Should Qantas sack their website team?

[Caversham04]

It seemed to be fixed last time I booked a flight.

Where's the "Dislike" button - I quite enjoyed my $170+ refund ?

 

[Caversham04]

...... Anyone who can develop a flight search system where someone seeking business flights gets smothered in "mixed class" fares, is just not understanding the task......... MEL-SYD in J then SYD - DFW in Y is NOT what I am looking for when I search for a business class MEL-DFW ticket!!!!!!!!

Designing a booking systems such as the QF system would not be an easy task

Agreed, juddles - how many people have had a nasty shock on the day of their flight because they didn't know that the little exclamation marks on the Select Your Flights page means that it's a mixed-class booking?

Harvyk - I'm not disagreeing with the overall level of complexity that lies behind what we see as users BUT the Qantas system already identifies mixed-class fares and the sectors to which each class applies (although it does its best to make them non-obvious on the booking pages!!), so it can't be rocket science to have a little selection box to say "Allow Mixed Class Fares?" or "Allow Economy only for Domestic connections"? I'm not a programmer but I would expect that it should be a simple filter applied to the flights that the software has already identified?

 

[harvyk]

Harvyk - I'm not disagreeing with the overall level of complexity that lies behind what we see as users BUT the Qantas system already identifies mixed-class fares and the sectors to which each class applies (although it does its best to make them non-obvious on the booking pages!!), so it can't be rocket science to have a little selection box to say "Allow Mixed Class Fares?" or "Allow Economy only for Domestic connections"? I'm not a programmer but I would expect that it should be a simple filter applied to the flights that the software has already identified?

Whilst I can't comment specifically on how the QF system is designed, in general typically when you are attempting to join two separate record sets into the one search where the results of one affect the other, and you have a variety of parameters which filter out results for 1 set of those records, but not another, it becomes very complex very quickly.

This is not to say it can't be done, but it's hardly a trivial thing.

 

[RooFlyer]

<snip>
Programming is one of those things, everyone assumes it's easy (because us developers throw around the words "easy" a little too often), and because these days we hide a lot of the complexity behind splash screens and spinning mouse wheels. It is also impossible to test every possible permutation which someone might put through the system, either as a user, or as an administrator, so it is possible for undesired behaviours to sneak in.

(No, I don't work for QF, but I am a software developer)

I thoroughly respect your software knowledge and don't doubt its all quite complex "under the hood".

But fair dinkum - this is a very large corporation obtaining a vast amount of its revenue through bookings on its web site and no doubt would like to get a higher % and avoid TA etc costs. The 'work experience kids' jibe hasn't come from nothing. Time after time we get the web site revised or tinkered with and its come back live with non functionality (such as the time the 'book business class' button (as it was then) didn't work!), 'layout' compromised, spelling errors etc. It's been pointed out here that going live with errors or even current inadequacies may not be the software people's fault, but rather management or the tester's, but they are all in the 'QF web site team' as far as I'm concerned.

If a firm got its sales from safety equipment and that equipment failed or was faulty or worked badly as frequently as the QF web site, no-one would be very forgiving.

 

[esseeeayeenn]

Qantas doesn't need to sack anyone, they need to hire more people.
Specifically their IT section needs some people who are not IT professionals.
People who are deliberately kept ignorant of "what's inside the box" and provide testing and feedback.
In-house "end-users" if you will.
Nothing should go live until it satisfies that team.
IT professionals are the experts on how to make such things work, but definitely not the best judges of when they do work for end-users.
Their very expertise contaminates their user experience.

 

[Franky]

The route map works for me too but I was simply looking for a basic alphabetical list that I could nail to the wall as a quick reference. Because I have to travel with baggage, Qantas destinations are much easier because I can book straight through, rather than mixing airlines and shifting luggage about. It makes a difference when you get a phone call asking if you can go to destination X.

If you select a destination, it will take you to a box which lists their destinations, for both domestic and international ports. However, it is not well formatted for what you want. Don't try to select Doha, which I appreciate is not where you usually travel, but it is the home port for one of their OW partners and does not appear on the list. Pushing us towards DXB perhaps to favour their other ME partner? I'm with you, I believe their web site is the least user friendly of the handful that I use.

 

[Daver6]

Agreed, juddles - how many people have had a nasty shock on the day of their flight because they didn't know that the little exclamation marks on the Select Your Flights page means that it's a mixed-class booking?

Harvyk - I'm not disagreeing with the overall level of complexity that lies behind what we see as users BUT the Qantas system already identifies mixed-class fares and the sectors to which each class applies (although it does its best to make them non-obvious on the booking pages!!), so it can't be rocket science to have a little selection box to say "Allow Mixed Class Fares?" or "Allow Economy only for Domestic connections"? I'm not a programmer but I would expect that it should be a simple filter applied to the flights that the software has already identified?

Its just assumed that its not implemented because of IT reasons. It could very well be a business decision.

 

[Franky]

Designing a booking systems such as the QF system would not be an easy task.


Perhaps not, but other web sites can, they might have a look at them to see what they have to offer. QF has been described as clunky, and thats not far off the mark.

 

[Franky]

Basic usability on the site is poor. Automatically resetting/clearing fields, regular errors when searching for flights, some cities in the From field but not the To field etc - all very poor. Also appears to be way too many unplanned and planned maintenance events. Shouldn't happen for a major, consumer facing site. This is 2016 not 1996. All quite easy to fix, but requires more $$$ than Qantas are willing to spend and if consumers keep on booking flights then it wont change.

Saying other airlines websites are also bad is no excuse.

Couldn't agree more with all of the above, they are relatively minor issues but generate much frustration and should be easy to correct.

 

[harvyk]

Its just assumed that its not implemented because of IT reasons. It could very well be a business decision.

Hit the nail 100% on the head there.

It's amazing how often IT projects make their way out into the real world with known bugs and issues, and I can tell you from personal experience it is not much fun being the poor sap whom is explaining to upper management why releasing the software as it is now is not a good idea, often upper management will simply say to release bugs and all.

Sometimes the reasons range from "we said we will ship by x date, so we WILL ship by x date", through to "don't work on x feature as it won't bring in the money like y feature will".

 

[harvyk]

Qantas doesn't need to sack anyone, they need to hire more people.
Specifically their IT section needs some people who are not IT professionals.
People who are deliberately kept ignorant of "what's inside the box" and provide testing and feedback.
In-house "end-users" if you will.
Nothing should go live until it satisfies that team.
IT professionals are the experts on how to make such things work, but definitely not the best judges of when they do work for end-users.
Their very expertise contaminates their user experience.

What you are talking about is hiring a dedicated test team. There is a full on methodology behind doing good testing, and it's not just clicking buttons at random.

As funny as it seams just releasing to end users with the instructions of "just tell us your problems" is a really bad way of testing, as features and functions are rarely tested properly. The software is tested to the point of how that particular end user would use it, not how both Joe Bloggs and Jane Doe public are likely to use it.

Don't know if QF have such a team or not.

 

[harvyk]

I thoroughly respect your software knowledge and don't doubt its all quite complex "under the hood".

But fair dinkum - this is a very large corporation obtaining a vast amount of its revenue through bookings on its web site and no doubt would like to get a higher % and avoid TA etc costs. The 'work experience kids' jibe hasn't come from nothing. Time after time we get the web site revised or tinkered with and its come back live with non functionality (such as the time the 'book business class' button (as it was then) didn't work!), 'layout' compromised, spelling errors etc. It's been pointed out here that going live with errors or even current inadequacies may not be the software people's fault, but rather management or the tester's, but they are all in the 'QF web site team' as far as I'm concerned.

If a firm got its sales from safety equipment and that equipment failed or was faulty or worked badly as frequently as the QF web site, no-one would be very forgiving.

Big company whom are not IT specialists and therefore IT will be considered a sunk cost, and therefore getting anything past the bean counters is likely to be a struggle.

QF have a website and IT systems because they know it will drive business, but like all such sunk costs if QF thought they could do just as well without involvement of IT systems you can bet your bottom dollar those systems would be scrapped faster than you could blink.

Using the example of "safety equipment", QF do look after the things which are their primary business (such as keeping their planes flying) in much the same way a company whom is selling "Safety equipment" would make sure the stuff they are selling is A1.

 

[Pushka]

I was looking at a J classic award ticket that wanted J points deduction and the whole flight (Int) was in Y on clicking the !

 

[serfty]

I was looking at a J classic award ticket that wanted J points deduction and the whole flight (Int) was in Y on clicking the !

Who says that's a software failure ... it could be planned

 

[Pushka]

Who says that's a software failure ... it could be planned

Another enhancement indeed.

 

[exceladdict]

Its just assumed that its not implemented because of IT reasons. It could very well be a business decision.

Things that we think are frustrating could well fall under this area - like the desire to deselect EK, indirect or mixed-class award bookings.

Does anyone know if QF in-source or outsource their Booking/Inventory/Revenue Management/Resource Planning systems? IBM, Accenture, etc? Whether it's a global or Australian IT company, it comes down to the fact IT systems - including websites - aren't products, they're monstrosities built on services. Every change means someone's time, and if it's a dev's time, it's expensive time.

My guess is their inventory/revenue management system has a set number of restricted interfaces that QF's Web contractor has to "plug in" to, to sell tickets etc. Yes, there are bugs, but it does what it's meant to, most of the time - book revenue seats for people with mainstream itineraries. I agree the "well, there's worse out there" argument is no excuse, but giving in to every customer's whim is never possible, especially when there's millions of them.

 

[wandering_fred]

At least someone seems to have found a way to have the home page load a bit faster...
I wonder if they will be promoted to a position that doesn't include coding?

Happy wandering

Fred

 

[esseeeayeenn]

What you are talking about is hiring a dedicated test team. There is a full on methodology behind doing good testing, and it's not just clicking buttons at random.

As funny as it seams just releasing to end users with the instructions of "just tell us your problems" is a really bad way of testing, as features and functions are rarely tested properly. The software is tested to the point of how that particular end user would use it, not how both Joe Bloggs and Jane Doe public are likely to use it.

Don't know if QF have such a team or not.

I never suggested anyone push buttons at random.

 

[harvyk]

I never suggested anyone push buttons at random.

The general public will, thats the problem when you release software to a large audience.

 

[wandering_fred]

One thing the methodologies never seem to test (with internet apps at least) is how the users scale the page to their screens. Scaled large to allow for "older eyes" sometimes the obvious functionality mysteriously disappears "off screen" and you wonder what the "next step" really should be... Cathay is a good example of that when the "confirm" buttons don't appear. And QF in the old format was guilty as well.

Happy wandering

Fred