How T-Mobile transformed its continuous delivery platform using GitLab

If you’ve ever used a cell phone, then you’ve likely heard of T-Mobile, the global wireless network provider that serves over 86 million customers annually with streaming services, personal banking, and roadside assistance. After its recent merger with Sprint, T-Mobile is now the United States’ second-largest wireless carrier and the only one providing 5G nationwide.

T-Mobile has approximately 5,000 developers who are constantly working towards improving software engineering techniques for customer satisfaction. Chris Hill, senior manager, software development, recently presented a talk called "Chasing Unicorns" at T-Mobile, where he discussed how to increase the throughput paradigm for high-performing teams with its newly formed continuous delivery platform.

Challenges with enterprise delivery

Developer platforms are systems used in between the steps of phase and production. Nearly every change that goes through the software development lifecycle will touch one or more of these systems on the path to production. How well a developer platform works can either empower or impede development.

When Chris joined T-Mobile, every team was leveraging enterprise delivery tools differently with their own specific uses and set of standards. The siloed use of tools created data integrity challenges, operational cost increases, and maturity variabilities. Because there was no shared ecosystem, it became extremely difficult to support all the permutations of variability and developers were struggling with the constant state of flux.

Other developer platform challenges at T-Mobile included:

Multiple pipeline strategies Inconsistent development processes Limited cross-company developer standards Multiple SDLC tools and platforms Fragmented integration efforts

“Ultimately, what comes with loss in speed and efficiencies is a very poor developer experience,” Chris said. “Happier developers build quality software. But what are the incremental improvements we can do to make happier developers?”

Implementing a continuous delivery platform

T-Mobile set out to create an improved internal developer platform called continuous delivery platform (CDP). The goal is to empower T-Mobile developers to build better software faster, safer, and healthier with a clear, cohesive mindset and a platform that provides a single source of truth.

CDP includes eight principles, all of which were created to solve the challenges that developers were previously dealing with. These fundamental ideas are in place to create a collective mentality for the entire organization.

T-Mobile has also implemented tactical methods to ensure that the principles are a part of the daily work. The working methods are real-life strategies that are in place to organize and substantiate software development lifecycles.

Accelerate DevOps throughput

To help developers improve delivery time and software efficiency in CDP, T-Mobile shifted its mindset to DevOps. Context switching between tools took a toll on T-Mobile’s roadmap and teams struggled with their existing toolchain to make DevOps a priority. According to Chris, moving from tool to tool in order to create an overall throughput created a lack of efficiency within software architecture that impacted the overall organization over time.

“One of the underpinnings of the major change in our evolution, along with all the principles, is moving to GitLab. What GitLab figured out early on is the combination of all of the systems without any context switch to the developers,” Chris said. Throughput is now developers’ number one priority because there is no context switching between SCM, CI/CD, or security tools.

T-Mobile adopted GitLab.com, GitLab’s SaaS model for CDP. “We asked ourselves the question ‘Could T-Mobile run GitLab better than GitLab runs GitLab?’ No one answered ‘yes’ to that question,” Chris said. By leveraging the SaaS model, T-Mobile lets GitLab focus on the infrastructure challenges, while teams focus on developing and deploying at an accelerated rate.

T-Mobile is in the process of replacing their existing legacy tools, including BitBucket and Jenkins, with GitLab for a single, intuitive user experience for SCM, CI/CD, issue tracking, and project management. “What the partnership feels like is more of T-Mobile working in tandem with GitLab to make a better product and leverage GitLab's product lifecycle to make higher throughput for T-Mobile in the longer term,” Chris says.

Learn how T-Mobile is transforming its business with GitLab on its DevOps journey.

Read more about GitLab and CI/CD:

How GitLab became the cornerstone of digital enablement for Sopra Steria

Understand GitLab continuous integration and delivery

How MGA builds 5 times faster with GitLab

Cover image by Brett Jordan on Unsplash



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