Case Study: Cisco achieves continuous, agile-aligned localization at scale with OneSky

9 Strategies from Cisco’s Continuous Localization Expert

Cisco, the global leader in IP networking, faced a major challenge: how to overhaul localization so it worked with agile development across 25,000+ engineers and roughly 500 products. Gary Lefman, Cisco’s Internationalization Architect, was charged with moving localization out of the late-stage “waterfall” model and making it an integral part of the development lifecycle.

Gary implemented “continuous localization” by integrating localization tools with CI/CD pipelines, building a community of internal champions (38 to date), and focusing on education, flexible workflows, and reusable documentation. The result was faster, more frequent localized releases (weekly vs. quarterly), quicker defect detection and improved source quality, and higher customer satisfaction—accepting higher translation costs as an investment—while still allowing smaller teams to adopt the approach incrementally.

Cisco

Gary Lefman

Internatonalization Architect