So it happened again yesterday. This time BA cannot handle luggage. A bit of an issue for an airline. No word yet as to the cause [Link] but it did mean that checked baggage did not travel with BA passengers.
I took a risk and travelled BA this last weekend (I was using air-miles for a trip to Romania where I was helping out a friend with a project in the hinterlands there) and the experience was pretty reasonable but even I had problems. This time my probelms came from catering.
I flew in the business class cabin (or as BA call it Club Class – hopefully not a reference to how they will quell any dissent). In any case there was all this pomp and ceremony involving hot towels and a menu for breakfast as we took off. I was given the choice of Full English or Eggs Florentine. Printed on some stout card in a very grand font. Sounded lovely. There were only 8 passengers in the cabin. But they packed only 4 of each menu item. Zero redundancy. So as I was the last to be served, I didn’t have a choice. The menu should have read – you’ll get what’s left over out the two possibilities or go hungry, good luck. People only got a choice until 4 people had chosen one option, and then there is no longer a choice. So, as my Texan friends would say, that fancy menu was all “Hat and No Cattle”
It seems that catering, like IT, didn’t use risk management and uncertainty when designing their systems. This highlights the danger of over-assuming and the consequences of running at minimum cost with no redundancy. Redundancy, like insurance, can be seen in hind-sight as wasteful. Sometimes it’s called “over engineering” – but only if it wasn’t needed. If the laws of probability catch up with you, it is really a prudent investment.
Risk management has three elements:
- Identification of the Risk, what can cause them and what the consequences will be
- Taking prudent steps to reduce the probability that the risk will materialise
- Making preparations so that if the worst does happen the effects are mitigated
Giving BA the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they knew that their IT systems may fail, the baggage system may halt, and that they may run out of eggs florentine, then I have to assume that BA management now hate their passengers.
The consequence failure seems to be inconveniencing passengers.
Probability of Failure: At no time did they take steps to reduce the likelihood of tripping their whole IT system by pulling out a plug [link] (perhaps they might have double ported UPS, or Duct Tape over the plug!) or running out of my choice of breakfast (by perhaps packing say 6 of each choice, rather than 4).
Consequence of Failure: Let’s just inconvenience everyone – was not mitigated either, it was just accepted with a shrug. Though to be fair baggage was re-routed and couriered and people were re-booked on flights. I got an extra Bloody Mary. But still feel that it would have been better to reduce the likelihood of failure, as the mitigation seemed to be the minimum anyone could expect – and may be a legal requirement (except the bloody Mary of course, which probably the EU would not mandate)
Good luck with preserving the premium pricing for your Brand BA.
In a future post, I’m going to argue that as operations now rely on IT to deliver (and even more so in the 4th Industrial Revolution) it’s quite wrong that much of IT comes under the purview of the CIO rather it should now be part of the remit of the COO. Risk management of operational IT should focus on putting barriers in place to interrupt the cause and consequence routes, using an operational function lens, not an IT one. I Bet that is going to cause some organisational “team work” issues when it comes to budget time.
