1. EUROCONTROL Overall
ATM/CNS Target Architecture
The case of missing information

2. EUROCONTROL
EUROCONTROL: the European
Organisation for the Safety of Air
Navigation
Intergovernmental organisation
39 Member States and the
European Community

3. EUROCONTROL Overall ATM/CNS Target
Architecture - OATA
”Plug-and-play” management system
Integration of technology and operations
to simplify air traffic management in
EUROCONTROL member states
Several working groups
One steering group
Several working meetings per annum
Four annual steering group meetings

4. OATA - Stakeholders

5. OATA – Main working documents
Concept of Operations (ConOps) providing
detailed description of the Operational Concept for
OATA
Associated Operational Scenarios and Use Cases
Logical model of the proposed Overall ATM/CNS
Target Architecture
Detailed specification of ATM 2000+ Strategy
system enablers
Architecture Evolution plan for European Civil
Aviation Conference
Transition plans for selected stakeholders
Initial Validation, Safety, and Implementation
Assessment reports

6. OATA
Steering committee received all
documents for review and input
Steering committee supposed pass
on the documents to senior
engineers in their organisations for
further review and input
All developments were done in UML
language Rational Rose

7. Rational Rose

8. Problem – Project side
Developments were advancing at a
rather advanced pace
Not enough input from steering
group and corporate engineers
Project members needed more input
and reviews to ensure development
were accurate
Project members felt as they were
developing “in the dark”

9. Problem – Steering committee
High-level engineers which hadn't worked
with technical analysis for years
27+ nationalities, including the US and
Japan
Steering committee didn't provide
necessary input
Wasn't going to stand up in front of a
large audience of international peers and
admit that they didn't understand the
information sent

10. Communications' situation
”Neutral” position
Not an engineers myself
Can turn technical information into
non-technical texts
Senior managers felt they could
speak to me without “loosing face”

11. OATA – situation and problem to
solve
Steering committee didn't provide
input
Developers weren't certain the
covered the ground they needed
IF there was input the input came
too late
Corporate engineers complained
about not being engaged enough in
the process

12. OATA - communications
With communications you start with
the solution
Here the solution was more and
timelier input
Preferably also more contacts with
the stakeholders

13. OATA – how to advance
What would you do?
Why? How?

14. Way forward and Findings
Conducted several interviews 1-2-1
with steering committee members
Unanimous result: couldn't read
Rational Rose documents
Management summary too long for
the time steering group members
could allocate to the documentation
Didn't know whom to forward the
documents too

15. Solution
A newsletter of maximum three pages
Written and produced by me in a non-
technical language
Received a lot of criticism from the
project team for “treating the readers
as fools”
Web site
Seminars, workshops etc.

16. Newsletter

17. Newsletter

18. Results - Readership
They liked reading it
Quick, simple and cheerful
The readership (Steering committee)
got document they could digest
Based on its content they forwarded
the programme documents in their
organisation for evaluation and input

19. Results – Programme group
Necessary evaluation and input was
received
Better contacts with stakholder
engineers and developers
Better development as result
Both groups
− Better co-operation

20. How do you learn this?
Personality trait – curious and want
to know how “things” work
Ask, ask, ask
Learn to ask the right questions
It's OK to be “stupid”
Easiest way it to try to put yourself
in the audiences shoes

21. Why do I think this fun?
Engineers are solution minded
Matter in our daily lives
Look into the future
Interesting to figure out how to
”sell” technical concepts to a non-
technical audience
Actually make a difference in 100
years!

22. Questions?
Sara Magdalena Goldberger,
gold@goldkom.se