Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) - Station modernization with Jira

Jira is used in an unusual way at the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). Jira is used there to control a train station modernization project, which shows how versatile Jira can be used - true to the motto "Everything is one ticket". With the solution from it-economics, everyone involved has an overview of the current status of the ongoing modernization project at all times, even with 1.500 stations.

Customer

The Swiss Federal Railways AG, or SBB for short, is the state railway company in Switzerland and is based in the federal city of Bern. With over 19.000 employees, it is the largest public transport company in Switzerland and one of the largest employers in the country. Around 3.200 million passengers are transported every day on a route network of more than 1,3 kilometers.

Key facts about the project

• Modernization of 1.500 railway stations in Switzerland
• Project with 200 SBB employees
• Individual ticket and reporting system based on Atlassian Jira
• Integration of third-party plugins and self-developed extensions
• 1 year project duration, support as Atlassian Solution Partner, Atlassian Developer and Atlassian Administrator

Initial situation / challenge

The Swiss Federal Railways, SBB for short, is running a five-year major project to modernize its nationwide stations. Around 1.500 SBB employees and their partners at 200 locations are busy updating the data networks. The challenge: How can such a project be managed intelligently? How can the SBB project managers stay up to date on the current status of the work? How do the employees on site know what exactly needs to be done? And how do you report your work status back to the planning team?

SBB was looking for a flexible but proven standard solution to map their work processes. At the same time, the quick and easy adaptability to the specific circumstances of the SBB played a prominent role.

Our solution and project implementation

it-economics relies on Jira from Atlassian for its solution. Jira convinces the SBB with its high degree of configurability and the very flexible, quick and easy adaptability to specific customer requirements. Jira also offers flexible deployment options (cloud, self-hosting, managed hosting) that enable the customized solution requested by SBB. The fair, clear and transparent license model of the annual costs is also popular. The ticket system is also easy to understand and is based on a simple operating concept, which makes it easy for new users to get started at SBB.

In the course of the one-year project, it-economics was commissioned to set up and configure Atlassian Jira, including the implementation of customer-specific requirements for the workflows and tickets to be created. Our Atlassian consultants also evaluate, select, set up and configure extensions (apps) for Jira, implement their own solution for the coordinates of the train stations for visual display on Google Maps and ensure the administration and security of the servers to fulfill the security concept.

Outcome / Benefits

With the individual solution for the SBB based on Jira, not only new tasks can be created and assigned quickly. Jira automatically logs the progress of the task, so it is always clear who carried out which process step and when. SBB management receives the weekly reports quickly and easily as Excel or PDF documents directly from Jira. And thanks to a connected app, the advantages of the ticket system are also available regardless of location. This means that everyone involved has an overview of the current status of the ongoing modernization project at all times, even at 1.500 stations.