Case Study
Hapag-Lloyd, with 280 modern container ships and a transport capacity of 2.1 million TEU, is a global leader in liner shipping, offering a total container capacity of 3.1 million TEU, including one of the most advanced reefer fleets.
40
teams
measured over
one year
Improved
productivity
driven by data
“With CAST, we have an empirical baseline for efficiency improvements across our product teams.”
Dr. Bastian Dölle
Director IT - Quality Assurance, Software Engineering, Project Management
CAST Imaging with SQG extension enabled Hapag-Lloyd to uncover empirical insights into the productivity of 40 development teams.'
Challenge
Hapag-Lloyd has dozens of IT development teams that build and maintain custom applications vital to the company’s operations. These teams differ in size, member experience, roles, collaboration models, and other organizational factors.
Despite providing individual training and using standard efficiency-improvement methods, Hapag-Lloyd sought a way to further enhance the overall efficiency of its teams based on data.
Solution
Hapag-Lloyd set a performance baseline for 40 development teams to gauge efficiency and replicate gains.
They used the CAST Structural Quality Gate alongside Automated Enhancement Points (AEP) – an OMG standard merging functional (AEFP) and technical (AETP) changes – to measure software size and output. Changes included new, removed, or updated functions. Hapag-Lloyd used Clarity to track team effort and measure AEP data.
Results
Implementing CAST SQG to measure productivity with AEP gave Hapag-Lloyd key insights. Data on effort, code ownership, and reporting aligned with real performance, as confirmed by teams and product managers.
Though each team posed unique challenges, it provided a solid starting point for discussions. Experience drove productivity, smaller teams (under eight) were more efficient, and the collaboration model had little impact, though productivity varied tenfold across teams.
