British Airways was struggling with flight disruptions at Heathrow airport. They hired Atos to develop a real-time dashboard to improve disruption management. Atos worked collaboratively to understand BA's needs. They designed a browser-based dashboard accessible from any device that aggregated data from 10 systems into easy-to-understand visuals. Atos then rapidly developed the dashboard in just 8 weeks using agile methods and open source technologies. The new dashboard reduced the time it takes operations staff to be alerted of issues from 20 minutes to 20 seconds, improving decision making and reducing costs for BA.

1. Case study
Your business technologists. Powering progress
agile innovation
delivers unique disruption
management for British Airways
Atos helps beat flight operation problems fast with live intelligence on a
scalable dashboard, keeping passenger journeys and the business on track
Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest
international airports. A plane takes off
every 90 seconds, and 50 per cent of the
operated flights at Heathrow belong to
British Airways. Managing Heathrow flight
operations is a top priority for the airline.
Any disruption can cause bottlenecks, with
significant potential impact on service,
profitability, and reputation. The winter of
2012-13 was particularly bad, and costly in
compensation and customer care.
Flight operations involve complex inter-
dependencies and fast changing conditions.
Making good decisions about delays and
cancellations demands near real-time and
comprehensive data. Key managers and staff
need the same ‘single version of the truth’ to
provide a seamless response in the best inter-
ests of passengers and the business.
British Airways was determined to improve
its disruption management at Heathrow. With
Atos’ help, it now has an easy-to-use dashboard
of live intelligence, providing fast access to
consistent information about its operations.
The dashboard reduces time between events
occurring and operations staff being alerted
from 20 minutes to 20 seconds.
Atos worked closely with the airline to develop
and deliver the solution against demanding
deadlines, very cost-effectively. Using highly
innovative open source technologies and
agile working, Atos devised the strategy in a
month, and developed the dashboard in just
eight weeks. The dashboard is browser-based,
available on PCs and mobile devices, scalable,
and believed to be a unique solution for the
industry.
Since the solution went live, the registered user
numbers have grown from 200 to 23,000
across the UK organisation. All board members
and executive managers have access, and the
airline’s offices in Beijing and Shanghai are also
now using it to track the effects of Heathrow
disruptions on their own operations. The
solution’s scope has also grown. In addition
to Heathrow operations, passenger flights
diverted to other UK airports can now be
seen on the dashboard, and there are plans to
extend its use much further.

2. 2 Agile innovation delivers unique management for British Airways
Time for change
Winters are often a problem for flight delays
and disruptions. Following the serious effects
of snow at Heathrow in January 2013, British
Airways committed to improve its disruption
management approach.
The need for a single consistent view of
the operational data being displayed in a
consolidated dashboard was one of the key
objectives. Most operations staff used complex
screens showing long tables of numbers that
needed years of experience to interpret. When
disruptions were identified, different systems had
to be interrogated to understand the causes. As
a result:
`` Decision-making was often subjective and
inconsistent
`` Data was only available to a core group of
managers
`` There was no system audit trail of operational
decisions.
Limited access to information made it difficult to
orchestrate ground staff and assets to minimise
disruption (for example, some aircraft were de-
iced, missed their take-off slot, and had to be de-
iced again). To overcome these problems, British
Airways wanted to find a way to aggregate its
raw data into a ‘Single Version of the Truth’. In
June 2013, British Airways asked Atos to devise a
strategy for a new system to improve disruption
management before the end of October 2013,
and the start of winter. The timeframe was very
aggressive with another winter fast approaching.
Atos faced major issues in its initial task:
`` Flow rates (numbers of aircraft in and out
of Heathrow hourly – dictated by the airport
authority) have complex inter-dependencies,
touching every part of the business. The
system would potentially need to cope with
millions of requests and events every day
`` There was no clear view of what was needed
by four distinct user groups: network and
airport operations, customer, revenue man-
agement, and IT. While all have safety and
effectiveness as a goal, each has its own priori-
ties, systems and processes.
Winter challenge
Collaborativestrategy
To tackle the fragmented requirements, Atos’
five-strong team led a collaborative one-month
assignment that became a model for the rest
of the project. Atos held more than 20 meet-
ings with stakeholders from different functions,
using screen visualisations and storyboarding to
explore different scenarios. Clarity was critical if
staff were to interpret and act on the data quickly
and consistently. As part of the exercise, data
was identified from 10 different systems across
the airline’s operations.
Atos consultants applied insight and objectivity
to help the stakeholders find root issues and
priorities for the strategy. Consultants also lever-
aged experience from the travel industry, and
from managing large-scale data-centric projects
in complex environments, such as the Olympic
Games.
Unique design
Atos completed its strategy design by June
2013, providing:
`` A fully scoped solution for a browser-based
dashboard accessible by PCs and mobile
devices
`` An approach to aggregating data into simple
graphics
`` An agile development plan to deliver the solu-
tion before end of October
`` A roadmap for future evolution of the
dashboard, and continuous improvement to
disruption management.
The dashboard proposed would show an ag-
gregate and drill-down picture of the status of
every flight coming into and out of Heathrow,
a forecast of the likely impact of delays on sub-
sequent flight operations, and the operational
status of de-icing and other ground assets.
Meeting the deadlines
Conventional procurement and implementation
routes would take too long. Instead, Atos recom-
mended open source technologies to develop
the dashboard. This would circumvent lengthy
processes while achieving the same technical
maturity and robustness, and support very high
transaction-processing across millions of events
daily. This was the first time open source tech-
nologies would be used for a mission-critical
system at British Airways.
As winter grew closer, British Airways decided
that the pace and accuracy required to develop
the innovative project was best delivered by a
co-located team on site.
New approach: new risks
Buy-in from British Airways’ IT and Operations
community was essential. To achieve that, the
IT Projects and Operations teams had to be
convinced that:
`` Agile techniques would not cut project devel-
opment corners and break corporate rules
`` Open source technologies could be used to
support mission-critical systems
`` The dashboard was realisable, given its highly-
optimised underlying technology platform.
There were also serious technical challenges for
Atos:
`` The dashboard had to scale to tens of millions
of events a day, with increasing numbers of
data-feeds added from public and airline-spe-
cific data-sources such as weather feeds
`` Three very complex data-streams had to be
aligned with British Airways’ business rules to
ensure that information on the dashboard was
what users expect to see
`` Source data would have to be the most trust-
ed available, despite duplications, inconsisten-
cies, and different values for metrics between
functions and systems
`` The airline’s legacy estate posed a challenge
to development of a browser-based system.
Delivery of the
dashboard is an
excellent example
of agile cross-
departmental
working, driven by
close collaboration
between operations
and our IT team and
useofexpertpartners.
This is an excellent
product which is a big
step towards a more
resilient and reliable
organisation.
Andrew Lord, Head of Operations,
British Airways

3. 3
The real-time dashboard that Atos and the British Airways team have built
provides a step change in the way we undertake data-supported decision-
making to maintain high levels of service to our customers.
Mark Pierson, Manager, Business Resilience,
British Airways
Accelerated delivery
Atos speeded up development and implemen-
tation to produce operating capability in just
eight weeks. Use of open source technologies
removed six to eight weeks from the develop-
ment schedule.
Atos provided the overarching design and
delivery discipline, but to supplement its imple-
mentation, chose two specialist partners to help
rapidly deliver the dashboard:
`` A specialist creative agency to turn Atos’ clear
and simple visuals into browser reality
`` A small open source software specialist.
Clear displays of regulatory metrics provide overview of operational status
These graphs show ‘scheduled v current v forecast’ performance against targets. They identify significant issues in the flight schedule, enabling flight
operations staff to make informed decisions about which flights (if any) to delay or cancel. Users click on the aggregates to drill-down into successive
layers of detail.
Agile innovation delivers unique management for British Airways
Pioneering agile
A continuous build-and-integrate process with a
rich client feedback loop helped to manage risk,
build visibility with users, accelerate develop-
ment, and ensure mass adoption at go-live. Atos’
early storyboarding approach continued so
that users were familiar and comfortable with
the dashboard without needing complex user
guides or significant training during an already-
busy time of year.
The benefits of using pure agile methodologies
for end-to-end system development became
clear:
`` With tight timescales, seeing updates quickly
and tracking progress easily was critical in
building confidence in the dashboard and
trust in the approach
`` Daily releases of new code into the British
Airways estate (which was unprecedented)
meant issues were unearthed and fixed early.
On 23 October 2013, the dashboard went live for
all flight operations in Heathrow.
British Airways benefits
`` British Airways has a dashboard that provides
virtually real-time data on punctuality targets
and current and forecast performance of flight
operations at Heathrow – supporting fast,
evidence-based decisions
`` The quality of decision-making is expected to
mean:
`` Fewer delays for customers
`` Fewer cancelled flights
`` Reduced costs for the airline.
`` There is now one set of key metrics across its
flight operations at Heathrow, covering up to
100,000 customers on a busy day
`` The time between when an event occurs and
when operations staff are alerted to it is down
from 20 minutes to 20 seconds
`` The dashboard provides competitive advan-
tage, and offers a template for potential re-use
cost effectively across the organisation.

4. Atos, Atos Consulting, Atos WorldGrid, Worldline, Canopy and blueKiwi are registered trademarks of Atos SE.
8380-1014 October 2014 © 2014 Atos.uk.atos.net
About Atos
Atos SE (Societas Europaea) is an international
information technology services company
with 2013 annual revenue of € 8.6 billion and
76,300 employees in 52 countries. Serving a
global client base, it delivers IT services through
Consulting & Systems Integration, Managed
Operations, and transactional services through
Worldline, the European leader and a global
player in the payments services industry. With
its deep technology expertise and industry
knowledge, it works with clients across different
business sectors: Manufacturing, Retail &
Transportation; Public Sector & Health; Financial
Services; Telcos, Media & Utilities.
Atos is focused on business technology that
powers progress and helps organizations
to create their firm of the future. It is the
Worldwide Information Technology Partner
for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and
is listed on the NYSE Euronext Paris market.
Atos operates under the brands Atos, Atos
Consulting, Worldline and Atos Worldgrid.
For more information, visit: atos.net