Spirit’s mobile apps offered robust functionality—flight booking, check-ins, digital boarding passes—but feature deployment lagged. The team relied on waterfall processes, manual QA, and had zero test automation in place. TribalScale embedded engineers to inject Agile mindset, institute automated testing, and accelerate delivery through modern engineering practices and cultural shifts.
Impact Delivered
Challenge
Spirit Airlines’s mobile development was stuck in second gear:
Waterfall bottlenecks: Feature delivery cycles took nearly two months or more, stalling innovation.
No automated feedback loop: Without unit tests, bugs were caught late—delaying features and adding risk.
QA was manual only: Teams relied on smoke, exploratory, and regression testing by hand—no automation.
Cultural inertia: Developers lacked trust in testing infrastructure, limiting velocity and predictability.
They needed more than tools—they needed a transformation in delivery mindset and software maturity.
Solution
TribalScale didn’t just advise—they built alongside the team: Shifted from purely manual testing to developer-backed automated unit tests. Introduced CI/CD pipelines to ensure every commit triggered reliable builds and tests. Rolled out MVVM architecture in mobile apps to improve maintainability and testability.
Working side-by-side with Spirit’s engineering teams over six months, TribalScale brought transformation via immersion:
Conducted a codebase assessment across platforms, identifying architectural and QA gaps.
Embedded development teams to model Test-Driven Development (TDD) and pair programming.
Delivered training and awareness workshops on writing unit tests, implementing MVVM architecture, and leveraging CI/CD.
Established weekly leadership touchpoints for transparency, prioritization, and momentum.
Research Methods & Frameworks
Codebase audit (pain‑point identification)
TDD & unit test coaching
Agile pairing for knowledge transfer
CI/CD integration design
Outcome
This transformation anchored long-term development maturity. Spirit’s mobile teams evolved from slower waterfall cycles to fast, reliable Agile delivery—with embedded testing and automated releases. TribalScale’s learnings also contributed to a new Software Maturity Model, now used to evaluate and guide other organizations on their Agile journeys.
Why It Matters
In fast-paced industries like travel, speed and reliability go hand in hand. By anchoring quality in automation and culture, Spirit freed its teams to innovate confidently and sustainably in mobile—reducing risk and boosting release velocity in one leap.