Peer Graded Assignment

Joyce Ka

14 December 2015

Challenge  I work as an internal strategy consultant / project manager for an Operations division in an airline.     One of the departments recently got approval to spend USD 4 million on using virtual training technology for  training cabin crew (both new cabin crew and those being developed to move up to more senior roles on  board flights). The original business case for the project was admittedly quite flimsy and, having gotten  approved, there were varying views in the departments leadership team on which technology solutions would  benefit the most in terms of training engagement and effectiveness as well as drive operational efficiency.     My role as the project manager assigned to the project was to define a scope and requirements for the project  so that a tender could be floated for solution providers. That being said, the department head and her  leadership team were not aligned on what issues they were trying to solve and had a tendency to jump  straight into talking about technologies that should be brought in. The core team discussed the issue at hand  and agreed that, if we initiated a typical scope phase, we would struggle to get detailed and specific  requirements for the solution.     Selection  Given the two key issues of unaligned stakeholders and a focus on technology rather than  problems/opportunities, we decided that we needed to go through a mind mapping process i.e. a structured  process that would include a review of research conducted in order to jointly identify insights and patterns  that would be the basis of establishing criteria for the idea generation phase.      Application  We decided to hold a visioning session for the project where we could get the leadership team to collectively  identify the key challenges being faced within the training department today and establish a set of criteria  against which different virtual learning solutions would be assessed.     But before we held the visioning session, we reviewed the research done during the business case phase to  see if any additional areas needed to be explored or research revisited. Following was the research already  available:     Analysis of course volumes and resource utilization (facilities and trainers) for different types of course

  Aggregation of survey results from courses for the last year

  Interviews with full time and part time trainers to get their view on training effectiveness and engagement  for different channels and courses

  Identification of minimum training requirements from a regulatory and safety perspective

  Desktop research on virtual training technology trends

Having reviewed the above, the core team agreed that we needed to conduct one more activities before  planning the workshop:    Direct observation and interviews with cabin crew currently in training courses to understand their  perspective on the existing training process and course. This was later represented as a journey map of  cabin crew with key observations highlighted as crew went through their learning journey at the airline.

Having completed the research, we then planned the day long visioning workshop to include the following:    5 minutes presentation for each analysis/research to give participants background information on it.

  1 hour guided session for participants to walk through and synthesize all the research for themselves. A  table was setup for each of the top 5 courses with posters of all the research applicable to the course.  There was also an additional table to be setup where the trainer and leadership team interviews would be  made available with word clouds created from the interview script. Participants would be split into two  groups with a core team member assigned to guide the walk through. They would also be provided wit a  simple handout that let them note their key observations on what works well and what needs  improvement by course and overall.

  2 hour session to collectively identify insights relating to challenges from three perspectives - trainer,  cabin crew and internal department perspective

  1 hour session to use the insights to define criteria for identifying which virtual technologies would be  relevant for cabin crew training

The core team facilitated the visioning session based on the above plan and significant progress was made  towards aligning the training departments leadership team on what they believed they wanted to achieve  through introducing virtual learning technologies in their divisions. It was great to hear conversations during  the insights and criteria phase because, for the first time, we were focusing on issues and opportunities  instead of technologies. As we finished the day, we had a very clear set of needs that we believed the right  solutions should meet and the team was more aligned.

Approach  Having gone through the process and reflected on it, I believe we used the right process to get consensus on  the challenges being faced and establishing a set of design criteria. That being said, it would have been  beneficial to include a virtual learning partner as a collaborator during the visioning session especially to get a  different perspective when establishing design criteria. We do have a partner who has worked closely with the  organisation during the business case phase and it was a bit of a missed opportunity to not bring them into the  session.

