Telstra is Australia's leading telecommunications company. It started with one agile team on a pilot project in 2011 and has since grown to include 7 teams working on many projects within one Agile Release Train. The document discusses six important lessons Telstra learned along its agile journey, including that culture is the foundation, environments need management, automated testing is critical, bottlenecks must be identified, product owners must be involved, and a scaled framework is needed. It also stresses the importance of support from experienced agile practitioners.

1. THOMAS, THE AGILE
RELEASE TRAIN:
Business driving agile
development at scale
Em Campbell-Pretty
General Manager, BI CoE Strategic Delivery, Telstra

2. ABOUT TELSTRA
Telstra is Australia's leading telecommunications and information services
company, with one of the best known brands in the country In 2011/12,
total revenue was $25.4 billion and reported EBITDA was $10.2 billion.
In 2011/12, Telstra:
• Handled close to 3 billion local calls, 4.7 billion national long distance
minutes, 12 billion text messages and close to 17 billion mobile voice
minutes
• Provided 8 million fixed line and 13.8 million mobile services, including
wholesale services
Telstra also:
• Handles around 300,000 calls in our contact centres each day
• Operates and maintains more than 11,000 telephone exchanges
• Our people and contractors, on average, complete around 23,000
customer service jobs (new services and fault repairs) a day
• Send out more than 100 million bills every year.
Telstra has one of the largest shareholder bases in Australia; with 1.4
million shareholders and millions more investing through superannuation
funds.

3. OUR EDW AGILE JOURNEY
18 months later
• 7 teams,
• Many projects
• One Agile Release Train
February 2011
One agile team
on a pilot project

4. SIX LESSONS WE
LEARNT THE HARD WAY

5. XP
Scrum &
Kanban
Lean Thinking
Culture
1. CULTURE IS THE FOUNDATION

6. 2. ENVIRONMENT MANAGEMENT

7. 3. AUTOMATED TESTING

8. 4. FIND THE LONG POLES

9. 5. GET PRODUCT OWNERS TO THE TABLE

10. 6. ADOPT A SCALED FRAMEWORK

11. AND WHATEVER YOU DO MAKE SURE YOU
HAVE THE SUPPORT OF ONE OR MORE
SEASONED AGILE PRACTITIONERS!

12. Em Campbell-Pretty
@PrettyAgile
Emily.Campbell-Pretty@team.telsta.com
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