Delta Air Lines · Project Manager · 2022
Atlanta Airport Operations Digital Transformation
Replacing the staff-management software behind Atlanta's ground operations, and fixing a communication breakdown between vendor and internal teams before it derailed the project.
Challenge
The staff-management software running Atlanta's workgroups was outdated and had become a known bottleneck to operational efficiency. Early in the initiation phase, a second problem surfaced: a cultural and expectation gap between the software vendor and internal Delta teams. Stakeholders would leave meetings with one understanding of scope, then discover in the next meeting that expectations hadn't actually aligned, creating a pattern that stalled the project before design work could even get traction.
Operational Bottleneck
Legacy ground staff software couldn't balance dynamic workload surges, constraining daily turnaround performance at the world's busiest airport.
Alignment Breakdown
Vendor teams and internal station leaders operated with mismatched definitions of requirements, stalling consensus prior to execution.
Approach
Fixing alignment came before fixing software.
Weekly stakeholder touchpoints
Set up a standing weekly session for every stakeholder group affected by the project, so everyone heard the same message on the same day instead of piecing it together secondhand.
Shared-screen note-taking
Started writing notes on a shared screen live during meetings, so the record of what was agreed matched what was actually discussed, closing the gap that had been causing repeat misunderstandings.
Requirements-driven build
Led the cross-functional team through design, development, testing, and deployment of new software built around real end-user requirements rather than the vendor's default configuration.
Staged rollout across workgroups
Deployed to Atlanta workgroups in stages, including one rollout during Summer Heightened Awareness (a period with lower tolerance for operational disruption), with minimal business impact.
Critical Decision Point
Fix alignment before scaling delivery
With stakeholder groups working from different understandings of the same conversations, the team could have pushed ahead on the technical build and tried to course-correct later. Instead, the fix went in first: standing weekly touchpoints and live shared notes, before ramping up design and delivery work. That sequencing choice is what the project's own retrospective credits for the improved organization and communication that followed.
Outcomes
- 30% average daily improvement in tasks performed, with better data and a more balanced workload across workgroups.
- Deployed to 4 workgroups in Atlanta, including one during Summer Heightened Awareness, with minimal business impact.
- Alignment and communication fixes from the initiation phase carried into Delta's first major deployment on this platform, and were later formalized ahead of the Detroit rollout.