout session to discuss how we can continue building agile synergy. We want your insights, so be ready to contribute. After that, we’ll do a final wrap-up. For now, let’s quickly address some of your questions:
- Coinciding agile with data-driven or global synergy or synergy with CR (Corporate Responsibility): We’re indeed addressing climate change, crisis readiness, new regulation, etc. The resolution plan is strong on these, but we can’t speak in detail here.
- Velocity and value management: We do track velocity in ISIT, and we’re gradually applying it in vehicle engineering. But we also aim to measure business value. The specifics vary by domain, with different maturity levels.
- Bringing the customer onto the “plateau” physically: Not always feasible, but we do partial measures like conceptual “persona” customers, and we push for more frequent direct user feedback and custom demos.
Thank you all for your participation and for sharing your ideas in the breakout sessions. If you have more questions, you’ll see our contact info on the final slide. We encourage you to reach out and continue the conversation. It’s our first participation in such an event, and we’re happy to connect further.
We appreciate your time and input. Together, let’s keep exploring agile transformations at Renault and beyond!
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