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Agile Transformation Journey of Metsa

The Client

Metsä Group is a Finnish forest industry group with a presence in around 30 countries. The client is in the business of sustainable wood supply and forest services, wood products, pulp, fresh fibre paper board, tissue, and cooking papers.

Evolution of Our Partnership

The Infosys partnership with Metsä started 9 years ago as the implementation partner for Metsä’s LEAN SCM program and the primary partner for application management services (AMS) and continuous development. The partnership has evolved over the years, expanding to multiple business areas, continuous improvement initiatives, and next-level ITSM processes. The collaboration has brought reciprocal benefits to both parties. It led to the adoption of SAFe Agile for the Metsä Board’s continuous release and development projects. The primary focus is on:

  • Faster implementation
  • Increase in operational efficiencies
  • Effective risk and dependency management
  • Transparency and measurable results

Key Highlights

Presently, Infosys is the primary partner in the Metsä Board agile release train. As a key partner, Infosys has incorporated several process changes at Metsä to drive release efficiencies:

  • Initiated agile adoption planning in early 2020
  • Rolled out the training and change management process for Metsä Group partners, IT SMEs, and key users in Feb 2020
  • Implemented the next generation service delivery model for transforming release activities by leveraging our robust agile and DevOps capabilities
  • Scaled fast and successfully completed eight agile implementation cycles by May 2022
  • Extending the agile SAFe methodology to other application areas by leveraging the current team’s experience
  • Proposed that Infosys have a proxy role as the counterpart to the Metsä product owner role to maintain sprint health and adhere to delivery timelines

Benefits

Engineering Outcomes Business Outcomes
  • Frequent deployments are supported by continuous testing
  • Decrease in development lead time by 30% to 40%
  • Implementation in smaller modules has improved testing quality and therefore overall quality of delivery
  • Faster realization of business value leading to overall customer satisfaction
  • Projects that followed disconnected schedules are moving to the agile release train. This helps in better coordination and reduced costs
  • Effective utilization of team capacity resulting in a direct positive impact on revenues