Case Study - How TalkTalk align technology delivery KPIs with business priorities

The challenge

TalkTalk is one of the UK’s largest providers of consumer and business broadband with over 4.2 million customers.

It relies on a large software delivery team of several hundred distributed software engineers to deliver a wide range of projects which are strategically critical for the business.

Plandek was adopted with the joint sponsorship of the CTO, and CEO to track and drive the effectiveness of the delivery team – and to help the CEO and C-Suite stakeholders better understand the effectiveness of the technology team on which they rely so heavily.

The scope

Phil Haslam the TalkTalk CTO worked with the Plandek CS team to define and track a set of ‘North Star’ metrics that define ‘what good looks like’ for TalkTalk technology delivery.

These metrics underpin a data-led culture (underpinned by Plandek) of continuous improvement sponsored by Phil and led by managers and Team Leads across the TalkTalk delivery organisation.

As Phil comments “The implementation of Plandek gave us the opportunity to revisit our Agile DevOps objectives and the metrics most suitable to measure success over time – the DORA metrics were a useful start point, but we went further.”

The Plandek Xcelerate framework avoids the top-down imposition of metrics on Agile teams as experience shows that data-driven software delivery is only effective when everyone shares the same goals and metrics – from individual engineers to the CEO.

The outcome

Plandek is helping TalkTalk accelerate value creation and build trust between delivery team and internal stakeholders.

It opens up ‘the black box’ of technology delivery for C-Suite stakeholders so, they receive understandable KPI’s that provide a balanced scorecard of delivery effectiveness, thereby greatly improving communication and trust.
It ensures that the delivery capability is aligned around the key strategic (value creating) priorities of the business.
It enables the technology team to clearly track and manage the allocation of resource between ‘the things that really matter’ like R&D (development of new road-map features), relative to less productive effort such as technical debt and unplanned work.
And crucially, it is designed to be ‘loved by teams and relied on by managers’ by providing a set of metrics that is shared and understood from scrum teams upwards, so that everyone within tech delivery is focused on driving improvement over time.

CASE STUDIES

Discover how world-class Agile teams use Plandek insights

Why Skyscanner chose Plandek over similar SEI tools and how they achieved ‘ground up’ adoption

Explore Skyscanner's approach to achieving a 'ground up' adoption from engineering teams to use

How this fintech became Plandek’s highest performer across key engineering benchmarks

Discover how a Fintech Bank uses Plandek to reduce lead times and drive improvements

Trainline improves engineering productivity and quality with Plandek insights

Find out more about Trainline has improved engineering productivity and quality with Plandek SEI

Sage expands Plandek rollout technology-wide following successful adoption by teams

Find out more about Sage and how they made the shift to a more

How Tysers use Plandek to strengthen relationships with delivery partners

Discover how Tysers Insurance utilised Plandek's insights and analytics to improve relationships with third-party

How portcos improve R&D ROI with data-led technology delivery

Find out how Hg private equity firm uses Plandek’s software delivery analytics platform to

Unlock the power of data with Plandek's intelligent insights

Choose the Plandek plan that suits your organization size and delivery objectives. To compare, see Pricing & Plans →

Plandek SmartDelivery: start your free 30-day trial now

Get Plandek SmartDelivery for real-time insights to deliver sprints & epics faster & more predictably. Powered by AI to help mitigate risks and blockers.

No payment details required. From $59 per month after free trial.

Plandek Enterprise: the complete engineering intelligence platform

Enterprise-level intelligent analytics to accelerate your roadmap delivery, improve delivery capability & communicate better with stakeholders.

Free technical POC available to get started with no upfront costs.

Your free practical guide to Software Engineering Intelligence platforms. Download now >