Project Stakeholder Management

Here’s an update to the Article on mobile phone usage in aircraft.

Emirates and AeroMobile announced a few days ago that the world’s first authorised cellphone call was made by a passenger during an Airbus A340 flight between Dubai and Casablanca. The call was made at cruising altitude, after passengers were permitted to make and receive both calls and text messages. Emirates are planning to fit additional aircraft with the cellphone system later this year. To minimise annoyance, the flight crew requested passengers to use phones on silent-mode and will shut off the in-flight service during long-haul night flights.

Qantas is also planning to allow cellphone usage during flight, but for SMS text messages only, after a nine-month trail period during which they received plenty of stakeholder feedback.

So different airlines have decided to offer different services, based on surveys and feedback:

• Emirates - full voice and text sms
• Qantas - text sms only

We’ll be watching to see how they manage passenger and other stakeholder feedback after full system deployment.

The Singapore Chapter of the Project Management Institute recently held a Focus Group meeting to discuss Project Phoenix, the project to restore the Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington, Virginia) after the September 11, 2001 attack.

The meeting covered various knowledge areas of project management and highlighted the opportunities for improvements and the lessons learned.

Project Phoenix was the code name used for the recovery of the 2m sq feet (185,806 sq m) of the Pentagon building damaged in the attack. The project was based on a self-imposed one-year deadline and involved up to 1,000 workers working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week until January 2002, followed by about 500 workers working 6 days a week in two 10-hour shifts. The time taken to perform such a project might normally take up to three years, so many tasks had to be performed in parallel.

This was a very unusual project due to the circumstances, with a very high level of managerial support and worker motivation. The project team used the normal Project Management processes with a special focus on controlling ‘scope-creep‘. The project team were able to propose and support the aggressive schedule by coordinating with the project stakeholders, who were invited to participate in the project planning efforts. The construction workers displayed an extraordinary level of dedication and support to the project and to the self-imposed deadline. This is an example of how stakeholder management helps to achieve project success in difficult conditions.

Although this was a unique project, the lesson of ensuring good communications with all the people involved in the project is always applicable to our ‘normal’ projects.

Link to USA Today.  Publishing articles in the newspapers is a great way of communicating with large groups of stakeholders including the general public, and should be part of your project communications plan.

Although the Airbus A380 aircraft is a wonderful achievement, it’s also the product of a very troubled project. The project to design, build and deliver the world’s largest passenger aircraft was delayed by two years, and lost a total of 2 billion euro in profits for the Airbus consortium.

This is a very interesting project from a Stakeholder Management perspective because of two things:

1. The main reason for the delay seems to be associated with a communications breakdown between the two main factories manufacturing the A380, leading to incompatible wiring being produced. Both sides thought they were correct: “my wires are OK, they just don’t plug into your wires!”. Apparently, much of the wiring had to be removed and new wiring fitted, causing a long delay.

Applying Project Stakeholder Management, and paying more attention to relationships, might have avoided this kind of difficulty.

Here’s a link to an interesting account of the troubles during the A380 project.

Here’s a short extract from an article in the German magazine Spiegel Online in February 2007 that shows just how bad the project political situation between Germany and France had become: “EADS’ newly drafted turn-around plan called “Power 8″ is little more than thinly laced French economic patriotism. The proposal would keep French jobs safe before the country’s April elections by axing about 10,000 mostly German positions and selling off factories near Hamburg”. Scary reading for the German stakeholders, and not helpful in resolving the project difficulties.

2. Now that the A380 has already been delivered, it’s being hailed in the press here in Singapore as a “milestone in aviation history”. Doesn’t that sound like an attempt to make the A380 look like a big success all along? This is a great example of managing stakeholders after a project has been delivered, to turn around the image of the product and make everyone happy.

At the end of 2007, the first SIA A380 had made 130 flights, with around 950 hours of flight-time. Interestingly, the second A380 landed at Singapore Changi Airport a few days ago on Saturday 12 January 2008 without much fanfare.

There was also a rather embarrassing incident last Friday with the first A380, which slipped off the tarmac onto a grass verge at Changi Airport, Terminal 3, whilst being towed into position for takeoff to Sydney, Australia. All 446 passengers had to get off the plane and make alternative arrangements to travel to Australia, while SIA ground crew rescued the aircraft, which was undamaged. Project Managers are aware that there will always be some initial technical difficulties with the introduction any new product or service, so this is only to be expected.

Notice that the incident has been reported to ‘The Relevant Authorities‘ in Singapore. These ‘relevant authorities’ will, no doubt, be part of the project stakeholder management strategy.

We can’t possibly know if the arrival of the A380 on the aviation scene is really ‘historical’, as history will be written much later and by other people. My personal view is that the A380 will dominate the long high-density routes for many years to come.

Yes, it’s coming soon to an airline near you. The technology now exists to allow mobile phone calls to be made from aircraft during flight.

The extension of mobile phone coverage to aircraft is a radical and welcome change. Planes are one of the few remaining places where where mobile phones don’t work, or where there use is prohibited. Allowing their use will undoubtedly delight many people, and upset others.

The telecoms industry has a long history of introducing new equipment and services without much thought for their social impact. In a rare example of companies seeking to manage the expectations of their stakeholders, some airlines are now starting to experiment with this new service, and are seeking the feedback of customers by survey. Only a few aircraft will be fitted at first, and phone-usage will initially be limited to text and email with stakeholder feedback on the appropriate etiquette.

Some railway operators have already experimented with mobile phone usage. When they later discovered that some passengers were vehemently against it, they responded by designating certain carriages as “quiet zones”. This will not be so easy in aircraft, with a single cabin and a few curtains.

The airlines should be congratulated on their use of stakeholder management when attempting to introduce such a radical new service. We will be watching to see how this new service is managed.