Where BT starts when it wants to change how it builds

BT traces its lineage back to the Electric Telegraph Company, the world's first public telegraph provider, founded in 1846. Nearly 180 years later, the company now delivers communication services across more than 180 countries. But longevity in telecom doesn't guarantee relevance. With consumers choosing products on experience as much as performance, BT has had to scrutinize its own internal workflows to keep delivering competitive digital products.

The first shift was structural: reorganizing product, engineering, and design teams into a product squad model. Under this arrangement, designers no longer work only alongside other designers. Squads are smaller and own end-to-end delivery, bringing together product owners, engineers, content designers, and others on a single team.

The new structure encouraged collaboration, but it also exposed inefficient tooling. The team juggled docs, Sketch, InVision, Jira, and other platforms. Head of Design Operations Matt Gottschalk described the friction: content and design files had to be moved between tools constantly, and feedback came through multiple streams. The overhead ate into time better spent on the design work itself.

Starting small with a pilot squad

BT's design operations team began evaluating alternatives with an eye toward streamlining. They piloted Figma with a single product squad over two months. The squad reported quicker real-time collaboration, simpler hand-offs, and the ability to design, prototype, and present from one location. Instead of shuttling files between tools, the work stayed in a single space.

Non-designers felt the benefit too. Product owners and engineers gained earlier visibility into design work, allowing them to contribute input before costly rework. "Figma removed silos within our product squads," Gottschalk said, noting that the rest of the squad became part of the design process rather than waiting for hand-offs.

The pilot's success led to organization-wide rollout. Today, more than 180 designers alongside product owners, content designers, and engineers use Figma to work together. The visibility extends beyond product teams: executive stakeholders can open a link and view or comment on in-progress work from any device. That transparency, according to Gottschalk, lets squads move faster and with more confidence in their decisions.

Beyond collaboration: cost, consistency, and continuity

Collaboration was the immediate win, but BT reports several other benefits from the migration:

  • 50% cost reduction: Figma replaced Sketch and InVision, letting BT consolidate design tools and halve associated costs.
  • Design at the table: With stakeholders able to see design work as it happens, design has become a more prominent factor in business decisions and investment planning.
  • Path to a design system: BT lacks a centralized design system across its brand and business units so far. Figma provides the environment needed to build one and create more cohesive products efficiently.
  • Remote resilience: When COVID-19 forced employees to work from home, Figma became a shared space for teams to exchange ideas and solve problems.

Digital Design Director Conor Ward credits the timing of the migration for the company's ability to maintain momentum through the disruption. "Being able to design and visually communicate together on the web has become a necessity to maintain innovation," he said.

The workflow has changed how BT communicates internally. Instead of polishing presentations to report on design work, Ward's team conducts live "experience walkthroughs" with the CEO inside real Figma files. That practice, he said, "has revolutionised our team's efficiency and transparency." In the daily rhythm of the organization, employees across departments now sign into Figma to create, comment, and iterate in the same place. Ward summarized the outcome simply: "The speed of creativity and the ability to have a shared understanding has made us all full believers in Figma."