Wow Airlines : A Project Management Failure

Wow Airlines has ceased operations March 28, 2019 stranding passengers everywhere across the globe. Reading the headlines it is surprising that Wow Airlines didn’t even have enough cash on hand to fly their passengers to their destinations and then ground their planes. That would be common courtesy and goodwill.

I am dissecting this from a project management perspective.

Triple Constraint

The triple constraint is scope, cost and time. Here I will start off with cost because Wow’s budget is bleeding red so many that it has to stop operating. I will delve deeper using reserve analysis. There are two parts of the reserve: contingency and management. As a project manager, you are in control of the reserve. The contingency reserve is a part of the cost baseline. The management reserve is the rest and it is controlled by management and not the project manager. In this case, Wow has exhausted all of its reserves because it does not have any money. These reserves are used for unknown knowns. Wow has been bleeding and burning cash for months. Everyone knows that…