This presentation presents the first steps on how to speed up your product development using agile methods in hardware development. The work is based on our decades-long experience in product and process development and coaching in the largest and fastest product development enterprises. The goal is to provide customer value sooner – gaining speed in product development is an essential step in that pursuit.

Learning outcomes

• agile can be used for hardware development
  how you can take first steps for a waterfall product
• development organization to agile hardware
  agile hardware
• development becomes a must due to EU’s Green New Deal and digitalization

Maarit Laanti,
SAFe® Fellow, SPCT, PhD

Maarit Laanti is an agile coach who has transformed organizations to lean and agile since 2006. Her current interest is in Agile Hardware. Last year, Maarit co-founded a consultancy company called WikiAgile, which is located in Finland, Germany, and Poland. Since the pandemic, she has been exchanging ideas with Joe Justice to help also hardware companies to reach the speed of innovation.
Maarit has been nominated with LIA100 amongst the 100 women worldwide who have contributed most to Lean and Agile methods and several times to the list of 100 ICT influencers in Finland (by Tivi). She also serves as Track and/or Program Chair for Agile Alliance’s XP conference from 2000 to 2024.
Before her career as a consultant, Maarit led the biggest agile transformation at the time, at Nokia Mobile Phones. She has contributed to SAFe in many ways, including the Lean-Agile budgeting to SAFe 3.0.
Her background is hands-on work at Nokia. She worked hands-on for over 20 years in multiple positions, from software developer to program, line manager, and transformation leader.
In 2013, she published the first PhD on scaling agile methods, titled “Agile Methods in Large-Scale Software Development Organizations – Applicability and Model for Adoption” that is based on the 10-year research she did while working for Nokia, leading the largest agile transformation at a time in product development, including software and hardware.

Outside of her professional life, Maarit finds joy in classical singing (soprano), a testament to her artistic side. She cherishes spending quality time with her family, especially on the sea, which she considers the perfect way to unwind and recharge.