Agile2024 - The European Experience: Culture eats Agile for Breakfast: BMW Case Study

With Vanessa Martens

27 Aug 2024

From May to December 2019 we worked with BMW in South Africa to build their first end to end Online sales website for BMW globally. 75 people and 9 teams delivered across 3 countries, a website that went live in January 2020 - where a customer can buy, trade in and book a test drive without leaving their lounge. Amazing timing considering the impact of Covid. Why did they approach us? There was a clear deadline and a lot of global visibility for this initiative but the team had not been able to get traction, or really get started for 6 months – they worked in silos aligned to traditional hierarchy. We introduced a new way of working aligned to Agile and Scrum principles.

This experience taught us that a successful Business Agility transformation is simply about 3 steps... 1. Business & IT leadership in it together 2. The Value stream that put the customer first 3. A Culture that embraces collaboration We had to get rid of the blame game and all accept we were in the same boat, even when it was sinking. This required a huge shift in BMW's culture, which is build around hierarchy, competition and individual success.