International Air Transport Association Bringing a new ticket distribution standard to life The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is an industry trade group with a mission to represent, lead, and serve the airline industry. Spurred by massive changes in technology, the regulatory environment and increasing competition, airlines are innovating in ways that strain the limits of current technical standards used to unite the global air travel distribution chain.
Highlights Delivery speed – ThoughtWorks was able to deliver the demonstrator in nine weeks, leading the IATA team from a high level vision to actionable requirements and through an evolving series of working versions very quickly. Flexible approach – The team adjusted roles, tactics and tools quickly to suit the needs of the distributed team and tight deadline.
Technology Platforms and Language NodeJS HTML5
In response, IATA is facilitating an industry-led initiative to propose a new standard for the way airline seats are distributed. Called New Distribution Capability (NDC), the new standard benefits the industry as well as consumers, by supporting faster introduction and more compelling marketing of new products and services, and making flight search and comparison shopping a better experience. Airlines, travel agents and industry software vendors are all involved in the initiative.
Javascript
How to explain an XML standard? A demonstration system is worth a thousand words
Underscore for functional javascript
As the initiative neared completion, IATA leaders realised that although they had a clear vision of how it would work, as an abstract XML and messaging standard, NDC would be difficult for industry leaders to understand. And with stakeholders entrenched in current technology, it was important to convey vividly the benefits NDC would enable in order to get companies to commit to implementation. Already the IATA team were encountering colleagues who had heard of NDC and had misconceptions about it.
Tools Jade and iCanHaz for templating Compass for CSS Grunt for builds
RequireJS for dependency management chardinJs for adding help MousetrapJS for keyboard shortcuts
To help everyone visualise the positive changes the new standard would enable, IATA wanted to offer a demonstration system. People could then walk through common travel agent and online ticket search and selection scenarios, and experience the new features and benefits that would be made possible by NDC. It would need to be compelling and immersive for users, and seamlessly compare and contrast the experience with and without NDC. But it would also have to be ready very quickly. The IATA Annual General Meeting for members—at which they wanted to show the New Distribution Capability in action—was only three months away.
working system. This included a user map, personas, and customer journeys, user stories, and the technical approach— with much more discussed over the course of the four days to provide context.
From vision to first system review
Getting the right user experience
in two weeks
ThoughtWorks engaged a small, flexible team to work with NDC stakeholders and industry representatives in Germany, Switzerland and the UK over the course of nine weeks to help with everything from scenarios and user journeys to developing and testing the new system. Key among the requirements, the system needed to interactively showcase what could be realistically achieved using NDC with today’s technology. ThoughtWorks led four days of workshops with IATA and NDC stakeholders, travel agent representatives and an airline representative. They used interactive exercises, brainstorms, and facilitated discussions to create the first actionable requirements from the initial high-level vision of what was needed. The intention was to create just a sufficient level of detail to get started with coding the first iteration of a
Developers started with a blank canvas, and from it created a basic user experience. By the end of the second week, the team conducted the first showcase of the working prototype to stakeholders. From that point, the system was refined and continuously extended using an iterative approach to both user experience and application features.
IATA planned initially to unveil the NDC demonstrator as a surprise to members at the annual meeting, but ThoughtWorks advised instead that the team engage various external reviewers early on in the development process in order to have time to change the design based on feedback. Thus in addition to the regular weekly showcases, the team also took advantage of industry visitors to IATA offices at the Geneva airport, letting them play with the evolving prototype and listening carefully to their feedback. External reviewers were also recruited from organisations involved in the creation of the NDC standard. Insights from these engagements led to significant improvements in the overall design of the demonstrator. Use cases for the demonstration system included experienced travel agents, online retail customers, and corporate travel departments. To create a fresh and modern user experience,
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the team worked hard to re-imagine how a travel agency interface might change to make it more accessible for new travel agents without sacrificing the speed and efficiency of experienced users. Using the latest browser and technology stacks, developers were able to create a web-based user experience for a complex domain that could be driven entirely by the keyboard as well as by the mouse.
Speed requires flexibility, in roles and approach With a lot to do and just nine weeks to do it, the team members had to work flexibly, taking on different roles as needed week by week, and even within each day to alleviate bottlenecks. Any processes that were not adding value were changed or dropped—even the collaboration tool was changed several times in short order before hitting on the one that best suited the project. At one point, the team decided the pace of work required daily iteration planning, so they changed from weekly, and the whole team helped in the creation of the stories. Story structure was able to be less formalised, because stories were delivered just in time and discussed on the day they were planned for delivery. To allow for rapid feedback the team showcased the app as many as three times per day. ThoughtWorks built a continuous delivery environment to facilitate this, which allowed the developers to rapidly turn requirements into tested, working code. There were times when issues picked up at the start of a showcase were fixed before the end of that showcase.
New standard helps the industry, and travelers In just nine weeks a small, distributed team delivered the demonstration system, highlighting benefits and dispelling misconceptions about the New Distribution Capability to stakeholders within all segments of the air travel industry. The new standard is essential to a wide range of new functionalities that will let consumers better compare different airline offerings, and allow airlines to compete on the quality of their product as opposed to only the price. NDC enables airlines to respond to changes in the market by introducing new products and services to create competitive advantages faster than ever before.
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I was impressed with how quickly the team was able to get up to speed. Air travel is a complex industry and the team were making meaningful contributions before the end of the first week. And they’ve been very flexible, willing to change tactics when needed to get the best result possible for us.
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Yanik Hoyles, Head, NDC Program, FDS Transformation, IATA.
The NDC demonstration system will be introduced at the IATA annual general members meeting, and will be subsequently made available online.
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