Delta Air Lines · Project Manager · 2023
Detroit Airport Operations Digital Transformation
Detroit needed the same software upgrade as Atlanta, but with a hard deadline set by winter operations, and a change-management plan built from everything Atlanta got wrong.
Challenge
Detroit was next on the roadmap after Atlanta, selected over six other candidate stations because its leadership, including the VP of Operations, was the most proactive about pursuing the optimization. A full implementation plan was approved by Detroit leadership in August 2023. Then, weeks before the planned start, two problems hit at once: a scheduling conflict with the above-wing workgroup, and a request from Detroit leadership to move the completion date up by 90 days, from a planned Q1 2024 finish to before Thanksgiving 2023, so the deployment wouldn't compete with winter deicing operations for resources.
Winter Operations Freeze
Missing the pre-Thanksgiving target meant pushing rollout into spring 2024 as winter deicing took over all station focus.
Schedule Compression Risk
Cutting 3 months from delivery required consolidating regression testing without skipping critical path safety validations.
Approach
Change management came first this time, not as a postmortem lesson.
A change management plan Atlanta didn't have
After the Atlanta deployment closed in November 2022, completed a two-day change-management workshop and built a full change management plan, covering stakeholder strategy, resistance management, and supporting governance pieces, reviewed with Detroit leadership, Atlanta leadership, and internal leadership before execution began in August 2023.
An on-site "genius bar" for the new software
Set up INFORM sessions modeled on an Apple Genius Bar, where subject matter experts sat in a Detroit conference room all day so agents and leaders could walk in, ask questions, and get hands-on with the new software.
Every channel, repeatedly
Reinforced the message through internal TV news outlets, email, internal webpages, and in-person break-room briefings right before shift start to meet agents where they already were instead of relying on one channel.
Consolidated regression testing
Worked with technical teams to reevaluate the critical path and consolidate regression testing so the 90-day cut was possible without shipping anything deemed critical-risk, while non-critical items were pushed to a fast-follow instead.
Critical Decision Points
Crash the timeline by 90 days, or lose the window entirely
Missing the pre-Thanksgiving deadline meant slipping to Q1 2024 at the earliest, once Detroit's winter deicing operations claimed the station's resources and attention. Leadership accepted the risk of a compressed regression-testing cycle rather than lose the deployment window for months: a risk mitigated, not ignored, by triaging what absolutely had to ship versus what could follow.
Prioritize Detroit and Minneapolis over more available stations
Of the stations on the post-Atlanta roadmap, Detroit and Minneapolis weren't necessarily the easiest; rather, they were the ones whose leadership was already leaning in. The roadmap decision weighted engagement over convenience, on the logic that a proactive station would carry a compressed, higher-risk deployment better than a passive one.
Outcomes
- Deployment completed one week before Thanksgiving 2023, 90 days ahead of the originally threatened Q1 2024 slip.
- 2 workgroups deployed in Detroit, 3 months ahead of schedule, freeing time for training reinforcement instead of racing the clock.
- A two-week on-site warranty period followed deployment, with subject matter experts present to resolve issues in real time.
- Software adoption in Detroit outpaced Atlanta's, and Detroit station leadership became an adamant champion of the platform across the Delta network.