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Customer Story

TomTom Evolves from Hardware Company to World-Class Software Company

Related services
Agile

Industry
Business and IT

Company
Xebia

Global leader in navigation and mapping products achieves drastically shortened innovation cycles and better market responsiveness by adopting Agile way of working.

Since 2004, navigation and mapping multinational TomTom has sold over 75 million Portable Navigation Devices (PNDs), made real-time traffic information services available in 37 countries, and delivered maps that cover no less than 118 countries to 4 billion people worldwide. Headquartered in Amsterdam, the company employs more than 4500 people, including 80 teams responsible for the development and innovation of TomTom’s products.

Why
Needed to move faster to continuously innovate and remain the market leader
What
Increase the speed of product delivery
How
Roll out the Scaled Agile Framework to improve delivery, ownership, and teamwork

New Skills to Win a Changing Game

TomTom was a pioneer in the areas of navigation and mapping products, but since 2008 the company had been suffering from the declining popularity of PNDs. TomTom realized that it needed to evolve from an excellent hardware company into a world-class software company, as well as step up its innovation game, in order to remain market leader.

Speeding Up by Teaming Up

Xebia first helped TomTom’s Navigation product unit adopt the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®), enabling them to deliver a new, high-quality product (PND Go500) in just one year. This triggered other units to follow, and large-scale programs were initiated to roll out SAFe and transform TomTom into a world-class software organization. This journey involved improving product ownership, delivery, and collaboration among 80 teams worldwide.

“We realized change was crucial, and it was clear that the Agile way of working, especially SAFe, would be essential to shorten cycle times and bring our innovations to the market faster.”
TomTom
Han Schaminee SVP Location Technology Products, TomTom

Harnessing Agile and Product Management to become a World-Class Software Organization

TomTom promoted the SAFe program to the World Class Software Program (WCSP). To empower TomTom to facilitate Agile Continuous Improvement without external support, Xebia also trained 30 employees to become WCSP ambassadors and trained 80 teams worldwide. Thanks to these programs, TomTom reduced the time needed to integrate new features from one year to three weeks and increased features released by 50%. Furthermore, all features were delivered as planned and over half of their product roadmap changed based on customer feedback and market insights. Productivity, predictability, and product quality also significantly improved.

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