DCL 600T Harvard Leadership Industry & Company Challenges Issues & Practices Paper & PPT

Richard’s sources:
https://files.devnetwork.cloud/DeveloperWeek/presentations/2020/Shahir-Daya.pdf
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2017/06/ibm-cloud-american-airlines/
https://sites.psu.edu/mariasoyosocapuder/lesson-10-ibm-cloud-case-study-entry-blog/ (note this
will not be used in the paper, but use as a basis)
Leslie’s sources:
How American Airlines is Transforming Its Culture by Transforming Delivery – Barry O’Reilly
(barryoreilly.com)

How American Airlines is Transforming Its Culture by Transforming Delivery

https://www.ciodive.com/news/big-innovation-impactful-changes-inside-american-airlinesemerging-tech/546112/
https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines/american-airlines-enhances-the-customer-experiencethrough-new-technologies.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/american-airlines-looks-to-the-ibm-cloud-to-end-travel-hell2017-6
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/american-airlines-embarks-on-global-cloudtransformation-with-ibm-300480254.html
https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud/2018/04/19/ibm-american-airlines-case-study/

American Airlines to partner with IBM for Cloud migration

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Principles of Teamwork within an Organization (DRAFT)
Since 2016, American Airlines (AA) has been strategically investing in its technology
footprint after signing a strategic cloud partnership with IBM. AA and IBM have a history dating
back to the 1950’s when IBM developed the industry’s first electronic reservation and ticketing
system. So, it seemed plausible that AA would continue it relationship by leveraging IBM’s cloud
computing benefits. But with these advancements, leadership recognized that it became
important that the teams involved would have to change their processes. According to the
author, “Slow development times were perceived as a hurdle for improving company
operations, and the IT organization struggled to get buy-in from business stakeholders” (Torres,
2020, October 14). AA’s Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO), Maya
Leibman, recognized this challenge and focused efforts to make improvements in the initial goal
of delivery value fast.
As part of the process, AA would be taking advantage of technology solutioning such
IBM’s Design Thinking (a framework for helping teams recognize and deliver continuously),
DevOps (the practice of improving the delivery of software development by combining with
technology operations), agile methodology (collaborating between cross functional teams), and
lean development (optimizing the entire process). Conducting a deep dive into how the
different teams operate was incorporated over a three-year period to ensure that adaption
could be learned successfully.
Like many other airlines, American had struggled to adapt to technology innovations
due to insufficient funding to support modernization. This led to frustration amongst its
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technology teams and leadership which eventually affected AA’s customers. IT would receive
requests from, business partners with an expectation that the project would take 12-18 months
to complete producing unwanted results. And although technology had been working in the
agile space for years, they ended up failing in this area and often prolonging project
completion. As expressed by Customer Technology VP Steven Leist, “All we were doing was
masking our inefficiencies in the way we delivered software. The reality was no one was
satisfied: our team members were fatigued, and our leaders were upset.” (Leist & O’Reilly,
2021, March 25).
Regarding project funding, the finance approval process was cumbersome and lengthy.
And although finance understood that their process needed to change there was a lack of trust
between the departments particularly since many, IT projects were often completed before
they were approved. To build trust and help the technology team understand where the money
was being spent, team members attended a cost mapping exercise. Part of that training
including learning how finances were assigned to products and costs to run them.
Throughout this process it was imperative that AA concluded that a cultural shift would
need to be made and old habits would need to change. And to achieve that goal, outside
coaching and training resources would need to be involved. The teams learned that their prior
methods of kicking off a project with a specific idea on which customers were going to use their
product and how they would interact with it, would lead to the project struggling after many
months of investment. Resulting in few that were finished. Once the team started applying
IBM’s Design Thinking and DevOps practices, they essentially started receiving positive results,
particularly in product reduction times and focused outcomes.
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References
Leist, S., & O’Reilly, B., (2021, March 25). How american airlines is transforming its culture by
transforming delivery. Barry O’Reilly.

How American Airlines is Transforming Its Culture by Transforming Delivery

Torres, R. (2020, October 14), American airlines accelerated IT delivery with devops. CIODive.
https://www.ciodive.com/news/american-airlines-touchless-kiosk-devops/587055/
1
Project 6: Work as a Team
Richard Bool
University of Maryland Global Campus
DCL 600T 9042 Decisive Thinking, Communicating, and Leading in Technology Fields
Omer Ozbek
March 1, 2022
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American Airlines (AA) believes in providing the best customer experience in the airline
industry. They must “modernize and transform by developing the right tools and technology”
(Henry, 2017). Open standards have multiple meanings; however, according to Henry, they believe
their expectations are met if they satisfy industry expertise and innovation. AA and IBM have been
long-time partners since the 1950’s when they first developed the electronic reservation and
ticketing system. IBM and American Airlines have successfully collaborated on other projects,
leading their long-standing relationship.
So, what practices did AA implement with IBM? First, their main priority was to ensure
that their policy on open standards was met. According to Henry, AA decided to go with Cloud
Foundry due to three factors: flexibility, security, and scalability (Henry, 2017). Flexibility due to
moving workloads without being locked to one provider, security primarily experience with
government and federal institutions, and scalability, meaning if the needs are not met, other
environments can be used (Henry, 2017). According to the AA website, their work culture states,
“We owe our employees the best company culture in the business – one that’s built on respect.
Respect for the product, company heritage, and each other.” (Our Culture, 2022). IBM follows
the standard. IBM went out of its way by being open-minded. For example, IBM follows the same
belief in open standards. Out of coincidence, they also chose Cloud Foundry as their foundation
base. IBM is addressing needs by supplying AA with tools such as squad/tribe models, Design
Thinking, and DevOps, to name a few. Overall, IBM and AA focus on innovation. With both
companies supplying both tools, it was a given that their communication is punctual.
Innovation is essential as Henderson states: “when a company has an innovative culture, it
will grow easily. Tried-and-tested methods can be reliable but trying out new things is a
worthwhile experiment.” (Henderson, 2017). According to Hobbs, innovation is modernization
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and transformation. IBM Distinguished Engineer Shahir A. Daya discusses the process of
microservices by using their personal experience with AA. In the PowerPoint presentation, Daya
defines microservices as “splitting the application into small teams who own the entire lifecycle
of service.” (Daya, 2020). One significant benefit of microservices is the ability to make changes
frequently. Henry stated that AA originally wanted to find an organization that would take
advantage of speed, productivity, and agility (Henry, 2017).
AA wants to implement agile, but due to the technology used, many complicated issues
occurred. For example, IBM identified the problem; having the same features in multiple channel
servers leads to duplicate code (Daya, 2020). IBM’s solution was simple: implement Agile and
use DevOps to create innovation and transformation (Daya, 2020). Using the IBM garage method,
squads were implemented, basically small teams responsible for delivering tasks (Daya, 2020).
After going through the test process, a couple of lessons were learned from IBM. The two that
stood out were: automate everything, and fail-small, fail-fast (Daya, 2020). Even though the
PowerPoint did not go into much full detail, it was enough to explain the process from start to
finish. There may not have been a full resolution, but it is essential to show progress and at least
show that a solution was made for a particular problem point for AA. Having a first-hand
experience of collaboration between IBM and AA, leadership retains the purpose of work culture,
using new tools to innovate and create new products to stand out.
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References
Daya, S. (2020, February 27). Cloud Native and Microservices Accelerate Process
Improvements at a Major U.S Airline. DevNetwork. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from
https://files.devnetwork.cloud/DeveloperWeek/presentations/2020/Shahir-Daya.pdf
Henderson, T. (2017, May 8). Why Innovation Is Crucial To Your Organization’s Long-Term
Success. Forbes. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/05/08/why-innovation-iscrucial-to-your-organizations-long-term-success/?sh=4605fa053098
Henry, D. (2017, June 27). How American Airlines is Innovating Customer Travel with IBM
Cloud. THINK Blog. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2017/06/ibm-cloud-american-airlines/
Our Culture. (n.d.). American Airlines. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from
https://jobs.aa.com/content/our-culture/
How the composition of leadership influences outcomes
The success and failure of a company rely on the performance of employees, work
culture, and quality of its product or service. The composition of leadership is also a significant
aspect that influences the outcomes of a company. A company will experience a risk when its
leadership does not take action in a rapidly changing business environment. It is challenging to
change a business process or company culture if a company size is enormous. However,
American Airlines, one of the largest global airlines companies, set a good example of how its
leadership team performed well to develop the vision and solve problems.
The CEO of American Airlines, Doug Parker, believed that communicating and building
strong personal relationships is the key to success in business. His idea led senior leadership
members to successfully communicate with unions and investors to merge with US Airways.
Parker and his team implemented an open-door policy for employees and shareholders. Hence,
the policy boosted interactions between executives and employees (Kaskovich, 2014). In 2018,
the leadership team launched the American Voice project to listen to employees’ concerns and
take action. The project revealed that 55 percent of problems were regarding the airline’s unclear
goals and objectives. The result led the leadership team to complete nearly 30 team member
meetings in 2018 and try to bring a positive environment to the company to understand the needs
of employees and customers (Lazare, 2018).
Another good characteristic that American Airlines leaders had was innovative thinking.
In 2017, American Airlines partnered with IBM to utilize its cloud technology for their critical
enterprise systems, including the main website, customer Mobile application, and kiosk
application (Henry, 2017).
Cloud technology’s expandability and flexibility allow a company to transfer data
quickly and run its application seamlessly in a new environment. It is now essential to combine
Cloud technology with digitalization and modernization of data and application. Most leadership
teams in the IT industry understand the importance of cloud technology. Still, they are reluctant
to utilize it due to the vast investment and fear of failure to adopt it. However, the American
Airlines leadership team had innovative thinking and focused on changing the information
technology environment and developing related products or services. The new application
developed for their customers helped nearly 130,000 passengers who used the application in
response to cancellations caused by Hurricane Irma in 2017 (Reed, 2017). The innovative
decision by the leadership team brought positive outcomes that they could modernize their
systems and improve employees’ productivity and customers’ experience.
Airline and travel industries have been trying to recover from the pandemic but still
expect to experience challenges. American Airlines lost 931 million dollars in the final three
months of 2021 (Chokshi, 2022). Despite successful adaptation of cloud technology for better
customer experience, the company is struggling in financial management under the current
pandemic. American Airlines appointed Robert Isom as a new CEO and other senior
management team members to support him. The new leadership team will bring a synergistic
effect with their skills and experience for its strong governance.
Chokshi, N. (2022, January 20). American Airlines posts a $931 million loss as the industry
struggles to recover. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/business/american-airlines-earnings-4q-2021
Henry, D. (2017, June 27). How American Airlines is innovating customer travel with IBM
cloud. IBM. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2017/06/ibm-cloud-american-airlines/
Kaskovich, S. (2014, January 8). A New Course For American Airlines. The D Magazine.
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-ceo/2014/january-february/a-new-course-foramerican-airlines/
Lazare, L. (2018, October 22). American Airlines leaders listening and acting on employee
concerns. Dallas Business Journal.
https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2018/10/22/american-airlines-leaders-listeningand-acting-on.html
Reed, T. (2017, October 3). American Airlines rolled out new technology for rebooking during
hurricane Irma. The Street. https://www.thestreet.com/investing/american-airlines-rolledout-new-rebooking-technology-during-hurricane-irma-14327229
PART FOUR: Rough Draft
Pramod Thomas
Leadership challenges, issues, and practices
Aviation is considered among the most competitive industries in the world with
project teams facing a lot of pressure given that success is critical in this industry. Leading a
project team in such conditions requires quality leadership skills as these define, in most
instances, the success of the project. Leaders face challenges including low team morale and
lack of staff, such as qualified personnel, expertise, inconsistent stakeholder support, and
project funding, which affects the leader’s effectiveness and team’s efficiency (Aronson &
Lechler, 2021). American Airlines was migrating to the cloud with the help of IBM, thus
requiring highly skilled teams to make this migration successful. With cloud migration, the
move had to be perfected while trying to avoid all challenges. Leaders have to be ready to
deal with these challenges as they arise ensuring that the teams are successful.
Industry challenges, issues, and practices
Defining the industry as a highly competitive one is usually in terms of each airline
trying to improve its services, thus customer satisfaction is the end goal for most projects.
The American Airline case shows this migration as it aims to deliver digital self-service tools
to its customers through migration to the cloud. Such customer-centricity increases
challenges in the industry with resources both human and financial being critical in the
industry. While the aim is to improve the customer experience, accessing funding is difficult
for most companies, and as a result project teams are unsuccessful, or if successful do not
meet expectations. The lack of funding directly affects human resources as the airline
companies lack the staff to take the project to success. While leaders are willing and primed
to work on the project to the end, the lack of staff makes it difficult. While in some cases
human resources may be available, having skilled employees is also an issue for technical
projects, as in the case of American Airlines (Kozlowski & Chao, 2018). Such projects
require at the least a team with ICT experts that come at a higher cost.
Company challenges, issues, and practices
American Airlines as a company had to acquire resources with this move, being
aimed at gaining a competitive edge over its competitors through improved customer
services. The changes required a highly skilled team with technological equipment (Guinan et
al., 2019). The change also required the introduction of DevOps concepts, which resulted in
the need for a highly skilled team. To be successful, the project had a time limit that also had
to be met by the team, which created a number of challenges. A major problem identified in
the industry revolves around funding with the stakeholders being expected to play a major
role in these funding activities. Stakeholder involvement for the company is a major
determinant of its success.
References
Aronson, Z. H., & Lechler, T. G. (2021). Project Success: What is the Role of Project Team
Morale and How It Can Be Boosted?. International Journal of Innovation and
Technology Management, 18(07), 2150031.
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219877021500310
Guinan, P. J., Parise, S., & Langowitz, N. (2019). Creating an innovative digital project team:
Levers to enable digital transformation. Business Horizons, 62(6), 717-727.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681319300965
Kozlowski, S. W., & Chao, G. T. (2018). Unpacking team process dynamics and emergent
phenomena: Challenges, conceptual advances, and innovative methods. American
Psychologist, 73(4), 576. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-23205-021

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