But why do so many of our brilliant ideas to bring innovative projects to life don’t come to fruition? I ask myself the same question, analysing why some projects have moved so quickly at the beginning and then fallen by the wayside after only a few months of planning and development. Or even worse, you have a leadership change, and the goal post changes entirely.
Following a thorough review of the industry, market research and years of experience leading some of the most significant project portfolios for global airlines (with a whirlwind of challenges), we can break it down into the following seven challenges.
Aligning on a Scope Document
Due to the size, regulatory compliance and stakeholder management of large-scale airline projects, defining and aligning the project scope becomes increasingly complex. Often, leaders know where they want to get to and the high-level objectives, but they need help comprehending the intricate details, project requirements, deliverables and metrics that enable us to bring the project to life.
A 2023 study published by PWC in their report “The Journey to Project Management Office Maturity in the Middle East” highlighted that having a clear scope is attributed to 32% of the success of a project. Moreover, PMI analysed data from nearly 3,500 project professionals who responded to the Annual PMI Global Survey on Project Management in 2023, highlighting a low level of scope creep as the second most crucial factor that impacts project success.
Remember, aviation leaders are logical and are accountable for delays and increases in budget. If you’ve developed a well-articulated scope document, agreed on the project roadmap, and if additional requirements impact time and budget, escalate them through structured change requests. This way, the leadership is accountable for the delay and can make well-informed decisions that align with the project scope.
Benefits Realisation
Calculating the cost vs benefit is one thing, but ensuring the benefits’ realisation is valuable financially to the business, drives efficiency in the operation, elevates customer satisfaction, improves employee satisfaction and is in the best interest of the leadership is another thing. Not to mention, if there aren’t financial gains in terms of cost savings or revenue generation in the short term, it becomes increasingly more challenging to attain finance leadership approvals – especially in aviation with historically volatile levels of profitability.
The 2023 Annual PMI Global Survey on Project Management highlighted benefits realisation management (BRM) maturity as the most critical driver of the project’s success. This is your ability to identify the benefits from the outset and align them with formal strategy in the business case; benefits are realised in stages as project implementation progresses and are sustainable well after the project is complete.
Clearly articulating the business case that stands the test of time can be the key to the project’s success, attaining additional investment throughout the project lifecycle and continued endorsement of the strategic direction amid leadership changes. Balancing the operations, the business, the customer, the employee, and the leadership can be tricky, but approaching the realisation of benefits through this lens will help steer the project’s success. In some cases, there will be no immediate financial gain, but quantifying and using customer lifetime value as a metric will drive long-term revenue, as customers with high emotional engagement spend up to two times more on brands they like.
Technology Innovation vs Legacy Systems
The airline industry is underpinned by technology, and, in most cases, legacy systems are constantly evolving to keep up with changing market demands. Introducing new systems, software, and technologies to enhance operations can be complex and time-consuming. Leadership and project managers must balance the need for innovation with disruptions and system integration challenges that may arise, considering the realisation of benefits for the customer, the operation, and the business.
After years of investment, time and resources spent building and maintaining legacy systems, most airlines are at a critical turning point – whether to develop and transform existing systems, buy completely new systems or maintain both until such a time that they can transition seamlessly, without data loss or risk of operational delays. But as airlines are typically years behind other industries in technology innovation, the transition often takes years of change resistance barriers that impact every business area.
In stages, most legacy systems at airlines are getting replaced because new solutions are more intuitive, offer customer experience innovations, modernise ancillary sales, and are quicker, more reliable, and more secure. Still, until executives see a significant flaw or issue with the existing system – it’s much harder to convince them that a major digital transformation is required. That’s where having a well-defined strategy, a robust business case, and a shared future state across multiple business areas helps drive the endorsement – backed by the transformation’s overall potential, impact and efforts. Moreover, new architectural approaches allow airlines to deploy different product increments separately with no need to redeploy the whole system – improving the maintainability and availability of the existing systems throughout the development process.
Transitioning Enterprise Projects to the Airline Operations
Over the years, lack of alignment between the strategy, project management, product development, safety, IT, digital, data privacy, and airline operations, whether it was the ground services, lounge operations, contact centre or inflight services teams, was a significant factor that impacted the success of any project. From cabin digitalisation projects that faced IT connectivity challenges during the soft launch to new lounge development projects that had handover delays due to safety compliance reviews by government authorities and customer applications that faced data privacy rejections on the day of the planned launch, each faced challenges through the transition stages of delivery.
A case study on Beijing Daxing International Airport in 2023 by Xinyue Zhang, Juliano Denicol, Paul W. Chan, and Yun Le on managing the transition from projects to operations of the largest transportation hub in China had several strategic takeaways on successfully managing the project transition to operations. The study highlighted that the delivery of large inter-organisational projects shows that many large-scale projects fail to meet the basic operational and usage expectations after handover. And when hardware, software, and people must come together as a functioning operating system, the challenge is even more significant. However, working alongside operations organisations throughout every project delivery stage enables the transition to be designed to achieve continuity between projects and operations – emphasising information exchange, coordination and keeping the customer at the centre of development.
From safety and security standards to environmental compliance to strict data privacy requirements, airlines must consistently navigate a myriad of regulatory requirements in a highly complex operational arena through every project delivery stage. Project managers must engage operational teams through a well-defined communication matrix that mitigates all risks before the transition into the operation. This is further highlighted in the Annual PMI Global Survey on Project Management in 2023 as the fourth most important driver to project success: the frequent use of standardised stakeholder engagement practices.
Leadership Commitment and Stability
In many airlines, leadership shuffles and new management often mean project management teams must adapt to new enterprise strategies, transition workstreams and sometimes stop transformational programmes entirely in line with a lack of alignment with the project sponsor or wanting to show immediate reductions in cost. Even after business cases have been approved, budgets have been cascaded, and we’ve moved ahead with project delivery, a lack of support from the sponsor can mean the project’s rise or fall.
Possessing the skills to navigate these turbulent times means you can walk a fine line between convincing the new sponsor that the project is valuable to the business, the customer, the operation, and, in some cases, more importantly, to their success. Although the sponsor possesses a broader range of authority over the project’s success, they can still be managed by strategically showing benefits realisation at every delivery stage and carefully tailoring communications that keep the leader engaged.
If, like me, you’ve had leadership that has worked against the success of your project, here are four tips carefully curated by Bucero, A. & Englund, R. L. (2007) in their paper “Building executive support–keys to project success” that I’ve adjusted based on my own experiences that still holds true today:
- Align. Know your executives, their vision for the organisation and what they truly stand for.
- Build. Define what sponsorship means in your organisation and tailor it to their way of working.
- Demonstrate. Emphasise the value of them leading the projects, the realisation of benefits at every project stage, and the advantages that continue to come to fruition after implementation.
- Ownership Commitment. Leaders need to be proud of the project and believe in the vision.
Stakeholder Engagement
If attaining the sponsor’s buy-in is challenging, ensuring all stakeholders from across the business are constantly engaged throughout the project lifecycle is even more difficult. Stakeholder departments are typically overloaded with work and are generally allocated by their senior management to participate in large projects (they do not volunteer themselves). In addition, they have a long list of higher-priority projects for which they are accountable. These factors make it difficult for them to be continually engaged and affect the level of power and interest each stakeholder has in influencing the project. We must tailor our approach based on each stakeholder we work with.
Work by Vogwell, D. (2003) reviews project delivery within a ‘political’ environment, comprised of stakeholders with a particular stake or interest in the project’s outcome. Through applying the stakeholder analysis matrix, project managers can group stakeholders to enable us to understand their influence and dedicate time to determining what is important to them. In most cases, strategic project managers can strike the right balance between involving some stakeholders and isolating others to achieve project delivery performance in line with their predefined metrics and maximise the benefit for the client and their stakeholders. Moreover, frequently using standardised stakeholder engagement practices was the fourth most important factor contributing to a project’s success in the PMI Annual Global Survey 2023.
Project Management Maturity and Persistence
Due to the intricate and complex nature of aviation projects, project management maturity and persistence are critical for the success of any large-scale project. In the latest 2023 Annual PMI Global Survey on Project Management, project management maturity came in as the seventh most important factor contributing to the success of any project. In most organisations, it’s the extent to which the PMO uses a formal methodology, strict alignment of programmes with organisational strategy, ensures benefits realisation at every stage of delivery and focuses on continuous improvement. The PWC 2023 study highlighted that having capable team members also contributed to 25% of the success of a project.
Over the years and across more than 100+ enterprise-level projects that I’ve been a part of, managing numerous stakeholders, including government agencies, airport authorities, suppliers, and subcontractors – project management maturity and persistence come in as the most critical factors contributing to the success of a project. Without adapting to evolving circumstances, having a structured approach to delivery and driving the project forward amidst obstacles, lack of support and, sometimes, lack of interest by leadership, many of the projects I had been a part of would not have come to life. A quote by Nelson Mandela that I always connect with sums this up: “It always seems impossible until it is done.” for the project manager, perseverance is crucial for the success of any project.
By addressing these seven most significant challenges, airline project managers and leaders alike are well-equipped to navigate the turbulence and deliver strong benefits realisation, enabling any airline to soar to new heights by delivering major enterprise projects and transformation programmes.
References :
Bucero, A. & Englund, R. L. (2007). Building executive support—keys to project success. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2007—EMEA, Budapest, Hungary. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
PMI Pulse of the Profession® 2023| 14th Edition
PWC The Journey to PMO Maturity in the Middle East https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/publications/the-journey-to-pmo-maturity-in-the-middle-east.html
Vogwell, D. (2003). Stakeholder management. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2003—EMEA, The Hague, South Holland, The Netherlands. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Zhang, Xinyue & Denicol, Juliano & Chan, Paul & Le, Yun. (2023). Designing the transition to operations in large inter-organisational projects: Strategy, structure, process, and people. Journal of Operations Management. 70. 1-30. 10.1002/joom.1275.
