How T-Mobile and Sydney Trains leaders deliver remarkable quality at scale with collaboration and DevOps principles

In the fast-paced domain of application development, delegating time to take stock of what’s working and what isn’t is necessary but not always prioritized. As the new year is an opportunity to reflect and redefine your transformation goals, we recently asked leaders what’s on their agenda for 2022 in the second season of the Transformation in 10 podcast.

In our Transformation Resolutions series, I speak with two previous Tricentis Customer Awards winners. Aaron Haehn, Director of Quality Engineering at T-Mobile, shares how his team excels at ensuring quality as a service, while Ernie Lam, Senior Manager of Digital Products & Applications at Sydney Trains, discusses how DevOps enables cutting-edge digital capabilities. Both customer-obsessed and team-driven, Aaron and Ernie openly share their know-how on driving software delivery excellence.

Here are the latest episodes in a nutshell, which can be listened to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other streaming platforms.

Episode 1 (season 2): Aaron Haehn at T-Mobile owns quality as a service across cloud delivery and beyond

When T-Mobile merged with Sprint in 2020 to elevate their user experience, Aaron Haehn’s Software and Release (SQAR) team had to rise to the challenge of scaling software delivery without compromising on market-leading quality. By owning quality as a service internally, and delivering on clear plans that satisfy all stakeholders, the SQAR team have stepped up to the mark.

How to extend this success into 2022? Aaron’s leadership plays a significant role. His style centers on collaborating with his team on a level playing field, which often involves showing them the horizon before “getting out the way.” Realizing that no one is exempt from producing quality is another principle of Aaron’s, which he says applies both company-wide and in the SQAR team. Because quality is paramount, T-Mobile’s current cloud push deserves the appropriate time to get it right, as Aaron shares in this soundbite:

 

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Episodes 2 & 3 (season 2): Ernie Lam at Sydney Trains champions DevOps for optimal safety and innovation

Ernie Lam has a track record of challenging the status quo at organizations by leveraging DevOps principles – and seeing results. In this two-part episode, Ernie shares how his team turned to Tricentis to modernize testing for DevOps, “to really instill that quality right through that lifecycle.” But the right tool is just the beginning, Ernie says. “That gives us the foundation, but it’s really about the people that come on the journey.”

Ernie often revisits the people aspect in this conversation, recognizing that his team is key in driving DevOps practices and ultimately achieving the end goal: quality software that keeps passengers and staff safe and satisfied. By extending frameworks like CI/CD and CL — the continuous learning of staff — Ernie’s team is well equipped to tackle the next best innovation. Find out how they are using augmented reality and why:

 

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Next up: Insurance customers take complex testing to the next level

In February we talk to Tricentis customers in insurance who excel at navigating testing in this regulated and multi-faceted field. Torsten Welp, (Software Quality Architect at Mobiliar,) dives into how DevOps facilitates 30 releases a day on demand, and Wolfgang Gaida and Markus Bonner, (Test Managers at Twinformatics,) share how they’ve finetuned their test automation strategy with well over a decade’s experience using Tricentis Tosca.

New episodes are released bi-weekly at minimum, so check for the latest episodes. We’d love to hear your feedback on social media — hashtag #TransformationIn10 and we might give you a shout-out on the show.