BT Innovate & Design increases agility and reduces development costs with improved collaboration

Customer challenge

BT Innovate & Design is responsible for designing, building and implementing the IT platforms, networks, products and services that the BT Group relies upon. The organisation's agile development teams are distributed throughout the UK, US, India, China and South Korea. BT recognised that by improving collaboration between these teams, it would be able to improve the quality of its development activities.

Computacenter solution

BT partnered with Computacenter to develop and install a solution based on SMART interactive whiteboards and Internet Protocol (IP) audio-conferencing facilities. More than 100 collaboration workstations have been implemented at BT Innovate & Design offices worldwide and its strategic partners, enabling developers to collaborate in real-time with remote colleagues. Computacenter is also responsible for maintaining and supporting the new technologies.

Results

By enhancing collaboration throughout the development lifecycle, BT has been able to improve application quality and speed to market. This in turn helps to improve customer service, reduce development costs and enhance the delivery of new services to both BT staff and customers. The project, which paid for itself within a year, has also helped BT Innovate & Design contribute to the company's environmental goals by reducing the need for travel and improving productivity.

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Customer profile

Providing a platform for global communication services
BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions and services. Its principle activities include networked IT services, local, national and international telecommunications services, which include higher-value broadband and Internet products and services. The company operates in more than 170 countries and has approximately 110,000 employees.

BT Innovate & Design is the group's IT design and delivery business. The organisation has around 6,500 members of staff and five key development centres as well as a number of satellite sites. BT Innovate & Design is responsible for designing, building and implementing processes, systems, platforms, networks and technologies that the BT Group and its customers rely upon.

Business challenge

Increasing business agility
BT Innovate & Design has three basic goals: to enhance the end-to-end customer experience, improve the speed to market for the new 21C network and applications and reduce development costs through the introduction of Software Development Toolkits (SDKs).

To support these goals, the organisation established a Global Development Centre at Adastral Park near Ipswich in May 2008. This state-of-the-art environment supports more than 1,000 BT employees using agile development processes and technologies. These staff work closely with other agile BT development teams and out-sourced partners based in similar facilities across the globe. BT recognised that by improving collaboration between these teams, it could improve efficiency and the quality of its applications.

Bola Oshisanwo, Director of the Global Development Centre Programme for BT Innovate & Design, explains: "Although some of our teams are focused on platform-centric development, we also have end-to-end teams that incorporate solution architects, developers, testers and end users. These teams are often geographically dispersed so need to be able to communicate and share documents remotely. We were using email and Microsoft SharePoint for these activities, but we wanted to provide our developers with collaboration technologies to enable more immediate and insightful interaction."

Although BT knew what it wanted to achieve, it lacked a comprehensive knowledge of the relevant technologies on the market. "We needed a partner that not only had global reach, but also had the experience and knowledge to help us identify the most appropriate technologies to meet our requirements," comments Bola.

Computacenter solution

Collaborative working for increased efficiency
To achieve these goals, BT opted to partner with Computacenter's audio-visual specialists. Following lengthy discussions to scope BT's requirements, the Computacenter team introduced the customer to a number of audio-visual technologies. "Computacenter has excellent knowledge of the market and advised which solutions best matched our needs," comments Bola. "The team also highlighted that building strategic alliances direct with some vendors could prove more cost-effective."

Following these discussions, Computacenter helped the customer to design and implement an audio-visual solution based on SMARTboard interactive whiteboards and Internet Protocol (IP) video-conferencing facilities, including IP cameras, LCD monitors and high-quality recording capabilities. Careful planning by the Computacenter team helped to ensure that the installation process went smoothly with minimal disruption to BT's staff.

Rather than restricting these facilities to meeting rooms, Computacenter and BT installed the equipment within the open plan office space. As Bola explains: "The positioning of the technology was key to ensuring optimal usage. We have equipped the Global Development Centre with varying densities of collaboration workstations according to developers' needs. For our end-to-end teams, this has meant providing a workstation for every 12 members of staff."

The interactive whiteboards and video-conferencing systems are used on a daily basis by BT's developers to communicate with their colleagues in several locations. Staff no longer have to bring laptops or notebooks to meetings, as notes can be taken and shared via the electronic whiteboards. This helps to ensure a common understanding and consensus over meeting outcomes.

The technology also enables BT to explore the requirements of its internal customers in greater detail, improving the quality of its development activities. As well as managing the design, procurement and installation of these audio-visual hubs, Computacenter is also responsible for maintaining them on a day-to-day basis. This will help BT to minimise downtime and maximise its investment in the technology.

Results

Reduced development costs and higher-quality applications
Following the success of the pilot project at Adastral Park, Computacenter has helped BT to implement 100 collaboration workstations at its development centres across the globe, including the US, Europe, India, China and South Korea as well as UK sites.

"Computacenter's experience has proved crucial to the success of the project, which was delivered on time and on budget," comments Bola. The collaboration workstations have supported a cultural change at BT that has enabled it to significantly improve efficiency. For example, five-day workshops have been condensed to just two days and some approval processes have been reduced from two weeks to a matter of days.

Improving collaborative working through audio-visual technologies has also helped BT Innovate & Design:

Improve customer engagement: Customers are invited to work with developers in the Global Development Centres to define new products and address the application and process interface issues that impact the integration of the customers' systems with BT's systems.

Improve the quality of its software: Increased collaboration has resulted in better requirements analysis and fewer coding errors.

Increase business agility: Applications, products and services can be delivered more quickly and to a higher quality, which means BT users and customers have faster access to new services and technologies.

Reduce costs: A more efficient development cycle also helps to reduce costs – a key aim of BT Group's 21st Century Network initiative, which is also designed to support the delivery of new customer services.

Minimise travel: Video-conferencing not only decreases costs and maximises staff productivity, but also helps BT Innovate & Design to minimise its environmental impact in line with the group's objectives.

Enhance the working environment: The audio-visual technologies have increased collaboration and staff satisfaction, which in turn leads to greater productivity.

These factors help BT Innovate & Design to provide lower costs and better quality application development to the wider business, which in turn enables BT Group to deliver better-quality services and achieve its goal of being number one for customer service. "The collaboration technologies paid for themselves within the first year," comments Bola. "By reducing costs and enhancing efficiency, we have been able to align with our strategic goals and better support the wider business and its customers."