Source: InfoQ. This article summarizes the DOES 2019 presentation by Ralf Waltram and Dr. Frank Ramsak of BMW IT.
Overview
At the DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES) 2019, BMW’s Ralf Waltram (Head of R&D) and Dr. Frank Ramsak (Head of IT Governance) presented the state of their ongoing IT transformation—described internally as the largest transformation in BMW’s history. The initiative, which began in 2016, is driven by a strategic shift from being purely a car manufacturer to becoming a mobility provider. Their session offered candid lessons for any large organization undertaking a major Agile and DevOps transformation.
The Problem: Two Speeds, Two Cultures
Before the transformation, BMW IT operated a classic waterfall delivery model, shipping large projects with tightly coupled application dependencies. Releases were so risky they were regularly scheduled for weekends to minimize business disruption.
BMW had adopted a bimodal IT model as an interim step, but it created as many problems as it solved:
- 20% of teams were working in Agile (two-week sprints).
- 80% of teams were still operating on annual waterfall release cycles.
- Agile teams were consistently blocked waiting on waterfall teams, negating the speed advantage of sprinting.
- Two distinct working cultures emerged, creating friction rather than collaboration.
Two structural silos compounded the problem: one between development and operations, and another between IT and the business. Both silos slowed delivery and made it difficult to prioritize customer value.
The Solution: Products, BizDevOps, and 100% Agile
To break down these silos, BMW IT made two foundational decisions:
- Move from projects to products — organizing work around long-lived product teams with persistent ownership rather than temporary project structures.
- Adopt BizDevOps — extending the DevOps model to formally include business stakeholders, ensuring transparency and shared accountability across IT and business functions.
The goal was 100% Agile adoption: a single, unified way of working that is customer-centric, value-driven, and flexible enough to support BMW’s evolving mobility business model.
The Four Cornerstones of BMW’s Transformation
BMW designed a holistic transformation framework built on four cornerstones:
1. People and Culture
Waltram and Ramsak identified people and organizational culture as the single most important factor in the transformation’s success. BMW rolled out organization-wide training on Agile values and practices before making structural or tooling changes. Cultural readiness was treated as a prerequisite, not an afterthought.
2. Structure
Development and operations were brought together into integrated DevOps teams. At the portfolio level, the IT landscape was reorganized around products and value streams rather than functional departments. This restructuring aimed to deliver:
- Minimum governance overhead at the portfolio level
- Maximum synchronization and team autonomy
3. Process — Changing How Work Is Funded
One of the most impactful process changes was how BMW funds its IT work. Historically, projects and operations were funded through separate budget streams—a model that reinforced the project-vs-product divide. Starting in 2019, BMW shifted to funding products and teams directly, tying investment to business value rather than project scope. This is a common enabler of Lean portfolio management and a critical step for sustaining long-lived product teams.
4. Technology
To support the new ways of working, BMW introduced technologies enabling microservice and cloud-based architectures, gradually replacing legacy monolithic applications. The team also developed a unified Agile software development toolchain now used by approximately 20,000 employees, providing end-to-end development visibility and synchronization across the organization.
Measurable Results
The business recognized and validated the transformation’s impact. Key outcomes reported by Waltram and Ramsak include:
- Release frequency increased from 12 releases per year to approximately 2 per month.
- Defect rates and time-to-resolution decreased significantly (specific metrics were not published in the summarized source).
Key Lessons and Recommendations
Waltram and Ramsak closed their presentation with practical guidance for organizations facing similar transformations:
- Set a bold transformation vision, but resist the urge to execute it all at once. Start small, deliver in increments, and scale what works.
- Embrace iterative learning. Small increments allow rapid inspection and course correction—something that is genuinely difficult to sustain in organizations with a deeply ingrained culture of perfection and high performance, as BMW openly acknowledged about itself.
- Learn from the community. Waltram and Ramsak encouraged organizations to participate in DevOps and Agile communities, share transformation experiences openly, and learn from peers rather than treating transformation approaches as proprietary.
Why This Matters for Enterprise DevOps
BMW’s transformation is a relevant case study for any large, traditional enterprise modernizing its software delivery. Several of their decisions reflect proven patterns in enterprise DevOps literature:
- Eliminating bimodal IT in favor of a single operating model
- Moving from project to product funding to sustain long-lived teams
- Extending DevOps to include business stakeholders (BizDevOps)
- Using value streams as the organizing principle for portfolio management
- Treating culture change as a prerequisite to process and tooling changes
For organizations still running hybrid waterfall/Agile models, BMW’s experience illustrates that the two speeds create more drag than the waterfall baseline they were meant to replace.