Case Two : British Telecom Spreading Agile Development across the Globe

In 2005, British Telecom (BT) took a big risk: the company dropped its use of the waterfall system development process and embraced agile development. Previously, BT had outsourced the gathering of system requirements to a third company, which would typically take three to nine months to meet with customers and stakeholders and create a requirements list. Next, the project would move back to BT where programmers often struggled to interpret the requirements and then develop and test the system within 18 monthsalthough some projects needed more time. In late 2005, however, BT took only 90 days to roll out a new Web-based system for monitoring phone traffic. The new system allowed traffic managers to change switches and other physical devices more quickly in order to handle shifts in load along BTs telecommunications network. The success of this initial project reverberated throughout the IT world, as BT became the first telecommunications giant to adopt agile developmentsometimes developing products in three 30-day iterative cycles.

The new system development approach had other advantages, too: programmers and customers communicated closely and teams from different locations around the world, initially the United Kingdom and India, worked together to develop the system. To overcome customer doubts, BT invited them to development hot houses to see how the agile development process worked. Many customers became such ardent believers that they adopted the agile approach themselves. In 2010, BT used its new system development process to create the 21st Century Next Generation Access Network process, which enjoyed an 80 percent return on its initial investment within its first year. Today, BT deploys agile development to service its customers across the globe.

In 2014, for example, BT applied the agile approach to deploy telepresence solutions for the international energy and chemical producer Sasol, a company with over 34,000 employees based in 37 countries. To oversee its operations and interact with clients, senior Sasol managers based in South Africa were traveling millions of miles each year, which was not good for the managers, the companys budget, or the planet. As an alternative, BT installed telepresence suites across South Africa and in Houston, London, Calgary, and Hamburg. Sasol achieved a 100 percent usage rate at each of these suites, and BT secured a five-year contract to provide continued support.

BT had one major concern about agile develop ent :previously, the company had conducted 16 or 17 types of tests before deploying a new system. Many feared that a shorter life cycle meant compromising on quality assurance. However, BT now continues testing with customers after system setup and finds that testing the product with customer involvement has significant advantages.

The main advantage I see is that you spend more time working on the right [system] features by talking to customers all the time and working on it, says Kerry Buckley, a software developer who worked on the initial phone-traffic monitoring system. Moreover, software engineers working at BT are excited about working on customer-facing live applications. As one engineer notes, All your work matters and will be released to the public. Agile development at BT has taken system developers out of their isolated bubble, inspiring them, and proving to the IT world that agile development can work.

Critical Thinking Questions:

Are there certain personal characteristics one should look for in candidates who will participate in or lead agile system projects? If so, what are they, and why are they important?

How might the establishment of telepresence suites support the use of the agile system development process? What do you think are some of the capabilities of such suites?

How might extreme programming and DevOps provide further improvements in the BT system development process?

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