Lufthansa’s digital future takes flight with ‘Digital Hangar’
Summary
Each Hangar houses agile coaches, business analysts, data and analytics specialists, product owners, Scrum masters, software engineers, and user interface designers — all with one mission: to elevate the airlines’ digital customer experience before, during, and after the flight. “This means we acknowledge that digital is a cross-functional effort, rather than operating in silos of technology and business,” he says, adding that the Hangar is also moving to a product-centric model, “as we believe that digital services require a product management approach to get really outstanding results, rather than ramping up a project and setting its mission, and then ramping it down again.” This is the most significant difference of the Hangar hubs, he continues, when compared to the traditional technology team within an airline. “Test, measure, and learn comes with responsibility, so it has a lot to do with a healthy failure culture and leadership.” Lufthansa Group is joining a host of major business peers in powering up a digital hub in Barcelona, including fast-moving consumer goods makers Danone and Unilever, tech firm Dynatrace, and Roche in pharmaceuticals. “The environment is very promising as it offers a very diverse open community, with access to tech innovation and startups,” he says, adding that the Barcelona center, which is operated by partner Quantion, will complement the other hubs in the Digital Hangar network. Many different cultures and communities come together here, and I feel that eases the collaboration, and this is the perfect fit to our target and our culture.” The Digital Hangar has, of course, begun to work with generative AI, too, with the first iteration being used for the Lufthansa Group staff portal.