Faster time-to-market thanks to reorganisation of software development

“The organisational model successfully introduced in collaboration with bbv with its custom value stream-driven structure has potential beyond software development.”

Christof Hurni, VP Technology at Franke Coffee Systems

Franke Coffee Systems is a leading provider of professional coffee makers and coffee services. As a division of the globally operating Franke Group, Franke Coffee Systems operates in the B2B business field and develops custom solutions in the coffee business, especially for restaurants, cafés, hotels, coffee-to-go outlets etc.

The complex embedded software, innovative user interfaces and IoT-based remote maintenance and digital fleet management require an enormous technology stack. Research and development are therefore important areas for Franke, with particular focus on software development.

No software, no coffee

The development team at Franke not only implements all machine control functionalities, it also guarantees seamless integration of software and hardware and ensures that the user experience is based on the same concept across all machine models. At the same time, there is increasing focus on expansion of digital services and maintenance of coffee machines.

As a result, the software department at Franke Coffee Systems has experienced significant growth in recent years. However, with several product lines being developed in parallel and the common machine software platform being modernised at the same time, the existing organisational structures were pushed to their limits. Despite additional resources being invested, increasing development capacity could not continue forever.

Need for change

A reorganisation was therefore urgently needed. A number of roles in the teams were not filled and responsibilities were not clearly defined. There was enormous deadline pressure and chronic overload. Processes needed to be made more efficient and development times shortened. For Franke it was clear that the software development teams had to be combined – but it was not clear how the teams should be reorganised.

An analysis by bbv showed that the team structure was heavily focused on functional disciplines, which made the completion of new software features significantly more difficult. There were also capacity gaps in requirements engineering. The consequences: Production and marketing milestones had to be postponed repeatedly as the software was not ready.

Franke and bbv also identified potential for improvement in collaboration, in processes and in the planned distribution of roles and responsibilities. The result was the joint change project “Ignite”, which was eventually launched by Franke Coffee Systems and bbv to spark change across the entire department –​and subsequently also beyond.

Stable teams and clearly defined roles

As part of the reorganisation of the software teams, historically separate disciplines were brought together under joint management. Positions and role descriptions were redefined. Development teams can now take on a complete value stream, while platform teams regard these end-to-end teams as internal customers and aim to accelerate their work by offering them the building blocks and services they need. Product owners now lead small, agile teams.

By changing from a structure characterised by disciplinary silos to a value stream-driven organisation with agile methods, bbv introduced an approach that is now being rolled out successfully by Franke Coffee Systems. Today, an integral development department develops a product-spanning, scalable software platform with associated digital services. Incremental teams assume end-to-end responsibility for the respective value streams.

Advantages in several areas

With the newly organised software department, all developments can now be implemented synchronously and coordinated with one another for multiple product lines. The agile way of working also ensures shorter development cycles and direct product maintenance in order to be able to respond quickly to customer requests for functional adjustments.

Productivity increased notably after just a few months. In addition, communication between development and stakeholders has improved enormously. Moreover, team members confirm the changeover as a very positive and motivating development.

The teams can now use their skills in a focused way and concentrate on developing solutions, the “what”, while line management concentrates on developing the required capabilities and the “how” of the department.

Project insights

• Proof of concept: In order to test how the new structures work on a small scale, a pilot project was carried out and the findings were then applied to the entire department.

• Permanent optimisation: During the project, a transformation board was established in which missing elements and difficulties raised by the team were continuously addressed together with line management.

• Efficient project implementation: Following analysis and joint conceptual design, bbv supported the company for six months after the go-live. Franke Coffee Systems was then able to continue with the reorganisation without further support. The desired key points of the transformation were implemented in 12 months.

• Close cooperation: bbv handled project management for the entire transformation and developed an implementation concept. During this phase, bbv expert Jonas Ruesch supported the management of the internal development department in an embedded ad-interim role.

Our services in the project