Insights from Taipuva Polarion Days 2026

On February 4th, the historic Posthuset in Stockholm opened its doors for Taipuva Polarion Days 2026. The atmosphere was filled with experts ready for a day of networking, training, and experience sharing. Rather than just showcasing software, the guest speakers talked about the actual methodologies and messy, real-world processes that determine whether a digital transition succeeds or fails.

Taipuva Sweden CEO Gunilla McLeod set the stage in her opening remarks:

“The stars of the day are you guys.” She made it clear that the event was built around the speakers and attendees, with the Taipuva team there to support and make the experience as valuable as possible.

Preparation is key for a successful rollout

The morning kicked off with Natalia Pawlak, Luca Pancani, and Slavisha Erkic from Hitachi Rail, who walked us through the massive task of rolling out Polarion across more than 50 countries. Moving from a scattered landscape of different tools to a single, unified ALM environment for digital signalling and smart operations is no small feat. 

The team was clear that technical deployment is only half the battle; the real work lies in how you handle the people and the data before the go-live button is even pressed.

”We started up a sort of community of practice for future Polarion experts. There was lots of hope and a positive attitude from the get-go. We exchange regularly with the users where they have the chance to ask any type of questions they want,” Natalia noted during a break. 

“I include demonstrations and give regular status updates. It’s a forum open to anybody, whether they are already onboarded in Polarion or not. Apart from that, we just try to be as transparent as possible regarding our roadmap.”

The Hitachi Rail team also talked about the importance of over-preparing, specifically regarding the data model in big migration projects. By spending significant time on mapping and refining their core templates before going live, they avoided cluttering the system with unnecessary attributes. 

“We looked at whether we already had something suitable, maybe an additional enumeration value could cover the topic without the need for yet another work item type. We focused on those details so we didn’t pollute our core project template”, Natalia explained.

“Drilling holes is our business”

The theme of organisational evolution continued with Epiroc, represented by Markus Rantakeisu, Per Stedfeldt, and Ola Larses from Taipuva. In their joint presentation, they described their journey as an evolution, not a revolution. 

Per Stedfeldt opened by noting that while “drilling holes is our business,” managing the technological complexity behind it requires a sophisticated framework. He explained that their focus has been on using functional analysis as the common thread, allowing for creative freedom within a structured reusable environment.

It hasn’t been a simple path; Per noted the challenge of aligning many “strong wills” to find a common language. Markus focused on why data-driven traceability is so vital:

”The purpose of traceable requirements in a data-driven tool is to ensure compliance and completeness. We need to be able to answer: ‘Are we done and are we reaching the customer’s needs?’”

While discussing the project’s impact later in the day, Markus pointed out that changing ways of working, roles, and habits is often a bigger challenge than the application itself.

”Many people struggle with the same things we do – change management within the organisation. Changing ways of working, changing roles, and habits. That is often a bigger challenge than the application itself. That journey requires more effort and more time.”

Markus also pointed to the partnership with Taipuva, noting that having a sounding board that understands their specific background has been a vital part of their journey

Keeping track of Public Transport

Alicia Kronqvist and Karin Andersson from Skånetrafiken showed how Polarion can be used in a completely different way: for contract monitoring in public transport. They manage 16 different contracts across five contractors to ensure that the nearly 500,000 daily journeys made in Skåne meet strict quality standards.

With roughly 500 requirements per contract, the manual workload used to be immense. By moving everything into Polarion, they’ve digitised their follow-ups, providing a clear overview that contracts are followed and that public funds are being used correctly.

Real capacity instead of guesswork

Radek Krotil from Nextedy delivered a reality check regarding project management. He addressed the common problem of fragmented landscapes where customer projects, shared components, and compliance tasks are often managed in separate, disconnected tools. By using Polarion as a backbone for collaboration and traceability, teams can merge hardware milestones and software sprints into one real-time view.

Radek spoke about the trap of planning on hope – where schedules are based on optimistic estimates rather than what a team can actually achieve.

”If you don’t understand real team capacity across projects, you’re not planning – you’re guessing.”

Nextedy’s solution involves a capacity engine that uses real, granular resource load analysis rather than estimates. With tools like the Nextedy Gantt and planning boards, managers can see true cross-project visibility and spot over-allocation before it causes delays.

Focus on the latest release and AI capabilities

The day wrapped up with Martin Popelak and the Siemens team presenting the latest release, Polarion 2512. The focus was squarely on Polarion Copilot, a suite of AI tools designed for requirements engineering, built on a secure, modular framework.

Despite the excitement around new features like the Polarion Help chatbot and automated content validation against INCOSE standards, the message from Siemens was grounded: AI “still requires a human.” 

These new features are designed to take care of the heavy lifting so that engineers can focus on high-level decision-making. As Radek Krotil noted, the most important signal is Siemens’ investment in modern, standardised APIs. This is the foundation that ensures you can actually trust AI tools in a professional environment.

The day also included sessions from Johanna Varnander at Hitachi Energy, who discussed the complexities of

Johanna Varnander from Hitachi Energy offered an in-depth look at how large-scale infrastructure programs bring a completely different level of complexity to requirements management. In projects that span multiple countries, regulatory environments, suppliers, and engineering disciplines, maintaining traceability and change control is not just a best practice — it’s business critical.

She walked through how their teams leverage Polarion X to manage thousands of interconnected requirements across long project lifecycles. A key takeaway was how cloud-based collaboration, structured traceability, and controlled baselines enable transparency between stakeholders while still supporting agility within individual engineering teams. The session highlighted how digital continuity reduces risk, shortens review cycles, and strengthens compliance in environments where the margin for error is minimal.

Jarkko Holappa from Sandvik shifted the focus toward cybersecurity and secure product development. As regulatory expectations tighten and connected products become the norm, security can no longer be treated as a separate gate at the end of development. Instead, it must be embedded directly into the engineering workflow.

He demonstrated how Sandvik integrates a Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL) into daily development activities — from requirement definition to verification and release — ensuring that security considerations are traceable, testable, and continuously monitored. By aligning security processes with their existing ALM framework, they reduce friction between compliance and engineering teams, while ensuring readiness for modern standards and evolving threat landscapes.

Closing Thoughts

In the end, real progress comes down to the work done beforehand — thoughtful data modelling, clear linguistic alignment between teams, and genuine human engagement. Whether in global rail, power infrastructure, or public service monitoring, success is built on a solid, well-prepared foundation.

A warm thank you to all our speakers for sharing your expertise so openly, and to every participant who contributed to the discussions and energy of the day. And of course, appreciation to everyone behind the scenes who made the event possible. We’re grateful to be building this journey together.