Zephyr
Acceleration Week
The fastest path from idea to production for your entire org.
What Acceleration Week is
Acceleration Week is five days with a destination the business has already chosen. Product, design, engineering, architecture, and security sit in the same work, and Zephyr is in the room with them. The point is to take a direction that would otherwise take months and prove it, on the organization’s own cloud, before the company depends on it.
For a front-end modernization, that destination is a micro-frontend architecture on Zephyr Cloud. Releases land in your account, on the cloud you already run. Cloudflare is included. The scope is the customer-facing experiences and the backend-for-frontend services behind them. The AI Platform is used on that same work: code, tests, documentation, troubleshooting, delivery, and platform management.
People often arrive unsure why they are there. The week still has a plan, and the room executes it. By Friday there is a working slice, a shared picture of the problem, and a clear line between what can start now and what waits on a cloud transition or a security review.
What an enterprise can hope to gain
A foundation you can build on
Domain ownership, a deployment strategy, and a governance model for growth and experimentation.
Teams that ship on their own
Fewer dependency bottlenecks. A team can deliver its part of the experience without waiting on every other team.
Faster speed to market
Digital enhancements and strategic work move when the business needs them to.
A working slice on your cloud
One customer experience and its backend-for-frontend, deployed through Zephyr, previewed, promoted, and rolled back.
The AI Platform on your work
Code, tests, documentation, troubleshooting, delivery planning, and the day-to-day management of versions and environments.
A clear start line
What can begin now, and what waits on a cloud transition or a security review already in motion.
What an Acceleration Week would look like for you
Level set, benchmarks, and agent roles
Method, tools, and a first scored run
Workflows a person can run, scored in a demo
Those workflows hand work across disciplines
The whole week, shown to leadership
Each afternoon the room runs the work and scores it. The next morning starts from what was missing. In the room: product, design, engineering, architecture, QA, security, cloud, and delivery leads. Zephyr works in the groups. Leadership joins the Friday demo.
Acceleration Week case study
Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits
Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits is the largest wine and spirits distributor in the United States. The company is family-owned and operates in 47 U.S. markets and Canada, with travel-retail reach into the Caribbean and Latin America. It is one of the country’s largest private companies.
The business is regulated at the federal level and differently in every state: what can be sold, how it is labeled, and how customer data can be used. Compliance sat in the room with engineering. The week brought more than 40 people from digital engineering, QA, architecture, product, and compliance. They have run Acceleration Week twice with Zephyr. The second, in 2025, was aimed at AI. The numbers further down are from the first week.
The week
Southern Glazer’s ran Acceleration Week with Zephyr, and the destination was already chosen: a micro-frontend architecture on Zephyr Cloud, covering their customer-facing experiences and the backend-for-frontend services behind them. Releases stayed in their account, on the cloud they already ran. The AI Platform sat on the real work: code, tests, documentation, troubleshooting, delivery, and platform management.
Their first week pulled a release path they had chased for six years into five days. Their second week, in 2025, pointed the same room at AI across how the organization works. The recap above is that second week.
People at Southern Glazer’s often arrived unsure why they were in the room. The week still had a plan, and the room executed it. By the end, separate conversations had become one shared picture of the problem, and that picture went back to work with them.
What their first Acceleration Week achieved
6 years → 1 week
A release path the organization had pursued for six years came together in the room.
4–5 weeks → seconds
Production releases that took four to five weeks moved to sub-second deploys and rollbacks.
5 hours → seconds
A simple change that took up to five hours to reach a demo environment became available in seconds.
Web, mobile, BFF, services
By the last day, one pipeline covered web, mobile, backend-for-frontend, and services.
Tests in under 20 seconds
QA ran automated checks while code was still in progress, before a pull request was opened.
40+ people, one room
Engineering, QA, architecture, product, and compliance worked the problem together.
“We tried to implement the changes we attacked for six years to get to instant deployments and rollbacks, and then with the acceleration week and Zephyr Cloud, it took us a week to achieve it.”
Build times in CI moved from about an hour toward minutes. They then ran the format again, with the second week pointed at AI.
What they said in the room
“It has a tech conference vibe, but you’re producing business value.”
“We start with essentially nothing, and at the end of the week you’re blown away by what you were able to generate.”
“You come out of a week with a year’s worth of results.”
“The beginning of the week, everyone was really confused. Nobody knew why they were here. But we had a plan. Throughout the week, we executed on that plan.”
“The group built a shared mental model, which allowed them to reason about very complex topics. I can already see how that will extend beyond this week.”
“A lot of the anxiety around what AI is, and around how we are going to move forward as an organization, is gone.”
“There is immense power in bringing people together around a big, motivating, significant problem.”
From the week
Longer conversations from Southern Glazer’s Acceleration Week, filmed with the people in the room.
FAQ
Does this replace our cloud?
Releases run in your account, on the cloud you choose. Cloudflare is included. Zephyr versions each release, routes it, and rolls it back. The cloud stays yours.
When can we start?
Broad use follows the date you set, with room for a cloud transition and a security review. The Acceleration Week can run before that date. If the cloud move or the review finishes sooner, the start can move up.
What is in scope?
Customer-facing experiences, built as micro-frontends that teams develop and deploy on their own, and the backend-for-frontend services those experiences depend on.
What does The AI Platform do in the week?
It is used on the real work: code, test creation, documentation, troubleshooting, delivery planning, and platform management. Platform management means which version is in which environment, how an experience and its backend-for-frontend stay in step, and how a change is previewed, promoted, or rolled back.
Is the week open-ended exploration?
The destination is set before anyone arrives. People in the room may not see the whole plan on Monday morning. Southern Glazer’s described exactly that: confusion at the start, a plan underneath it, and the plan carried out by the end of the week.
Have you run a week like this on AI?
Yes. Southern Glazer’s second Acceleration Week, in 2025, was aimed at AI across the way the team works. The recap at the top of this page is that week. Their first week is the one that turned a six-year release problem into sub-second deploys.
Who needs to be in the room?
The engineering leads who will own domains. Product and design for the experiences in scope. Architecture, security, and the people who own the cloud. Someone who can clear a blocker the same day. Zephyr works in the room on the architecture, the deployment, and The AI Platform.
What do we leave with?
A working slice on your cloud. The experience and its backend-for-frontend released together. Domain ownership and a governance model. The AI Platform used on your own code. A list of what can start now, and what waits on the cloud transition or security review.
Name the destination.
Tell us where you are going. We will run the week.
Talk to Zephyr