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A very interesting Project Management read comes from NASA’s Ask Magazine (issue 25) in an article written by Kim Ess titled Managing a Critical, Fast-Turnaround Project. It describes some of the challenges Kim faced as Project Manager when developing and deploying the Orbital Boom Sensor System (OBSS) on the space shuttle in the wake of the Columbia disaster in September of 2003.

There are a lot of challenges to managing this type of project, and most notable was its high visibility. After all, this was to be the solution to the problem, and literally everyone – the media, the public, congress, and practically the rest of the civilized world – knew something had to be done, and this was it. When you manage a project in such a “fish bowl” environment it’s easy to succumb to fear of failure or of making mistakes. (Nothing like a little pressure to add that certain zest, that zing, that je ne se qoi, eh?)

I definitely admire her style, though. Practically her first task was telling the Control Board their estimated cost and deadline of $40 million and six months were unrealistic. Her team’s assessment set the cost at $100 million, with completion expected to take 20 months (they were within 5 % of this estimate at completion). This is not an easy thing to do. But precisely because of that, it’s absolutely necessary for project success.

“I’ve sometimes said, jokingly, “We were working so hard we didn’t have time to do anything but tell the truth.” But the truth in that joke is that telling the Board anything less would have made the project much harder — depleting time, energy, and good will — when we inevitably would have had to go back to management to ask for more time and resources.”

The collaboration aspect, though, is what I find most exciting. The key to success, Kim found, was not only communication – they had plenty of that – but actual face-to-face time with contractors, clients, and team members. This is something I don’t think is emphasized enough when it comes to big-ticket, high-visibility, or mission-critical projects. When the chips are down, there is no good substitute for actual face time. It helps align team members and develop that trust in each other that is invaluable in achieving the goal. Managing from a distance is simply not as effective.

This was useful in breaking through the NASA culture of “having a solution before reporting a problem”. When the entire team was appraised of potential problems they were able to successfully bring more resources to address the challenge before it caused the inevitable domino effect on other activities down the line. That trust, developed during face time, was invaluable.

Another thing that really worked was having a central repository of information and links that could be shared rather than having to distribute actual documents. Call this one a best practice for sure – it saves time, money, and IT overhead by cutting bandwidth dramatically.

One final lesson learned came from the fact that due to unrelated issues, their deadline kept moving; in effect, giving them more time. But extra time is not always a good thing (we engineers love to tinker and make things better), and a good PM knows when to draw the line. I’ll never forget a sign I saw once in an auto assembly plant production manager’s office: “Sooner or later you have to shoot the engineers and start production.”

Overall a great article. Discovery launched in July of 2005, and the new OBSS worked as expected. What more can a PM ask? Kudos to Kim and her team for a job well done!

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