Agile transformation of the R&D organization to increase customer focus and efficiency

In 2019, sales of 2.45 billion euros were generated with around 12,000 employees worldwide. As the market leader in banknote and cash processing, the Currency Technology business unit has set itself the goal of evolving from a hardware manufacturer into a hardware-based software, solutions, and services provider. At the same time, the company faces challenges such as increasing and rapidly changing market and customer requirements and a rather long-term product engineering process (PEP) that needs to be further developed to meet future requirements.

To prepare the company for the future, a customer-centric, fast and flexible organization with an agile working model should be created. In doing so, the solution was expected to increase innovation, strengthen cross-business line collaboration, and increase overall organizational efficiency by 15%. To this end, the “R&D Transformation” program was initiated together with a team from 3DSE.

The procedure was divided into three streams:

A) Define and implement a new agile and customer-centric requirements management process that will enable future rapid and flexible response to changing customer requirements.

B) Re-organization of the R&D area including adaptation of roles, competence profiles and collaboration models to the new processes.

C) Implementation of the new process and organizational elements incl. accompanying communication and change measures adapted to the target groups.

The “R&D Transformation” program proceeded in the following four phases.

1) First, in the set-up phase, the current situation was analyzed, “major pain points” were identified, and the strategic orientation and internal project organization were determined. Suitable projects were selected to help shape and pilot the new requirements management process. In preparation for the reorganization, a competence analysis of all business areas was prepared.

2) In the second phase, the framework of agile requirements management was defined and strategic alternatives of a future organizational model were developed during two one-week innovation workshops. Subsequently, the core elements of the requirements management process and the developed organizational models were detailed. In the process, new roles and a comprehensive collaboration model were developed using an agile scaling framework.

3) In the third phase, the organizational change was planned, prepared and implemented. In addition, the new agile requirements management process and the agile collaboration model were piloted in several projects and brought to life within the teams based on jointly defined agile values. Cross-businessline communication measures and training supported the sustainable change process.

4) In the upcoming fourth phase, the new processes are rolled out to the entire organization. In order to be able to measure the efficiency gains achieved by the R&D transformation in the medium term, suitable metrics were defined and collected together with the G+D team. The overarching goal of the R&D transformation is to increase R&D efficiency by 15%. The increase in productivity achieved is to be used to realize further innovation projects in the future.

“The transformation of an organization takes place on different levels and often takes years. With the support of 3DSE, we were now able to set the right course in the context of the R&D transformation and, thanks to the emergent consulting approach, we have an internal G+D transformation team that stands united behind the jointly developed solutions and helps the organization with the agile transformation in the long term.”, says Richard Schachtner, Head of Program Management, G+D Currency Technologies. “3DSE’s expertise provided us with proven best practices in both defining the agile framework, the new organization, and designing the change program.”

Best of Consulting Mittelstand Award 2020

For the second time in a row: For this successful project at our customer Giesecke+Devrient in the Currency Technology business unit, we were awarded “Excellent” in the Organization category of WirtschaftsWoche’s Best of Consulting Mittelstand Award 2020. After the award in 2019, another success and a special appreciation of our work that makes us proud!