Accelerating Time-to-Market at MTN
MTN is one of Africa’s largest telecom providers, expanding into financial services across 19 countries. In 2022, the company launched a strategic initiative to modernise its payment systems and reduce time-to-market for digital services. I was brought in as an Agile Coach to support this high-impact transformation.
Organisation
MTN Nigeria
Industry
Telecom & FinTech
Tools & Frameworks
Jira, Confluence, Scrum
Challenge
MTN, a leading telecom and digital financial services provider, was undertaking a strategic overhaul of its payment platform. The organisation needed to improve Agile maturity across four delivery teams, many of which had inconsistent practices and low delivery discipline. Leadership sought to accelerate delivery timelines for new financial products without compromising system stability or compliance. At the same time, there was mounting pressure to reduce payment failure rates and ensure seamless user onboarding. Navigating these delivery goals was made more complex by a wide range of internal stakeholders with conflicting priorities. A more aligned, structured, and data-driven approach to delivery was urgently needed.
My Agile Framework in Action
🔍 Assess
I began by conducting an Agile maturity assessment across the four delivery teams, using Jira data to evaluate sprint progress, throughput, and blocker trends. This helped surface gaps in planning, estimation, and stakeholder alignment. I also gathered qualitative input from team members and product leaders to identify delivery pain points and areas for improvement.
🤝Align
With a clearer picture of the current state, I facilitated alignment sessions with product managers, engineering leads, and key stakeholders. Together, we defined success metrics, clarified team goals, and mapped dependencies. This alignment resulted in a shared delivery roadmap and a common understanding of what successful execution would look like across all teams.
🔧Adapt
I then worked closely with each team to embed Agile best practices. This included coaching on Scrum roles, ceremonies, and working agreements. I introduced consistent sprint planning, backlog refinement, and retrospectives, while standardising the use of Jira boards and reporting dashboards. I also helped teams adopt definitions of ready and done, improving the clarity of work and reducing delivery friction.
⚡Accelerate
Once foundational practices were in place, I focused on helping teams accelerate performance. I guided sprint planning using real-time delivery metrics, supported continuous improvement through retrospective action plans, and improved communication flows across squads. These changes empowered teams to deliver more confidently and helped build stakeholder trust through transparent progress reporting.
Results
Supported continuous improvement through retrospective action plans, and improved communication flows across squads. These changes empowered teams to deliver more confidently and helped build stakeholder trust through transparent progress
🕒 Time-to-Market
Reduced by 50% for new financial products
📶 Delivery Efficiency
Increased by 35% across 4 teams
📥 User Onboarding
Improved by 25% with better system flows
💳 Payment Reliability
20% reduction in failure rates
📊 Sprint Accuracy
Improved by 30% through Agile tooling and planning
Key Success Factors
Strong leadership engagement and roadmap alignment
Embedded coaching across delivery squads
Real-time performance tracking
Quick wins through tactical retrospectives and backlog prioritisation
Conclusion
At MTN, I enabled a fast, focused Agile transformation during a high-stakes payment platform overhaul. By building delivery discipline and visibility, I helped teams release faster, collaborate more effectively, and deliver tangible results aligned with business goals.
Contact
As an agile Coach and Scrum Master, I bring calm to complexity, clarity to process, and momentum to teams. Whether you're scaling delivery, starting something new, or rethinking how your team works — I'm here to help.
aileruoyin@gmail.com
Address
United Kingdom
Phone
07789632182