Faster, Better, Cheaper
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a government agency which invents and implements aeronautical, space, and Earth science programs. NASA is currently led by an administrator, Daniel Goldin, who has done a good job leading NASA into the twenty-first century. In the early 1990's, through Goldin's leadership, NASA adopted the Faster, Better, Cheaper (FBC) approach to the project management of its space and Earth science missions. The goal was to shorten development times, reduce cost, and increase the scientific return by flying more missions in less time. This goal was driven by politics and funding. Politics play an important part in NASA's management strategies and has led to many changes in management style. Politics for all intents and purposes started NASA.NASA was formed as a result of Russia's Sputnik program successes. The official start of NASA was October 1, 1958. NASA inherited the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other government organizations, and almost immediately began working on options for human space flight. NASA's first high profile program was Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive in space, followed by Project Gemini, whi
So how well is NASA doing? Well, as with any major upheaval, NASA is being turned over in every sector, like fields in the spring to bring new growth. As with any major human endeavor, there have been successes and failures in the stress and strain of venturing onto new ground, trying new things, and taking risks to gain significant return. In the current NASA transition, they have moved from a few to too many Missions, requiring many more Project Managers, Project Teams and institutional support including Review Teams. Also, management attention has become diluted across these many Missions. As before with few missions, Project Managers worked through the ranks for many years to gain significant experience before they became Project Managers. Now with many missions this is not always possible, making training, mentoring, and peer review even more important. NASA needs to slow down some. They must not rush too quickly into important programs and projects. They must plan and implement them more carefully, and move away from fixations on cost and near term gain. To assist the learning process of doing programs at NASA's Centers, better reality checks of the feasibility of implementing the Mission within the program funding profile is needed. An FBC Project in a pre-project phase must be permitted to develop correct cost and schedule caps for the Mission scope by working estimates from the "bottom up" with all members of the Project Team participating, who then own their Project Plan.
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Approximate Word count = 1319
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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