TalkTalk Powers Up with 9X Faster Salesforce Deployments

‍The Challenge

TalkTalk's Struggle with Time-Consuming, Manual Deployments

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Bogged down by manual, error-prone deployments, TalkTalk faced significant challenges with their DevOps processes. Handling over 200 components manually for each release, deployment times were stretched to over nine hours. This labor-intensive process often led to errors and stressful, late-night fixes.

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"It took hours to build. We’d have several attempts to get stuff into production because of the errors and the manual steps involved,” says Alex Atkinson, Salesforce Programme Manager at TalkTalk. 

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Without a robust source control system, managing component versions was a major pain point. This often led to conflicts and rollbacks, complicating the deployment process and increasing the risk of integration issues. “Source control was almost non-existent. Any time we did changes, we were scrambling to fix forward if something went wrong. Confidence in our releases was quite low,” Atkinson adds.

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TalkTalk additionally struggled to keep about 60 environments in sync, which led to frequent integration issues and delays. Constant intervention was needed to maintain alignment, all of which were manual and were neither efficient nor sustainable.

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 “Deployment night wasn’t fun. We were working late hours, dealing with manual errors, and the overall confidence in our process was just not there,” mentions Paul Calf, TalkTalk’s Salesforce Environment and Release Lead.

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The Solution

Unifying Deployments Through Automation

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TalkTalk searched the DevOps market for a robust solution and found Copado to be the best fit. The decision was driven by Copado’s comprehensive capabilities that allow seamless deployment of both Salesforce and Salesforce Industries code in a unified process.

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“It was a best-in-class, one-tool DevOps solution that helped us drive our automation and give us assurance that we were deploying the right thing and it was going to be easy,” says Alex.

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One of the significant challenges TalkTalk faced was maintaining consistency across multiple environments. Copado’s automated back promotion feature ensured all environments remained aligned, thus improving overall development efficiency. “Copado's really allowed us to back promote our lower environments, so that they're aligned. It means that the developers, as they're building, are building on the latest version of the code, and that we're building correctly from the start,” Alex explained.

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The introduction of Copado transformed TalkTalk’s deployment process, making it more efficient and reducing manual effort. This has significantly reduced the time spent on deployments and increased the team’s productivity.

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The Outcome

Enhanced Efficiency and Reduced Deployment Times 

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"One of the challenges we were able to fix with Copado is the ability to deploy both Salesforce Industries and Salesforce core code and changes in the same deployment," says Alex. "Previously, we had to deploy them separately, which was time-consuming and prone to errors. Copado's unified deployment process has significantly reduced these issues."

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Copado’s automated back promotion feature ensures that TalkTalk’s development environments remain consistently aligned with production. This alignment has allowed developers to work on the latest code versions, reducing discrepancies and improving the overall development process.

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“Copado has allowed us to have our environments aligned from start to finish, so when coding development starts, we know we're building it against the latest version of our code,” Alex explained. “This ensures that we're building correctly, from the start.”

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By automating key processes, Copado has saved TalkTalk significant time. The deployment times have been drastically reduced, allowing the team to focus on more strategic tasks.

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“Copado has allowed us to reduce the amount of manual steps we need for a deployment, it's helped us to automate as many steps as possible,” says Alex. “This has enabled us to deliver business value more efficiently and effectively.”

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The implementation of Copado has also positively impacted team morale. The development and DevOps teams now have more confidence in their deployments and can focus on innovation rather than troubleshooting.

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The Future

TalkTalk's Vision for Full Automation

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TalkTalk aims to fully automate their deployment and testing processes, ensuring higher efficiency and reliability in their operations.  Expanding their fiber network is a key priority for TalkTalk, with the goal to deliver high-speed internet to more customers and improve overall service quality.

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The team looks to utilize Copado at its foundation, to drive continuous improvement and innovation across their operations.TalkTalk plans to integrate AI into their processes and extend Copado’s usage across more applications and business units.

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“We’re focused on what’s next within the DevOps space and leveraging it to enhance our testing capabilities,” Alex explains. “We want to automate as much as possible.”

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