Interview: Clarity and the Inte­gration of Third-Party Systems at Flughafen München GmbH

Matthias Graf, Chief Project Portfolio & Resource Management

Let’s start by saying that we are an airport, and an airport is, so to speak, a large general store with many different projects. A truck is digging up a field to lay fiber optic cables to connect outdoor transmitters for German air traffic control. That is an example of an IT project. Of course, we also have what you think of as more conventional IT projects, such as implementing ERP systems, to name just one example.

The topics at FMG are therefore wide-ranging and encompass a very large IT system landscape. Consequently, the information is distributed across many systems, which is also what gives rise to the need for interfaces.

When developing an interface, we tend to be agile to a certain extent. First, we conceptualize in rough terms internally what we want. The joint implementation process with itdesign is then very iterative, and that works well. This way, we make sure that we only implement what we really need – no more and no less.

Often, certain special cases that have not yet been specified and still need to be addressed can be seen only in the operation of the interface – this step cannot be avoided at all. With the iterative approach, we simply add parts bit by bit that we find out we need along the way. In addition, we achieve the desired benefit more quickly, such as, for example, the anticipated reduction in workload.

We have a nice success story about our path to implementing Meisterplan: When we first brought up the topic of resource management and transferred our data to Meisterplan for the first time, we were able to show that our planned needs did not fit our capacity at all. We were totally torn: We couldn’t handle the projects. We only got the necessary additional capacity approved after we were able to use Meisterplan to show that we would have to cut a huge number of projects given the current resource situation.

We use Meisterplan like this: Every two weeks, we conduct an IT resource board meeting. All of the executives who contribute resources to projects meet, which is about 15 to 20 people. We talk about changes in projects, project launches, and new project proposals to be included in the portfolio. Meisterplan is the tool used for this, and we project it onto the wall (or share it via the screen at a web meeting). The tool provides us with a live view of the current project situation. We then make our decisions, that is, resource allocations, based on this. This is how we use Meisterplan at FMG: every two weeks, live directly in the tool, with the whole team.

The principle we agreed on earlier was: The basic data is stored in Clarity and will stay there. Clarity is the gold source, so to speak. Meisterplan is the simulation tool.

The bidirectional interface then works as follows: We take the data from Clarity, import it into Meisterplan and simulate the planning there. Decisions about resource allocations are made in the IT resource board and the data is then returned to Clarity (to the hard allocations of the teams). There they are redirected back into the projects. This backchannel work alone used to take an hour of our time, roughly – today, it takes less than ten minutes. At the next resource board meeting, the data will be transferred freshly from Clarity to Meisterplan.

I can’t tell you in detail how it came about back then, because I wasn’t on board at the time. But I do remember that we found itdesign through a recommendation. itdesign has developed tremendously over the last 12 years: Today, no one can come close to what your team is doing. I know implementations that were done with other partners, but itdesign does a really great job.

I always like to use the following argument when I talk to people who are interested in Clarity: itdesign has an idea about how Clarity works inside and the direction in which certain topics are developing. This allows you to give us, as the customers, tips on what is not worth pursuing at the moment and how topics could be implemented differently. This gives itdesign a big advantage over others, and everyone who works with you ends up benefitting.

What I particularly appreciate about the partnership is the way we work together. Your approachable and technically skilled Management convince through impressive know-how and partnership. When the Senior Management talks to each other, some topics are simply able to be conveyed differently. That has helped us at that level from time to time.

Last but not least, with my main contact Ralf, I have someone on hand with whom I can connect on a human level. I often sit down with Ralf, and we find a solution very quickly, just like in “pair programming”. Thanks to the intensive collaboration, I am now in a position to develop topics in Clarity independently and to assess implementation and realization topics in a completely different way.