Algar Telecom, part of Grupo Algar, has been a pioneer in Brazil's information and communications technology market for nearly 70 years. From its base in Uberlândia, it runs a 122,000 km fiber network serving more than 372 cities across 16 states and the Federal District. It offers fiber internet, mobile, cloud, and security services to business and consumer customers.
The challenge: A traditional team inside an agile business unit
Algar Telecom moved its Integration department, a 50-person team handling IT deployment, governance, and architecture, into a business unit that already worked in agile ways. The business unit delivers connectivity, cloud, and security products to customers, and the Integration team had to deliver alongside it.
The two sides worked very differently. The Integration team managed work in long Excel spreadsheets, and communication was spread across email, calls, and meetings, with no central source of truth. This caused four problems:
- Weak project management: no consistent way to plan and track projects.
- No delivery metrics: planning was difficult, and delivery capacity was unclear.
- No standard workflows: every team worked differently.
- Little visibility: for the team, and for customers, who couldn't follow their own projects.
Agile coaches Frederico Oliveira and Ednaldo Azevedo were appointed to lead the transformation. The goal was to modernize how the team managed work and, through that, improve the customer experience.
What changed: Adopting a digital mindset through Lean/Agile ways of working
Kanban with a monthly cadence
The coaches looked for an approach that fit unpredictable work. At the Agile Brazil conference in November 2022, they chose the Kanban method for its focus on continuous flow. Project managers still had monthly release deadlines, so they added a monthly cadence:
- Planning: each month's plan builds on what was delivered the month before.
- Reviews: customers see progress and confirm they're getting the value they pay for.
- Retrospectives: teams review the past month and agree on improvements.
Boards built together with the teams
At the same conference, the coaches tested Businessmap against their existing tools and found it fit their department's structure better. Each team co-designed its own board, mapping every delivery step from kickoff to completion. Each board holds a project workflow and a workflow where large initiatives are broken down into smaller work items. Connected boards show blockers and dependencies across the hierarchy.
Visualizing project flow on a digital board in Businessmap
Dashboards replaced manual reports
Workflow performance dashboards now track delivery metrics in one place. Project managers stopped spending hours compiling manual reports and use that time to gather and understand customer requirements. With data in one place, management makes decisions with more confidence.
Businessmap's customizable dashboard to monitor workflow performance
Customers see their own projects
The team shares boards with customers and generates custom reports for them in Businessmap, so the entire journey from concept to delivery is digital. Customers can follow progress and raise concerns early, and the team can act on them in time. As one customer wrote after a review:
"The Businessmap tool is a great project vision platform, easy to use, great project vision and communication."
The impact: Faster problem-solving and closer customer relationships
The Integration department achieved:
- Live visibility for customers. Shared boards, custom reports, and monthly reviews.
- Hours of reporting time freed and spent on understanding customer needs.
- Faster problem-solving. In March 2023 alone, monthly retrospectives found 12 root causes and cleared 20% of urgent process blockers.
- One standard way of working that fits the agile business unit.
- Flexible planning. The team can adapt to customer needs instead of being locked into the first plan.
Next steps
Next, Algar Telecom plans to bring the rest of the business unit, including project managers, developers, analysts, and sales, onto Businessmap as its single source of truth for project portfolio management. It is also testing OKRs in the platform to connect goals with daily work.
