Scaled Agile Release Train

International Fast Fashion Retailer

Challenge

The customer had an ambitious plan to transition to a new retail solution while simultaneously expanding into new markets. This often required going live in multiple countries at once.

Beyond standard business requirements, the solution is needed to comply with the fiscal regulations of each country. Given that these country openings had no legacy system to fall back on, deadlines were non-negotiable.

Solution

• Implemented a Scaled Agile approach in collaboration with the customer, using release trains to ensure a structured and predictable quarterly release cycle. Customized roles were introduced to effectively manage dependencies.

• Release Train Engineers (RTEs) were responsible for planning, dependency mapping, and dependency management, ensuring smooth execution across teams.

• The development team, consisting of several dozen developers and testers, was organized into multiple Scrum teams.

• The Product Owner retained responsibility for overarching business requirements, while Proxy Product Owners were introduced for each Scrum team to manage country-specific requirements.

• Country Project Managers were assigned to oversee third-party integrations and coordinate dependencies across development, testing, infrastructure, and release management teams.

The program followed a structured release train/wave model, maintaining three active waves at all times:

1. Wave 1: Design phase

2. Wave 2: Development & testing

3. Wave 3: Deployment, early support, and hypercare

Results