IT System Development Failure

In the year 2019, an IT System Development Failure occurred in London’s Heathrow Airport. London’s Heathrow Airport experienced technical issues at check-in, which affected British Airways (Skopeliti, 2020). There were a hundred flights that were canceled while the rest of the flights were delayed.  Over ten thousand passengers were greatly affected and inconvenienced by the outage. The passengers who had traveling plans had to postpone their travel for about two days, which was inconvenient. The managers in charge failed to respect the concepts of planning, monitoring, and executing in project management.

            As part of the steering committee, I would ensure that project management concepts such as planning, monitoring, and executing are well understood, respected, and implemented. One of the critical issues that must be undertaken is testing the system. This could have happened after the deployment of the technology or after the completion of every project milestone. During planning, I would ensure that the goals formulated are possible to achieve, goals that are not too ambiguous. When planning, every member of the steering committee would have a role in the project such that they would be held responsible for any failure or success in the project.

In monitoring, I would ensure that all issues arising concerning the project management plan are well addressed. Monitoring helps to measure the type and frequency of issues affecting the project management plan and how fast they are addressed. Monitoring also helps determine whether the resources allocated for the project are on track. In execution, I would ensure that enough resources are set for the project so that the project management plans are fully executed with no chance for failure. Also, I would stand up to correct the mistakes happening by referring to the needs of project management learned in class and the regulations relevant to the project.

Reference Skopeliti, C. (2020). Thousands stranded at Heathrow due to check-in systems meltdown. Retrieved 19 August 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/17/thousands-stranded-amid-heathrow-check-in-systems-meltdown