Written Assignment – Unit 7

Case Report: Agile Delivery at British Telecom

BUS 5114

Management Information Systems & Technology

University of the People

Instructor: Dr. Paula Cherry

Dec 27, 2021

 Introduction

Agile development is a methodology which involves the collaborative work of cross-

functional teams and end-users to achieve customer fulfillment and solutions. It utilizes

incremental changes on project at a specified period of time to ensure that both quality and

objectives are met (Bourgeois. 2014). In order words, it is an approach to software

development that builds software step-by-step in a project rather than delivering it all at once

in the end. Agile development has different methods that promote project management and

encourage adaptation to change, team-work, and self-organization. This paper presents agile

development at British Telecom and how this technology has contributed to the company’s

competitive advantage. It also discusses it’s the company’s value chain and the benefits

gained from the implementation of Agile delivery.

Case Description

British Telecom is a British multinational telecommunications company that operates in

almost 180 countries around the world. It is also the largest provider of fixed-line, mobile, and

broadband services in the UK (British Telecom, 2020), and also, provides subscription

television and IT services. It first started as Electric Telegraph Company in 1846 and later

changed to General Post Office. British Telecom was formed in 1980 and later privatized in

1984.

In 2005, BT switched from their waterfall development program to using an agile

development practice with the help of management tools such as Scum and DSPM. Prior to

adopting Agile development, the BT group used Unix-based phone-traffic monitoring

systems with a web-centric architecture (Evans, 2006). Agile development is what allowed

BT to code quickly, have test runs, and fix problems quickly (Hoffman, 2008). The

traditional development cycle would have slowed down the company as it would take several
months for an external developer to obtain data which would then be used to create codes.

Scrum is an agile development method that provides management with an overview of

the project and helps the team manage itself successfully. By design, scrum is a management

tool for agile projects; intended to give management a meaningful view of the health of the

project, and the ability to make management decisions about how to proceed. But this entails

some amount of overhead. But arguably, scrum provides more realistic information about the

project than traditional tools, helps the team self-manage, and incurs less overhead than

traditional tools would incur (Freeman, 2015).

BT Agile contribution to competitive Advantage and Impacted Forces

Competitive advantage is a benefit that a firm has over competitors that allows it to

enjoy better sales, more profit, and a higher level of customer loyalty. British Telecom’s use

of agile development cycle contributed to its competitive advantage because it was able to

quickly and efficiently provide new mobile and telecommunication service to its customers

without interruption (Hoffman, 2008). One of the issues with using Agile is due to the

decentralized nature and the number of people having an impact on the deliverables as it is not

easy implementing a system where you have thousands of people in the organization (Evans,

2006). BT’s opportunities changed the mindset of not just its own employees, but also, gained

support from its customers whilst actually delivering the promise (Evans, 2006). So how did

BT approach this? The first thing BT did was to require an uncompromising shorter delivery

period across its portfolio. BT focused on real deliverables to its customers both internally

and externally. BT required that all programs had to be fully delivered and functional within
90 days after selection (Evans, 2006). BT is very focused on the delivery of the business

value of the programs. Because of the Agile approach, many programs could be running

simultaneously and therefore collaboration between teams was highly important. The

personnel that BT has at its disposal were well-qualified team. Every resource available to the

company used appropriately will aid in achieving success. However, getting the human capital

to be innovative and think outside and buy-in to the change was a challenge (Jones, 2014.)

The onus for success was left to the teams which required collaboration to be kept up until

successful delivery had been completed (Evans, 2006). BT used two outside companies to

assist and in bringing about change within the company while they also created a “team” to

assist with ad-hoc support. In some instances, Agile is part of a waterfall system and for some

developments, naturally lends itself to using a waterfall methodology, even so, BT could not

allow for Agile not to be followed across the board.

Agile Implementation on BT’s value chain and benefits

Porter’s value chain is made up of primary and support activities. Porter’s value chain

allows for the company’s activities to be broken down into pieces which then allows for costs

to be assigned. Primary activities are functions that have a direct impact on the creation of a

new product or service with a goal of adding more value to the company than they cost

(Bourgeois, 2014). Specifically, there are five primary activities. The ones that are impacted

by BT’s implementation of the agile development process are inbound logistics and

operations. Inbound logistics are functions that bring in raw materials or inputs that can be

later used by information technology to improve the process (Bourgeois, 2014). BT had to

gather information from its internal and external customers to assess their readiness for
changing their operations. BT started tracking improvements in development cycle times as

well as metrics such as “right first time” to provide its IT managers the benefits of using agile

developmental processes (Hoffman, 2008). Operations include activities that take data and

turn it into a feature of a process. All delivery programs were required to adopt a standard 90-

day delivery cycle which was kick-started by an intensive 3-day session where teams explore

problems in the business and developed solutions (Evans, 2006). Agile brings benefits to both

inbound logistics and operations by allowing the company to focus only on what's important

and not spending too much time on documentation (Evans, 2006). Agile also allows for a test-

first approach that is integrated with continuous development, which helps to break down

complex problems and avoid stalling or supplying the customer with their service (Evans,

2006).

Conclusion

In conclusion, for any well-established organization like British Telecom, the transition

from traditionally waterfall to agile delivery could be time consuming and very challenging.

The greater picture being its overall positive effect on the business prospect, mission and

vision should be focused on. From the above analysis, it is evident that agile delivery has

created a positive employees’ attitude in delivering real value to the business through IT.
 References

Bourgeois, D. T. (2014). Information Systems for Business and Beyond. Saylor.org. Licensed
under Creative Commons (CC BY) Attribution.

British Telecom. (2020). Our history - About BT | BT Plc. Retrieved from:

https://www.bt.com/about/bt/our-history

Evans, I. (2006). Agile Delivery at British Telecom. Methods and Tools, 14(2), 20-27.
Retrieved from: http://www.methodsandtools.com/PDF/mt200602.pdf

Freeman, J. (2015). Common Problems Experienced When Adopting Agile Development.

Retrieved from: https://www.seguetech.com/common-problems-experienced-when-
adopting-agile-development

Hoffman, T. (2008, March 11). BT: A case study in agile programming. Retrieved from:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2650760/application-development/bt--a-case-study-
in-agile-programming.html

Jones, S. (2014, December 05). Business Strategy BT. Retrieved from: http://study-
aids.co.uk/dissertation-blog/business-strategy-bt/