The Importance of Service Transition

“With the right pricing, a business will lead its field, brand loyalty, have the cash to expand and be highly profitable” - Peter Drucker

In these highly competitive times when businesses are under constant pressure to get the right pricing and reduce Capex (Capital Expenditure) and Opex (Operational Expenses), there is a constant change in service and product lines. To ensure the smooth flow from one service to another, “Change Management” and “Service Transition” play an important role.

While many managers understand the meaning of Service Transition as the addition or modification of planned or supported service or service components and its associated documentation some fail to realize the importance of Service Transition.

One interesting example of Service Transition which provides an insight on how things can go wrong is given below:

On 23 July 1983, an Air Canada Boeing 767-200, flight 143 from Montreal to Edmonton ran out of fuel at 26,000 feet midway into the flight. The Captain with extensive experience as a Glider Pilot was able to land the plane at an unused airport, Gimli, Canada, using techniques normally applied by Glider Pilots with no fatalities. This flight made aviation history and gave the plane its name “The Gimli Glider”.

On investigation by the “Transport Safety Board of Canada” the following was noted:

• The Boeing 767-200 was a new addition in the fleet. The planes had been in service for 4 months prior to flight 143, and the “Minimum Equipment List” or set of procedures had been updated more than 50 times
• Earlier planes had 3 crew members flying the plane, including the flight engineer who was responsible for fuel loads.
• The 767-200 had two crew members, and the duties of the flight engineer had not been adequately distributed amongst the pilot and co-pilot.
• Air Canada had just converted to the metric system of calculations for determining the fuel load, which were done in a complex calculation between volume or the holding capacity of the fuel in the fuel tanks and the weight of the fuel, so that instead of 22,300 Kg of Fuel, the flight had 22,300 pounds of fuel, or about 10,000 Kg.

All these errors got compounded to such an extent that the lives of more than 150 people were put at risk. The conclusion of the review board was this was a result of poorly managed transition caused by a series of corporate failures and minor human errors.

These errors happen so often in many things we do. While for a lot of managers the consequences may not be that dangerous, from a business perspective they could be. Thus an important learning from this is the importance of Service Transition in today’s business where minor faults can be catastrophic.

‘The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.’— Alfred North Whitehead