Orlando, Fla - October 16, 2008 - JetBlue's Approach to the Project Management Office There are usually 2 compelling reasons that prompt organizations to review their approach to managing IT projects. They both have to do with the importance of information to the business. The first reason is to take advantage of their IT capabilities to capture a larger portion of the market, or to capture new markets. The 2nd is that some disaster or cataclysmic event has forced the organization to review its approach to managing IT projects.JetBlue's implementation of a Project Management Office (PMO) was for the latter reason. In 2007 an IT systems failure contributed to the infamous St. Valentine's Day shutdown which left thousands of passengers stranded and cost JetBlue $30M. Joe Eng, Vice-President Systems and Technology for the New York based airline advises Chief Information Officers (CIO) to get very close to their Finance Departments to ensure that the business cases for their projects are factual and closely aligned to the company's bottom line. "You need to set up a governance type of structure -- and I say this very bluntly -- to force the business to be involved in IT," said Eng. JetBlue's Chief Executive Officer (CEO), David Neeleman, has stated that JetBlue's goal is to become the leading low-cost airline emphasizing customer service and has implemented several measures to advance the airline towards that goal. Measures such as in-flight DirectAccess TV, XM Radio, and Dunkin' Donuts coffee have advanced the company's standing in the area of customer service. Joe Eng's, and the IT organization's, contribution to the prioritization of projects undertaken by the PMO with the company web site being the number one priority. The airline currently takes 80% of their bookings from the web site and enabling this has allowed the IT organization to lower the airline's operating costs. The role IT plays in furthering the company's efforts to fulfill its goals extends beyond reduction of the bottom line. Joe Eng helps the company to undertake the right projects by ensuring that the business units have the information they need to make decisions and build business cases. It's then up to the executive to ensure a fit with strategic goals and objectives. What This Means to YouIf you're like most project managers, you have little input into the decisions to choose which projects your organization undertakes. If you manage a Project Management Office, you have a little more influence on the choices. In either case, you can improve your company's decision making abilities by ensuring that the right information is made available to the business units in your company. On the other side of the coin, you can work closely with your finance department to ensure that you know the exact actual and forecast costs of your IT projects. Since the majority of the costs of an IT project are labor, make sure you know the loaded labor rate for each category of resource on your project. Don't forget yourself. Make sure that the effort estimates are up to date; don't just focus on the durations. Learning lessons by comparing actuals against original estimates for activities will allow you to keep your budget forecasts up to date and an up-to-date budget forecast will allow you to keep your project's business case up to date. |
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