Stop the Plane, I Want to Get Off!

Home  >  Articles  > 
Stop the Plane, I Want to Get Off!

Paula Weber

June 7, 2000





Gerhard "Gerd" Fliegermeister is hopelessly overbooked as the senior IT project manager at Central European MegaAirlines. He spends no less than 95 percent of his time on the road--or in his case, in the air--as he jets his way around the world troubleshooting one mainframe problem after another. From flight and weather computers at headquarters to reservations and customer service operations at each airport served by Central European MegaAirlines, Gerd is responsible for anything having to do with mainframes (physical repairs to programming). A typical week could have him in his Frankfurt headquarters on Monday morning, in Munich by noon and in Ankara by nightfall. The following day, he’s on his way to South Africa via Hamburg and London. After spending a mere six hours in Johannesburg on Wednesday, he’ll head back to Frankfurt, then off to New York in the morning. Friday afternoon finds him in Buenes Aires trying to make his way back to headquarters after scheduling an emergency visit to Katmandu via Sidney and Auckland.

"I flew 340,000 miles last year," Gerd reports.



Please login/register to read the entire article.





sponsored announcements and special offers
CA Technologies' Innovation Management survey is a study into the barriers to innovation success and the measures companies are taking to improve performance. Each survey respondent will receive a complimentary copy of the report containing the survey's results. Please participate now!

Build and deploy interactive reports and dashboards — without any hidden costs. Our in-the-cloud free trial lets you see for yourself — no download required. SAP Crystal Reports Server 60-day Free Trial

Enable Agile Process; Support Agile Teams
CollabNet announces ScrumWorks Pro 4.4. As intuitive as Scrum itself, this version offers improvements in estimation and integration to CollabNet TeamForge. Improve your Scrum team's performance, enable tracking, view reports instantly, and effectively manage your Agile projects. Request a Trial

Enterprise hardware and software evolve faster than your customers can consume new versions and features. Overcome this gap: learn how professional services can boost product consumption and speed repurchasing in TSIA/Compuware white paper. Read now

Packaged Services Success: Join us on Sept 8 for this Free Webinar as RTM Consulting and Tenrox discuss the competitive and financial benefits of Leveraging Automation to meet the Rising Demand for Productized Professional Services. EARN 1 PDU. Register Here Today to receive a Free White Paper.



"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
- Douglas Adams