Doubling Productivity in Telco with a Dedicated Team

Success Story

Our client was going through rapid business growth, which led to many new functional requirements and the need to further expand their existing IT landscape and infrastructure. Scalefocus built a dedicated team that helped them bring down software development and QA costs, provided extended business coverage outside of their working hours, and enabled the client to deliver critical business infrastructure with a doubled increase in productivity.

The Client

One of the biggest North-American telecommunications providers focused on connecting its customers to the world through a best-in-class, seamless connectivity experience. The company has one of the most advanced hybrid fiber-coaxial networks in the region to accommodate customers’ changing technological needs. By combining its wireless footprint with the strength of its fiber network, the company provides telephone, Internet, television, and mobile services.

The Challenge

The company was looking for a way to support its strategic growth and focus on demand-driven agility while keeping optimal development costs.

The client needed to scale quickly and was eager to get started on the project as soon as possible to provide high-quality services in the Telco domain. They sought a reliable technology partner that could cover all the risks. Someone who would provide support when they need to scale up quickly and reduce the size of the team, if required, without worries about HR processes, underutilized office space, and IT assets.

A dedicated team can provide a unique feature of talented teams with a variety of skills. This was another challenge that the company wanted to solve as Telco is a very complex domain with its own rules and specifics. They wanted to gain access to people who are equally adept at the latest technologies and know the mechanics behind the telecommunication industry.  

With Scalefous’s well-developed and battle-tested engagement and governance models, the client knew that both offshore and local teams could run like a well-oiled machine that provides consistent delivery and quality of services. 

The Scalefocus engagement model enabled seamless adjustments to the team based on anticipated project needs. Both headcount and technology expertise could be changed to maintain high levels of velocity and delivery. We assembled a dedicated team with mixed seniority that effectively handled knowledge retention and carried full accountability for delivery and hitting of critical milestones. The transparent communication with monthly reports ensured that all stakeholders were on the same page regarding project progress.

The Solution

From the start, the Scalefocus dedicated team effectively integrated with the client’s Enterprise Service Integration Team. Prior to this, we conducted a thorough prescreening process to ensure that all team members were a good match in terms of technical and cultural alignment, fostering a cohesive one-team culture.

The dedicated Delivery Manager provided technical governance and workflow coordination to the Scalefocus team. He joined technical delivery in critical problem-solving and architectural design, leveraging the technology expertise of Scalefocus gained in the telco domain from other projects. 

One of the main tasks the Scalefocus team faced was developing and enhancing the middleware layer for the client’s telco operations. The software layer between the operating system and the applications controls all landlines that provide telephony and internet and TV services to the end customers. Our dedicated team developed all middleware services, implemented through Oracle Service Bus, following the strict procedures and requirements of the client. 

We established a robust process where software developers, DevOps, and QAs utilized Scalefocus’s best practices and tools to deliver services at high velocity, evolving and improving the middleware layer faster than the client’s previous traditional software development process. 

Our QA team performed all the needed testing – functional, regression testing, and low-key performance testing for every enhancement of the middleware layer. Our joint automation efforts with the local team reduced testing resources in half and brought down the regression testing hours from 240 to just one click.

As a result of our successful partnership, we extended the team with additional experts who are now working on the wireless services of the client. They needed more developers with niche technical knowledge – working with Sonic ESB, another powerful integration option requiring skill and expertise to unlock all of its flexibility.

The right mixture of IT knowledge and specific industry expertise that Scalefocus provided helped the client to quickly extend their capabilities with a well-rounded team in line with their business priorities. As the dedicated team was located in another time zone, the client benefited from extended coverage outside business hours. The offshore team tested and deployed new services without significant risks to the business continuity. As work was done around the clock, the dedicated team involvement substantially increased deployment productivity. Due to the extended support window, new end-to-end releases were now deployed six times faster than before.

The Results

With the help of technology, shared resources, and faster service delivery at a lower cost, provided by Scalefocus, our client managed to reap the full benefits of the dedicated team development model. The opportunity to get instant access to a high-quality skillset with expertise in the niche and the latest technology, the ability to quickly scale up, and the dedicated team’s accountability helped the client augment their expertise, mitigating risks and significantly increasing productivity.

2 times more project work was done due to:

• More frequent deployments
• Automation of deployment and regression testing
• Support from the offshore team during after hours
• 6 times faster end-to-end deployment
• 40 times faster environment provisioning
• 50% reduction in testing resources
• From 240 regression testing hours to 1 click with automation