Published on the 22/10/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Patrick Eltridge, chief information officer of Telstra wants to run the “best IT shop in Asia Pacific” – not to satisfy his vanity, but because it’s a “strategic necessity”…
Speaking at an Australian Computer Society Foundation event in Sydney last week, Telstra CIO Patrick Eltridge outlined the progress that the national telecommunications carrier has made with a transformation of its information technology culture. Eltridge said it had been necessary to reform the culture of the organisation and embrace Agile techniques in order to cope with the rapid pace of change in the sector.
He said that the 5-10 percent iterative productivity gains that were available under the old waterfall method of systems development were not enough to deliver the “quantum leaps that Telstra needs”. He acknowledged that at present both Agile and waterfall methods were used in Telstra, and declined to put a target date on the completion of the migration to an entirely Agile approach, but he said that the programmes of work for Agile were growing.
Last year a $60 million IT programme involving legacy integration was completed using an Agile-only approach. The organisation currently has 100 people working in Agile teams.
At the same time the IT shop has engineered a different relationship with Telstra’s business users when it comes to defining future application requirements. Instead of scoping a fully functioned application, Eltridge said that business users were encouraged to define “minimum viable product (MVP) constructs”.
The IT shop had committed to delivering these MVPs “blindingly fast” he said, which then gave the business time to test and refine its requirements.
This he said had also required a fresh approach from Telstra finance which had been working to develop what he termed “Agile-friendly finance” and a capital release programme that allowed iterative investment and the opportunity for unsuccessful projects to be identified quickly and turned off with just one week’s notice.
“My IT has got to be able to work with and like a start-up. It’s a strategic necessity,” said Eltridge, adding that Telstra also had to focus on its employment brand in order to attract the “sort of talent that start-ups attract.”
Telstra’s adventures in the start-up space now also extend to investment. The company this week announced muru-D, its technology incubator, which will provide investment of up to $40,000 for ten local start-ups.
