Case Study
Leading telecom provider boosts developer productivity 100% with UST's agile transformation
OUR CLIENT
Founded nearly 30 years ago, this multinational telecommunication holding company operates well-known cellular service providers across Europe and North America. The company employs over 70,000 people globally and serves nearly 115 million customers.
THE CHALLENGE
Overcoming a void in development leadership and technical expertise
Although the telecom company’s application development team had been working with a consulting partner, the company struggled with several major business and technical challenges, including:
- A lack of strategic direction—from lackluster thought-leadership and no product roadmap, hindering the company’s ability to innovate
- Multiple data environments—that prevented the company from making strategic decisions rooted in data analysis
- Inefficient collaboration and communication—across business units that stifled innovation and slowed response times, hampering the company's ability to adapt to changing marketing conditions
- Talent and technical gaps—lacking deep expertise in essential technologies such as Azure, Snowflake, and cloud-based data environments
THE TRANSFORMATION
Strategically revamping and unifying app data engineering for enhanced productivity
UST's approach was multifaceted, outcome-focused, and included:
- A strategic roadmap and business engagement—The company transitioned key roles to UST with senior product owners to steer ROI-driven product strategies and implementations.
- An agile transformation—By embedding agile methodologies across product teams, the telecom enhanced application development flexibility and responsiveness.
- A cloud data consolidation—UST leveraged its cloud expertise to unify disparate data sources into one robust cloud ecosystem, significantly improving data visibility and utility.
- Automations for operational excellence—We deployed automations in critical operational areas to accelerate product release cycles.
UST's unique contribution also included assembling a specialized team within a stringent 8-week timeline, outperforming the previous vendor by completing two sprints ahead of schedule, and instituting numerous process improvements that stabilized and optimized operations from the outset.
THE IMPACT
Doubling productivity and setting new operational standards
The collaboration yielded these significant quantifiable results:
- Productivity doubled—Average velocity increased despite a smaller team size than the previous vendor.
- Enhanced developer commitment—The team's commitment strength reached 100%, with a consistent say/do ratio, marking a significant uptick in reliability and predictability.
- Accelerated time to market—The development team successfully launched several product releases post-transition, all with zero defects within the initial 45 days, showcasing an exceptional increase in delivery speed and quality.
- Best-practice standardizations—Process improvements became standard across teams, fostering widespread enhancements in knowledge management.
RESOURCES
https://www.ust.com/en/industries/tmt-telecom
https://www.ust.com/en/insights/small-cells-big-impact-unlocking-the-power-of-5g-networks