This needs to be tackled in a way that can be understood by a non-technical layperson and also prioritised in a way that doesn't have the business trying to tackle multiple things at once, even when the amount of technical debt may suggest that needs to happen. Once you are confident you have identified what areas need to be improved and that you have a solution that ensures you are building the right thing it’s essential to get key stakeholder buy-in. Building a more modern version of the same thing may well address the technical debt by making your systems more updatable but does it still offer the same inefficiencies and provide a service that is equally as brittle? Focus efforts on building the right thing, not a more modern version of the same thing. Avoiding these steps would risk simply moving to what you think you need rather than what you actually need. However, doing a proper deep dive into the business process and then re-evaluating the needs should be the first step. Once you have that overall picture of the business experience it’s easy to think that you just jump in and tackle those areas. Looking into the detail behind this issue showed that they hadn't invested in their flight scheduling tools to ensure that they remained fit for purpose. In Southwest Airlines' case, they saw things falling apart around flight schedules. Looking at things at an experience level allows you to drill into the detail behind them. This is an important step because it will allow you to identify the problems, which will help you prioritise where to start. What does the landscape look like?Īt this stage, businesses need to map out their overall business experience, both from an internal and customer perspective. The difficulty comes in understanding the problems. These businesses know they have a lot of technical debt and they know they need to change. Whilst I use Southwest Airlines as an example, there are many corporations of different sizes out there that face the same challenges in different sectors. This latest problem is likely to have cost them $825 million. This is not a one off though, Southwest Airlines have been experiencing these issues for the last 20 months and it's all to do with outdated processes and outdated IT. A hugely complex task, a delicate house of cards that could quickly tumble when the company encountered a problem. Staff resorted to having to put together flight schedules manually. Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson explained that the company’s outdated scheduling software quickly became the main culprit of the cancellations once the storm cleared, according to a transcript of the call obtained by CNN from an aviation source. Southwest’s schedule includes shorter flights with tighter turnaround times, which are causing some of the problems. Many airlines still lack sufficient staff to recover when events like bad weather cause delays or flight crews max out the hours they’re allowed to work under federal safety regulations.īut Southwest also hurt itself with an aggressive schedule and by underinvesting in its operations. Although Southwest says it was fully staffed for the holiday weekend, illness makes adjusting to increased system stress difficult. More bad luck: The storm hit just as the so-called tripledemic surged across America, leaving people and their families sick with Covid, the flu and the respiratory syncytial virus. The storm hit Chicago and Denver hard, where Southwest has two of its biggest hubs – Chicago Midway airport and Denver International airport. Let's start by looking at the contributing factors that caused this perfect storm. Its focus on efficiency and customer service has seen it achieve a large amount of success over the past few decades, but that was threatened in December 2022 when a perfect storm of events caused them to cancel more than 2,500 flights and left thousands of passengers stranded in terminal lounges across the country. They are the largest domestic airline operating within the United States, with most of its revenue coming from domestic travel. However, this is not as uncommon as you might expect - in fact, I'd bet that there are many organisations out there facing a similar problem to Southwest Airlines - for all of its success in the airline industry, Southwest has continuously been criticised and derided for having outdated operations and technology. We hear a lot about things like “the customer experience” or “the user experience” and how important it is for businesses to invest in this area but it's rare that we see an entire corporation's operations, systems and technical infrastructure so severely affected by a lack of investment.
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