appl.nasa.gov

INTERVIEW

Dennis Grounds

ASK Magazine • Issue F ASK Magazine • Issue Fifteen ifteen

DECEMBER 2003 DECEMBER 2003

Academy Sharing Knowledge y Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management The NASA source for project management
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Table of Contents

ASK 15 December 2003

STORIES

6 Class Act 

We were in the design phase for Viking, and I didn’t see how it was possible for me 

to leave the project at that point BY TOM YOUNG 

9 Would You Raise Your Hand?

I remember thinking, “What an innovative concept, but it will never work in our system”

BY DR. OWEN GADEKEN 

12 A Good Man Is Hard to Find 

One-person depth is not the same as “only one person can do it” BY MARTY DAVIS 

16 Staying on the Lookout 

I learned that he had equipment for rapid prototyping that I didn’t have at Ames

BY FRANK LARSEN

19 Dedication

Instead of deploying the Web site in four months, they wanted it up in just four weeks 

BY JEANNE M. HOLM 

FEATURES

24 The Long Journey

Sometimes as managers, mentors, and coaches, we need to re-examine our career 

“musts” and “wants” BY W. SCOTT CAMERON 

26 Sink or Swim

I told her that she was going into that job whether she liked it or not

BY TERRY LITTLE

SPECIAL FEATURE: CAREER DEVELOPMENT

28 The Enterprise Project

We were twenty-three people thrown together in a room, without a leader 

BY WENDY DOLCI 

PRACTICES

34 Fly on the Wall

This seemed like a great way for me to experience a review from a new perspective 

BY DR. GERALD MULENBURG

INTERVIEW

38 ASK Talks with Dennis Grounds 

A seasoned project manager looks back on his decision to move to Washington, D.C.,

for a one-year assignment, and considers how it may impact the rest of his career

IN THIS ISSUE • 3

Oh, Develop

BY TODD POST

REVIEW BOARD • 4

FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK • 5

So, Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?

BY DR. EDWARD HOFFMAN

LETTER FROM THE 

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF • 44

Small Wins

BY DR. ALEXANDER LAUFER

ON THE COVER The Inter The International Space Station national Space Station

flies o flies over Mongolia ver Mongolia
2 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

WELCOME TO THE ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT

Leadership (APPL) and ASK Magazine. APPL helps

NASA managers and project teams accomplish today’s

missions and meet tomorrow’s challenges by providing

performance enhancement services and tools, supporting

career development programs, sponsoring knowledge

sharing events and publications, and creating opportunities for project management collaboration with universities, professional associations, industry partners, and

other government agencies.

ASK Magazine grew out of APPL’s Knowledge

Sharing Initiative. The stories that appear in ASK are

written by the “best of the best” project managers,

primarily from NASA, but also from other government

agencies and industry. These stories contain genuine

nuggets of knowledge and wisdom that are transferable

across projects. Who better than a project manager to

help another project manager address a critical issue on a

project? Big projects, small projects—they’re all here in ASK.

Please direct all inquiries about ASK Magazine editorial

policy to Todd Post, EduTech Ltd., 8455 Colesville Rd.,

Suite 930, Silver Spring, MD 20910, (301) 585-1030; or

email to tpost@edutechltd.com.

APPL DIRECTOR AND PUBLISHER 

Dr. Edward Hoffman 

ehoffman@hq.nasa.gov 

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Dr. Alexander Laufer 

allaufer@eng.umd.edu

EDITOR

Todd Post

tpost@edutechltd.com

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Jody Lannen Brady

jbrady@edutechltd.com

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

W. Scott Cameron 

Terry Little 

Ray Morgan

KNOWLEDGE SHARING MANAGERS 

Denise Lee

dlee@edutechltd.com 

Therese Salmon

tsalmon@edutechltd.com

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Michael Derocher

mderocher@edutechltd.com 

DESIGN

Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group, Inc.

www.hzdg.com 

SENIOR PRINTING SPECIALIST

Dave Dixon

ddixon@hq.nasa.gov 

PRINTING

Fontana Lithograph, Inc.

STAFF

ASK ONLINE

http://appl.nasa.gov/ask
IN A MATURE VIEW OF THE SUBJECT, CAREER DEVELOPMENT

is not simply four years of college or a week at training,

culminating in a diploma or a certificate to hang on an

office wall. That’s why we wanted to take a broad look

at career development in this issue of ASK. Take for

example, Dr. Gerald Mulenburg’s contribution, “Fly on

the Wall.” When Mulenburg and other members of a

knowledge-sharing group at Ames were invited to

observe an upcoming project review, Mulenburg

thought it would be interesting to learn how another

project does its reviews.

Note that Mulenburg is no “fresh out” who’s never

attended a NASA project review. Not only has he been

through a fair share of them as the reviewed, he has also

been on the other side of the table as a reviewer. This

experienced project manager recognizes that at any

stage of a career there is room to grow and develop

one’s repertoire.

Too often people associate career development with

textbooks and rote classroom training, far removed from

project life. But classroom training need not be like this,

as you’ll find in our Special Feature, “The Enterprise

Project” by Wendy Dolci, which sprung out of an APPL

Advanced Project Management class in July 2003 at

Ames Research Center.

In addition to Dolci, some of her classmates

contribute to the story. Mike Sander of the Jet

Propulsion Laboratory, project manager for the Mars

Science Laboratory mission, who provided the assignment on which the story is based, also has a cameo in

the story. We think Dolci’s story is an inspiring example

of what classroom training can be if it’s approached

imaginatively and made to serve a practical purpose.

Another story from Ames, by Frank Larsen, takes a

different twist on career development. At the annual

Experimental Aircraft Association Fly-in in Oshkosh,

Wisconsin, Larsen represented Ames at a NASA booth.

While there, Larsen met a colleague from Glenn

Research Center.

Months later on a project with a quick turnaround,

he remembered his colleague from Glenn who had

equipment that might help Larsen save time and money

on his project. Although they had never worked together

and they had to unravel a lot of red tape before they could

collaborate, they managed a way to get the job done.

That’s the fun part of the story, but we think

“Staying on the Lookout” also depicts the unassuming

relationship between serendipity and career development. Much the way it does in Tom Young’s story,

“Class Act,” when the opportunity to go back to school

coincided with Young’s working for a manager enlightened enough to value the personal development of

team members.

There are other stories in this issue that deal

directly with this theme of career development. Then

there are others in which it is less explicit. But if you

take the view that career development happens all the

time, and is as necessary to your survival as breathing,

then you can read almost any story in ASK with your

career development in mind. In that case, all the best,

and so then—start developing. •

Oh, Develop

Stories in ASK Magazine demonstrate that career development is rarely

something successful project managers consider just a phase of their career

IN THIS ISSUE Todd Post

ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 3
4 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

REVIEW BOARD

JOHN BRUNSON of the Marshall Space Flight Center is a

member of the NASA Program Management

Council Working Group. He served as project

manager for three separate microgravity

payloads that flew on various Spacelab

missions. His career in the space industry began

in 1980 as a technician working on the first Space Shuttle.

DR. MICHELLE COLLINS works in the Spaceport Engineering

& Technology Research Group at Kennedy

Space Center. She has over twenty years

experience in aerospace spanning engineering,

R&D and project management. She is on the

Florida Tech Engineering Accreditation Board,

the National Fire Protection Association’s Technical Committee

for Halon Alternatives, and the United Nations Environmental

Programme Halon Technical Options Committee.

HECTOR DELGADO is Division Chief of Process Tools and

Techniques in the Safety, Health and

Independent Assessment Directorate at the

Kennedy Space Center. In 1995, he served as

Senior Technical Staff to the NASA Chief

Engineer at NASA Headquarters in Washington,

D.C. He has received many honors and awards including the

Exceptional Service Medal, Silver Snoopy Award, and various

achievement awards.

DR. OWEN GADEKEN is a Professor of Engineering Management

at the Defense Acquisition University where he

has taught Department of Defense program

and project managers for over twenty years. He

retired last year from the Air Force Reserve as a

Colonel and Senior Reservist at the Air Force

Office of Scientific Research. He is a frequent speaker at project

management conferences and symposia.

DR. MICHAEL HECHT has been with NASA since 1982 at the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He is project

manager and a co-investigator for the Mars

Environmental Compatibility Assessment

(MECA). In his previous assignment with

NASA’s New Millennium Program, he was

instrumental in defining the “microlander” that was adopted as

NASA’s New Millennium Program Deep Space 2.

JODY ZALL KUSEK is a Senior Evaluation Officer at the World

Bank. She is currently involved in supporting

the efforts of seven governments to move to a

focus of performance-based management. She

has spent many years in the area of public

sector reform, serving the Vice President of the

United States, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, and the U.S.

Secretary of Energy in the areas of Strategic Planning and

Performance Management.

DONALD MARGOLIES of the Goddard Space Flight Center was

Project Manager for the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) mission, launched in

1997 and still operating successfully. He

received the NASA Medal for Outstanding

Leadership for his work on ACE and a NASA

Exceptional Service Medal for the Active Magnetospheric

Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE) mission.

DR. GERALD MULENBURG is the Manager of the Aeronautics

and Spaceflight Hardware Development

Division at the NASA Ames Research Center.

He has project management experience in

airborne, spaceflight, and ground research

projects with the Air Force, industry, and NASA.

He also served as Executive Director of the California Math

Science Task Force and as Assistant Director of the Lawrence

Hall of Science.

JOAN SALUTE is the Associate Director of Aerospace at Ames

Research Center. She has managed many

NASA projects including those involving flight

testing of thermal protection materials,

commercial technology, commercial applications of remote sensing, and remote sensing

science projects. She has been at Ames for twenty years, and was

awarded the Sloan Fellowship to attend Stanford Graduate

School of Business.

HARVEY SCHABES is currently assigned to the Systems

Management Office at the Glenn Research

Center. He started his career with NASA in

icing research, and since then has served in

numerous organizations in support of the

Space Station Program.

CHARLIE STEGEMOELLER is Manager of the Johnson Space

Center (JSC) Human Space Life Sciences

Programs Office. He is responsible for the

programmatic and tactical implementation of

the lead center assignments for Space Medicine,

Biomedical Research and Countermeasures,

and Advanced Human Support Technology. He began his

career at NASA in 1985 with JSC Comptroller’s Office as a

technical program analyst.

HUGH WOODWARD is a Program Manager for Global Business

Services with the Procter & Gamble Company.

He served as the Chairman of the Project

Management Institute (PMI) for consecutive

terms in 2000 and 2001. He was elected to the

Board of Directors in 1996, and before being

elected as the chair, served terms as vice chair and in several

other key leadership roles.
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 5

AS A GRADUATE STUDENT AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,

one afternoon I decided to ask my advisor, Warner

Burke, for help in finding an internship. I was aware 

of the connections Warner had with British Airways 

and Citibank, and I was hoping 

he could steer me towards one 

of them. As it turned out,

he mentioned that NASA

Headquarters was looking for a

COOP student to work on a 

joint research project. Before I

knew it, I was in Washington,

D.C., working at NASA. All

this without career planning, a

resume, or an interview.

While at Headquarters, I was

invited to the 1983 training officers’ conference. I drove

there with the Goddard Training Officer, and at the end

of the three-hour ride, he indicated an interest in

bringing me to Goddard should anything open up. Two

years later I got a call and started working at Goddard in

January of 1986. Once again, I wasn’t sure how events

played out, but I knew that luck and meeting the right

people at the right time provided a major assist.

Several years later, opportunity knocked again

when I was asked to apply for an agency position as

assistant to the head of the Program Project

Management Initiative (precursor to NASA APPL).

The position represented a significant departure from

my previous work, and it took me some time to decide

to apply. Eventually, I decided that I wanted the job.

Once again, fate appeared to be on my side: I was

selected for the job.

In all of these critical career events, the role of

people, timing, circumstance, and serendipity superceded

more formal career planning and

development. People have always

been there for me at the right time.

I am, therefore, a big proponent of

the power of the network.

So does it all come down to

dumb luck, or blind fate?

It is simple to ascribe meeting

the right people at the right time

to luck. In each of the previous

situations, however, I was prepared

to take advantage of the opportunity presented to me. In every situation I encountered, my

academic background was an advantage. In addition, I

have been fortunate that my work experiences have been

both visible and valued. When visibility and value

intersect, it creates opportunity and a halo effect.

As I ponder the role of luck in my professional

progression, I am reminded of the line from Dirty

Harry, when Clint Eastwood says, “You’ve got to ask

yourself one question...Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya

punk?” With twenty years of work to reflect on, I guess

I do feel lucky.

But another quote comes to mind, as well—this one

from the world of baseball. Branch Rickey once said,

“Luck is the residue of design.” The way I see it, luck is

only as good as the preparation that goes into it. •

So, Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?

The start of my career at NASA was largely based on serendipity

People have always been

there for me at the right

time. I am, therefore,

a big proponent of the

power of the network.

FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK Dr. Edward Hoffman
6 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

BY TOM YOUNG
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 7

IN 1971, I WAS WORKING ON THE VIKING PROGRAM WHEN

my center director, Ed Cortright, recommended that I

accept an offer to become an MIT Sloan Fellow. I

certainly considered it a flattering offer—but the timing

couldn’t have been worse. We were in the preliminary

design phase for Viking, and I didn’t see how it was

possible for me to leave the project at that point.

Actually, on Viking all phases of the project were

critical. It was NASA’s first mission to soft-land a spacecraft on Mars, and we understood the opportunity we

had, coming only six years after landing on the moon.

The project manager was a gentleman by the name

of Jim Martin. He not only displayed an extraordinary

amount of discipline in his own work, he required it of

the people who worked for him. He understood that the

way you get in trouble is by cutting corners, and he was

committed to excellence. He lived it, and he pushed it

every day. It’s fair to say that he was known as a

demanding manager.

I had been selected by Jim to be one of a handful of

critical people on the project. When I got the call from

Ed, I was in the middle of establishing relationships with

all the scientists. I couldn’t imagine that Jim would let

me go without a fight.

But that’s when he taught me something about

leadership that I have never forgotten. Though it was

going to cause difficulties for his project, Jim encouraged me to take the Sloan fellowship. He agreed with Ed

that it was too good an opportunity for me to pass up,

and it would be too important a step in my career not to

take. Jim might be demanding of the people working for

him, but he cared an awful lot about them, and he was

willing to make sacrifices to invest in them. That’s what

I learned.

When Jim told me I should take the Sloan fellowship, I wasn’t about to argue with him. But I told him that

when I finished at MIT I wanted to come back to Viking.

“You’re welcome back,” he told me. But he also

made it clear that I wouldn’t be entitled to anything other

than the opportunity to return to the project and work

hard—in whatever position he needed filled at the time.

This story so far has been about Jim Martin and

Viking, but I also want to say something about career

development. When an opportunity comes up, whether

it is to go to Sloan or to attend one of the APPL classes

at Wallops Island, I would urge any project manager, or

aspiring project manager, to consider the value that

training offers not just to them, but also to their

He not only displayed an extraordinary amount of discipline in

his own work, he required it of the people who worked for him.

VIKING 2 CAPTURES A BOULDER STREWN LANDSCAPE ON MARS IN 1976.
8 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

projects—and to the Agency, in giving young leaders the

chance to develop.

Sloan did many things for me. One, I was exposed

to academic subjects that were new to me. Before going

to MIT, my expertise was all technical; through the

Sloan program I had the opportunity to study business

and management, and to see another side of project

work. Even more important than that, it was an

enormous confidence-builder for me. It gave me the

personal self-confidence to do things that I don’t think I

would have done without that experience.

I was an engineer who had worked almost my whole

career at NASA. In my classes, I met people from all the

major industries, and also from several foreign countries.

When I went to MIT, I had no idea if I would be able to

hang in there with the likes of them. To my delight, I

found out that I could.

When I returned from Sloan a year later, I was

ready to give back to NASA and I returned to the Viking

program. I wasn’t treated special for having gone to

MIT, but Jim put me in a position that he thought was

right for me—and, eventually, he gave me even more

responsibility than I had when I left. I stayed until the

end of the project. Viking launched in 1975, and the

history books tell the story of our accomplishments

better than I can.

After Viking, I went to NASA Headquarters as

director of the Planetary Program. I went from there to

the Ames Research Center, where I was appointed deputy

director, and then on to the Goddard Space Flight

Center, where I became center director. I left NASA in

1982 to join Martin Marietta, where I eventually was

appointed president and chief operating officer.

The Sloan experience was critical to what I did afterwards, but so was having worked for people like Jim

Martin and Ed Cortright, who realized the importance of

developing young people to be leaders. In essence, what

they told me was, “Look, this stuff you’re doing now is

important, but so is preparing yourself for the future.”

That’s another thing I learned from Jim. Real leaders

understand that if they make decisions that are in the

best interest of their employees’ careers, then everyone

benefits. Certainly, the individuals involved have more

opportunities. But project managers also gain; they get a

more qualified workforce, and they earn a reputation for

being managers who good people want to work for.

Jim Martin certainly influenced me by helping me

to understand that the development of people is a

critical responsibility of any leader. Because he was

willing to invest in my future, I stretched myself to do

things that I might not have had the confidence or the

courage to do on my own. •

LESSONS

• Good managers do not stand in the way of employee

advancement and development. In fact, they encourage it.

• Project success often depends on having the right

people in the right roles. Competition for the “right”

people is stronger now than ever, and a project manager

who wants to recruit strong teams should establish a

reputation as someone who takes care of people.

QUESTION

When you have offers to join more than one project team, what

are your considerations when deciding which offer to accept?

In essence, what they told me was, “Look, this stuff you’re

doing now is important, but so is preparing for your future.”

After earning a Masters of Management

degree from the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, TOM YOUNG returned to NASA,

and earned the Agency’s highest award, the

Distinguished Service Medal, for his role as

mission director on the Viking project.

He went on to receive the Outstanding Leadership Medal for

his contributions to the Voyager program, the Meritorious

Executive Presidential Rank Award, and the Distinguished

Executive Award. He finished his career as Executive Vice

President of Lockheed Martin Corporation.

“I’m trying to be retired now,” says Young, though his resume

might not concur. Since “retiring” in 1995, Young has served

on several boards of directors and chaired reviews of NASA’s

Mars and International Space Station programs, as well as

DoD’s space program.
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 9

WOULD YOU RAISE YOUR HAND?

BY DR. OWEN GADEKEN 

THE SCENE WAS ALL TOO FAMILIAR TO ME: A NEW LEADER WITH A NEW PROJECT. GONE WERE MY DAYS AS A MANAGER

ON AIR FORCE MISSILE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS. I HAD JUST JOINED THE FACULTY AT DEFENSE SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT

COLLEGE TO TEACH PROJECT MANAGEMENT. NOW WE HAD A NEW COMMANDANT, AN AIR FORCE BRIGADIER GENERAL

WHO WAS OUT TO REVOLUTIONIZE OUR CAPSTONE PROJECT MANAGEMENT COURSE.
10 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

IN DUE FASHION, HE ASSEMBLED HIS PROJECT TEAM OF

faculty and staff and announced he had a “new vision”

for project management training in the Department of

Defense. We would create a new course with a single

evolving project as a central theme. We would cover the

entire project life cycle using a series of case studies

based on this single project. Further, we would construct

the new course as a “living project” so that student

decisions could be incorporated to change the scenario

as it evolved. This ability to adjust the case “on the fly”

would allow students to actually see the impact of their

early decisions on project outcomes.

As he went on, I remember saying to myself, “What

an innovative concept, but it will never work in our

system.” We had up to 300 students going through the

course at a time. If each student group were allowed to

adjust the scenario as they went along, we would have

an enormous configuration management problem.

Also, the bulk of our cases studies came from real

world projects where we had actual cost, schedule, and

performance data. Where would we get the data to feed

to each group as they departed from the baseline

scenario? Our faculty prided themselves on meticulous

preparation before teaching each case study. What type

of faculty would it take to respond to this constantly

changing scenario? A set of “negative fantasies” raced

through my mind if we were to adopt the commandant’s

new approach.

After concluding with a comment about how this

would revolutionize our educational process, the

commandant said he was interested in our candid

feedback on his proposal. My instant reaction was,

“Sure, he’s interested in feedback—as long as it supports

his idea.” Having been through situations like this many

times before, I resolved to keep my mouth shut and was

certain my colleagues would do likewise. Even if the

vision proved futile, which was highly likely in my

opinion, we would just wait a couple years for the next

commandant to rotate in with another vision.

So I anticipated the usual prolonged and uncomfortable silence followed by a politically correct question

or two. But this was not to be as my colleague Don, who

had convinced me to change jobs and come to the

college, raised his hand and stood up to speak from the

back of the room. “Sir, with all due respect, your vision

won’t work. I admire the concept, but it is too complex

for our students and faculty to execute.”

I knew Don was thinking this, but I couldn’t believe

he was saying it publicly. I lapsed briefly into another

negative fantasy. Perhaps the commandant would let

Don stay on for a few months before he terminated his

faculty appointment (all faculty were on excepted service

term appointments). Or maybe he would just reassign

him to one of our new regional “outposts.”

After giving Don time to outline the reasons to

support his position, the commandant responded

immediately. He surprised us all by praising Don for his

courage in voicing an opinion counter to his vision. The

general went on to say that he encouraged people to

state their honest opinions even if they were not in

agreement with his or other senior leadership positions.

Even after this statement by the commandant,

many of us continued to expect negative fallout from

Don’s challenge to the general’s vision. But it never

came. Don kept his viewpoint, his job, and actually

became the commandant’s favorite “lightening rod” for

candid feedback on any new proposals.

And the commandant’s vision? It never came to be,

either. We worked hard on it and had some success in

our pilot offering. But, in the end, Don was right. It was

too complex for both faculty and students to execute. So

we gradually moved back to enhancing our current

course offering.

Ironically, there were several positive repercussions

from this experience. Don’s “free to speak your mind”

example was not lost on the organization. Other faculty

and staff gradually felt more empowered to speak up and

offer their candid views about on-going projects.

Even though the commandant’s vision ultimately

failed, we learned a great deal from the experience that

was incorporated as improvements to our existing

project management courses. We also kept the spirit of

experimentation and allowance for failure alive and well

at the college. We continued to try new approaches.

Even if they didn’t succeed, we always learned valuable

lessons from the process.

And the commandant? He gave the vision his “best

shot” and after the normal two-year tour, retired, moved

to Colorado, finished his doctorate, and embarked on a

new career as an independent consultant.

As I think back on this incident, it stands out clearly

as one of the “tipping points” in my career in project

management training. While it seemed like an almost

MY INSTANT REACTION WAS, “SURE, HE’S INTERESTED

IN FEEDBACK — AS LONG AS IT SUPPORTS HIS IDEA.”
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 11

trivial event at the time, it reinforced the value of praising

rather than “shooting the messenger.” I found myself

using this same approach on teams I led with equally

successful results. •

LESSONS

• Even the most trivial event can influence the climate

and ultimately the results on a project.

• Being able to speak freely without repercussion is an

important element in any team or project.

• Sometimes our negative fantasies keep us from making

positive contributions to our team or project.

QUESTION

In light of evidence that suggests cultural change is rarely accomplished strictly by executive fiat, what can we do to cultivate an

environment in which speaking up is rewarded, not silenced?

FROM THE ASK ARCHIVES

In addition to serving on the ASK Review Board, DR. OWEN GADEKEN has published a practice in Issue 2 and

stories in Issues 7 and 11. In his practice, “Cross-Training within the Project Team,” Gadeken discussed the

“internal conflicts” across functional organizations that hamper project work: “What happens is that team

members form stereotypes and make snap judgments about what their colleagues are doing and why. To prevent this kind of

conflict from undermining the project, I believe it is helpful to set up short cross-functional training sessions that allow project

team members to explain the key elements of their job to the other members of the project team. The intent of these sessions

is to: (1) establish closer cross-functional working relationships among project team members; (2) identify dysfunctional gaps

and overlaps between team members; (3) raise the general level of project knowledge among team members; and (4) raise the

level of trust and openness among all project team members.”

HE ENCOURAGED PEOPLE TO STATE THEIR HONEST

OPINIONS EVEN IF THEY WERE NOT IN AGREEMENT WITH

SENIOR LEADERSHIP POSITIONS.
12 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

A GOOD FIND

MAN

TO

IS HARD
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 13

EVERY PROJECT HAS ITS STORIES. THE ONES WE USUALLY WANT TO

tell are the outright success stories—but the ones we also need to

hear are the “things we did wrong and should have known

better.” The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) was the

heaviest astrophysical payload ever flown at the time of its launch

in April 1991. Working on CGRO, we accumulated our fair share

of that second breed of story. I’ll share a few of them here:

The one-person syndrome

The Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope used light

pipes to measure time-of-flight. These were simple pieces of

plastic, bent and glued together, and this appeared to be an easy

task to accomplish. The catch here is that the task appeared easy.

by marty davis

D
14 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

It was known to the engineers that only one person

had been able to complete this task successfully so that

the light pipes worked optimally. Unfortunately, this

man was about to retire, and an attempt to procure the

light pipes from another source failed. Only by

appealing to the man to save the project and the

Center’s reputation did he agree to hold off his retirement to finish the work and to train a replacement.

It was much the same way when it came to a

contractor who made the photomultiplier tubes for the

science instruments and who used only one of their

assemblers to make the tubes. The specifications were

quite rigid, and the one assembler who knew how to

make the tubes had a success rate of just 40 percent.

CGRO needed more tubes and this one man was on

vacation. The project office put pressure on the

contractor to keep the production line working. The

contractor reluctantly agreed.

Ten tubes were pushed through the manufacturing

process and the yield was zero. What the one man did

working at an identical station with identical parts is not

known, but CGRO lost time and the contractor lost

money. They informed us that from then on we should

wait until their one man was available. We agreed.

What do these cases say to a manager? Project life

is rarely as simple as it seems. Make sure you find out

how difficult the work is—and if told only one person

can do the job, no matter how “trivial” that work might

appear to be, pay careful

attention to the situation so

that you know that one person

will be there when you need

him or her most.

One-person depth 

One-person depth is not the

same as “only one person can

do it.” The problem here is the assignment of complex

systems to only one team member—a situation often

necessitated by budget constraints, but one that adds

risk to a project.

For example, on CGRO the design of the digital

electronics for the COMPTEL instrument was a oneperson effort. The system was ahead of schedule.

The prototype was finished and had undergone

preliminary tests ahead of schedule. Everything

sounds wonderful, right?

But then the engineer was offered a better job. He

gave notice, and left the project. No one else was

familiar with the system and how the changes identified

from testing should be made. This led to six months of

long days and weekend work for team members who

had to fill in.

The mechanical design of the Energetic Gamma

Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) was another oneperson job. Sadly, the design engineer died during the

build of the mechanical engineering test model. The

engineer we hired to replace him had to hit the ground

running; he had to finish the build, and move right on

to testing.

Though the documentation was in good order, the

new design engineer never got the chance to study the

design in detail and get familiar with the work that had

been completed by the first engineer. Tests indicated that

The stories we usually want 

to tell are the outright success

stories—but the ones we also

need to hear are the “things 

we did wrong and should 

have known better.”

2704 BATSE GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

Above: The Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) records 

a radioactive emission in space. Right: The Energetic Gamma Ray

Experiment Telescope (EGRET) captures an image of Earth’s moon.
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 15

changes had to be made. This resulted in a series of

change and test, change and test. In the meantime, the

replacement engineer decided to retire. The EGRET

instrument was finished but there was an uncomfortable,

lingering feeling that no one knew the design in depth.

One-of-a-kind solutions

What can we learn from these stories? In cases like

these, a manager should estimate how many of the

systems on a project are one-person affairs. He or she

should then try to keep some reserve resources to cover

lost personnel. A team member lost late during system

development may require that two to three people come

on board to pick up the work, which normally means

that one of the experienced persons on the project must

be one of those chosen to do part of the work. Filling

one void may require shifting a lot of responsibilities.

There may be no way out of this situation since

having two people from the start adds too much cost.

What to do is simple, albeit no guarantee of a solution:

Make certain there is adequate paperwork for someone

to see what has been done, what is left to do, and how

and what to do next.

Despite these problems, CGRO was graced by

having a project manager who believed in the abilities of

his people, who projected a “can do” attitude, and who

generated enthusiasm for the project. In that sense, no

effort was truly a “one-person” effort. Because we

believed in what we were doing, we pitched in when the

time came and, in the end, the project was generally

regarded as a resounding success. •

LESSONS

• Project managers need to identify in advance those

critical tasks for which they don’t have sufficient overlap

or redundancy in their work force.

• In positions that are “one-person” jobs, the project

manager copes through a combination of documenting

as much as possible, providing opportunities for team

members to share their knowledge, and fostering a sense

of shared responsibility on the team.

QUESTION

As a project manager how do you allow individuals the satisfaction that comes from making unique contributions to the team

at the same time that you protect the team against being too

dependent on any one individual?

MARTY DAVIS is the Program Manager

of the Geostationary Operational

Environmental Satellite (GOES) at the

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in

Greenbelt, Maryland. The recipient of

many honors, he received NASA’s highest award, the

Distinguished Service Medal, in 1995. He has worked 

at NASA since 1962.

Pulling stories 

out of the trunk

Making the front page of The New

York Times is every program’s dream,

right? Except we were, oh, 300 percent

over budget, and without a prayer of

reaching our technical goals. Nobody

was working on solutions; everybody

was pointing fingers and taking cover.

Into one of our meetings one

morning walks a new manager on the

program who says, “I just saw in the

paper this morning that somebody has

brought an elephant into town, and

they’re offering rides.” 

Everybody else looks around the

room, thinking, “Well, what has this

got to do with anything?” And then the

manager says to the other senior

managers around the table, “Okay,

you, you, you, and I are going to

go over there, and we’re going to ride

this elephant.” 

And there was great protesting. It

seemed crazy. But, in the end, they

went down the street a couple of

blocks and rode this elephant. Believe

it or not, from that point on, they

started to cooperate a lot better. It’s

hard to argue with somebody that

you’ve just been hanging onto on the

back of an elephant—especially when

there are pictures.

That came straight from the

playbook of none other than Mr. Marty

Davis. It was brilliant. What that little

story reminds me is that you’ve got to do

goofy things sometimes to get people to

start working together. And, as we’ve all

learned, people working together is the

only way to get out of a mess. 

—Larry Goshorn, former Vice

President of ITT Industries
THE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION (EAA) AIRVENTURE

in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is one of the biggest aircraft shows in the

world, and it is also a huge public relations event for NASA.

I was there in 1999 representing Ames Research Center. It was my first time

at Oshkosh, and I was thrilled to be there. I’d heard about the show for years, how

popular it is with the public, and all the amazing things that you can see there.

Research aircraft, future aircraft, old aircraft—just about anything you can

imagine in aviation is there. Even inflatable wings!

NASA likes to show off some of the things we’ve done historically in

aeronautics, as well as some of the things we’re doing now and are planning for

the future. Craftsmen from some of the NASA Centers shared a table in one

building. My background is in manufacturing, but I work now as a liaison

between manufacturing and designers, helping designers see their ideas realized.

But I was a craftsman for a long time, so I went there with a display about the

history of manufacturing at Ames, and felt right at home being part of the

craftsman display.

16 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

by Frank Larsen

Staying

Looon the kout
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 17

I’d never met any of these guys before, but we hit it

off immediately and started talking. It was clear that we

were all excited about the work we were doing back at

our Centers. For instance, I learned from Steve Nevins of

Langley that he had equipment for rapid prototyping

that I didn’t have at Ames, especially the stereolithography capability, and I was like a kid again listening to

my dad show me what he had in his tool box.

A few months after I got back from Oshkosh, a

project came along to build landing gear, and the

customer needed it done quickly for an acoustic wind

tunnel test. The shape of the gear was so complicated

that the only way to do this quickly was to build the

mock-up gear with stereolithography tools, and that’s

when I thought back to my meeting with Steve Nevins

at Oshkosh.

I had never worked with another fabricator from

another NASA Center. To be honest, I didn’t know if

there was a way for me to use his services.

I called Steve up, and we talked about the project.

He told me to send him some computer drawing files

electronically so that he could see what I was talking

about. I sent the files over the Internet and while we

were on the phone, he started asking questions about

my requirements, such as how thick the walls needed

to be, etc.

Not long after our phone conversation, he came

back with how long it would take him and how much

material he would need—and it was about one-third the

cost of what I would have to pay at home, in Silicon

Valley where Ames is located. To me it seemed like a nobrainer. Why pay to use a vendor’s equipment when we

(NASA) have it already? 

But there was still a problem of how to get Steve to

do the work for me. I started looking into it and people

said it wasn’t easy to exchange monies between Centers.

For instance, hourly labor rates differ from Center to

Center based on cost-of-living adjustments, and all that

had to be figured in, too. It would seem simple, but it

never is.

I needed to get the parts made as soon as 

possible to satisfy my customer. Finally, I said to Steve,

“How about if I just pay you in replacement stereolithography material?”

He said, “Hey, that would be great with me.” And so,

that’s what I did.

I didn’t pay for his labor directly, but I supplemented his labor costs by buying additional material

A cross sectional view of the Global Hawk unmanned security aircraft,

which will provide highly detailed images of large geographic areas.
18 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

that he could use later. I got what I needed at one-third

of what it was going cost me to use an outside vendor.

Plus, I was keeping him busy with interesting and

challenging work. He got to put his machine to work

making my complex parts.

The bottom line is NASA got a better deal, and

Steve and I established a working relationship that

continues to this day. I’ve used Steve’s services on at

least three or four other projects.

Since that first job, I’ve learned that there is in fact

a way that he and I can work together through

something called the “NASA Fabrication Alliance,”

which consists of all of the fabrication divisions at

NASA’s ten Centers. This allows us to get things done in

a smarter way. Until I was in need of something like this,

I’d never heard of it. But through the Alliance this sort

of collaboration between NASA Centers has become

routine and I was able to tap into that to put Steve to

work on my projects.

I shake my head every time I think about the irony.

No matter what I knew or didn’t know about the

Fabrication Alliance, had I not met Steve at Oshkosh I’d

probably never have benefited

from his expertise and ability

to help me. Nor would

NASA, for that matter. Here

we were all working for the

same Agency, doing much the

same kind of work, and it was

a public relations event of all

things where we finally got

the chance to meet and learn

about one another’s work.

It just goes to show the

variety of ways in which we

can forge fruitful working

relationships, and that opportunities exist to collaborate

through events we might not

expect could lead to that. •

LESSONS

• Partnerships may spring up from informal meetings

with colleagues. Look at all such occasions as potential

opportunities to extend your network.

• Cooperation based on a clear win-win relationship

enables the development of simple, innovative, and

pragmatic solutions, which in turn lead quickly to

desired results.

QUESTION

What are other approaches to enabling practitioners at different

NASA Centers to collaborate on projects?

AN AGENCY-WIDE ALLIANCE

FRANK LARSEN works in the Aeronautics and Space Flight Hardware Development Division in the Project

Management Office at Ames Research Center, where he is responsible for managing the fabrication of multidisciplined research projects.

The NASA Fabrication Alliance he describes here was originally comprised of the four NASA Research Centers

(Ames, Dryden, Glenn, and Langley), but has expanded in recent years to include all NASA Centers. The Alliance works to

strategically manage fabrication resources by sharing best practices and reducing duplication of capabilities and physical assets. 

“The Fabrication Alliance is a ‘One NASA’ success story,” says Dr. Gerald Mulenburg, a member of the Alliance’s steering

committee from Ames. “To transfer funds in NASA is time-consuming and difficult, and that discourages partnerships like the

one Frank established informally with Steve.” 

Under the Fabrication Alliance, partners draw from an available pot of money, eliminating the need to cut through the red

tape involved in transferring monies between Centers. According to Mulenburg, “This makes it possible to get the job done

quickly, and it provides better value to NASA and the taxpayer.”

Through the Alliance, 

this sort of

collaboration

between 

NASA Centers

has become

routine.
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 19

The NASA Web

portal we had designed

was exactly what we

felt that NASA

management wanted: a

new face for the

Agency, engaging,

interactive, and upbeat;

a real change from the

staid, informational

Web site that NASA

had already.

by Jeanne M. Holm

dedication
I WAS THE PROJECT MANAGER FOR THE REDESIGN. I WAS THE

one who would say, “We’re going live,” who would push

the button, so to speak. I felt great about what 

we had accomplished under an incredibly tight deadline.

On January 2, when we still had about four months

to go on our schedule, we had given a presentation at

Headquarters. Upper management had loved our vision

for the new site; they loved it so much that they said they

didn’t like our schedule and, instead of deploying the

site in four months, they wanted it up and running in

four weeks. We hadn’t even signed contracts with our

subs yet, but we were asked to deliver the portal on

February 3rd.

Launch date

Though we were in a hurry-up mode of operation, we

had spent the time to find the right place for everyone

on the team, so that every team member knew they

could trust the people around them to do their jobs. My

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) team included Douglas

Hughes, Jay Dyson, Ellie Trevarthen, and Greg Williams.

We all worked around the clock; no one took any

time off. In that month, we were able to pull together a

well-constructed, solid Web site. It didn’t have all the

bells and whistles that it would have had over the fourmonth development time, but we had a plan for adding

in all those bells and whistles eventually.

The team decided to launch the new portal on a

Friday night, January 31st, just before midnight here in

California—traditionally a slow time for the Web.

Though the Shuttle was scheduled to land the next

morning and we knew the public would look to the site for

information, we would be able to give the site a test run

before most people saw it.

We invited friends from around the world to join us

as we logged on. When the Web site came up on our

computers the music we built into the splash page

started. On the telecom, every couple of minutes we

heard the music start in the different remote locations.

We would ask, “Which country was that?” And the

answer would come back: “Oh, this is Panama.” “It’s

Calgary.” “It’s France.”

We all had been working 16-to-20-hour days for

weeks. Many of us—myself included—were about ready

to collapse, but it was still a celebratory moment for us.

Most of the team was online until about 2 a.m., and then

I sent everyone home for a well-deserved rest.

But we didn’t rest for long. A few hours later I got a

call at home. It was someone at NASA Headquarters

who told me, “We’ve lost the Shuttle.” I was asleep when

the phone rang. It was early in the morning, and I was so

tired that it took me a moment to understand what I had

just heard. And then it hit me: Columbia was gone.

Then and now

I can’t help but compare the whole experience to the last

Shuttle tragedy, and contrast it with the helplessness I

felt then.

In 1986, I was working on the Voyager project at the

JPL, and we were gearing up for a planetary encounter.

We had all sorts of press folks there in the room with us

because planetary encounters come few and far

between. We had the NASA TV on in the background

and were all watching the Challenger launch. When we

20 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP
lost Challenger, there was just this stunned silence and

disbelief. It was the longest time before anybody could

admit what had happened.

The team I was on during Challenger wasn’t directly

involved in the manned missions, and we had no official

role in helping the Agency through the crisis. Because

we didn’t know what we could do to make a difference,

we felt a sense of complete helplessness.

This time, with Columbia, I felt the team I was leading,

in our own small way, could do something to help.

Pulling together

I knew immediately that we would need to make

changes on the Web site. The way we designed the site

was completely inappropriate for the incredibly tragic

event unfolding. Our flashy rock-n-roll intro showed, of

all things, a Shuttle flowing through the sky. I knew

immediately that it had to come off the site, as soon as

possible. And I knew that we would need to prepare for

an onslaught of traffic; like us, the rest of the world

would be looking to NASA for answers.

Driving back to the office, I got on my cell phone

and called my leads on the project at eTouch and

Critical Mass, explaining to them, “I know you’re

exhausted, but we need to get back to work. We’ve got to

make the site appropriate for the moment.”

By the time I had gotten into the office, which was

only about fifteen minutes away, the team had come

back to me with a new proposal for how they could,

within the next hour or so, bring together a Web site that

ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 21

From left to right:

Columbia crew members David Brown, Rick Husband, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, William McCool, Ilan Ramon
would reflect what we were struggling with at that

moment as an Agency and as a Nation. The team may

have been tired from the marathon of getting the site

online, but they reconvened instantly for this new dash.

On the fly that Saturday morning we completely

redesigned the interface to the site. We developed new

graphics and started posting new Columbia contents,

including posting warnings about staying away from the

debris and informing people whom to contact if they

came across any.

Instead of the 200,000 hits that we thought we

would get that first weekend, we had 220 million hits

from all around the world. My greatest concern was our

search capability. Normally we would get about 6,000

requests a day to the NASA search engine. We had built

the initial deployment to handle about 20,000 hits a day,

wanting to make certain that we had plenty of capacity.

That first day we got 1.5 million search requests.

Redesigning graphics was easy. But you can’t scale

up a search engine on the spur of the moment. That first

day, the search started to melt—it started taking half a

minute, a minute, and then longer for people to get a

response. This kind of load on the system was unprecedented, and it looked as though we didn’t have the

ability to get people to the content they wanted.

I did two things to address this problem. First, I

reduced demand on the search by asking my designers to

build navigation on the home page to get people immediately to Columbia. They created a rotating banner of a flag

at half-staff that linked directly to the main Columbia

page. People looking for content could immediately see

that they could get what they were looking for by clicking

on a big image at the top of their screen.

That handled a huge number of the search queries

because we were directing people to where they needed

to be, rather than having them get there by way of a

search. But that wasn’t enough. Many searches from our

site were still timing out. I needed to enhance our

capacity—and I needed to do it immediately.

Because we had been pushing so hard on the site, I

think I knew the home phone numbers for every NASA

The team may have been tired

from the marathon of getting the

site online, but they reconvened

instantly for this new dash.

22 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 23

Webmaster. I called two people who ran other large

search engines for Agency sites, Scott Glasser and Jeff

Cobb. I asked, “Hey guys, can we offload some of our hits

to you?” They were still doing fine because they weren’t

the primary search engines for NASA, and they agreed.

One of the search engines had actually been scaling

back, in anticipation of the new portal capabilities. They

had already taken some of their servers offline and

boxed them up. In no time at all, they went into the

office and put the servers back online.

By mid-morning, when our search function

required too long a response time (more than 45

seconds), we programmed the site to bring up a message

directing users to the two other NASA sites. Together,

we were able to successfully handle all requests through

the three search capabilities.

We wanted to make certain that the site stayed up,

functioning optimally, so that the folks who were trying

to communicate what was happening at the Agency

could say, “If you need some information, go to www.nasa.gov.” If we could

demonstrate that we could handle the

unprecedented traffic, then they would

have a tool they knew they could use.

None of us left the office for two

days, making sure that the folks who

were posting information about

Columbia had all the support they

needed, and making sure that the press conferences

were streamed online.

Our team played a small role compared to so many

others, but I am immensely proud of their dedication,

and it made me realize, yet again, that NASA is not just

America’s space agency. Those weren’t just our astronauts; those were the world’s astronauts. Through the

Web, the world could mourn their loss together. •

LESSONS

• Under conditions of uncertainty and tight deadlines,

one important capability of project teams is quick adaptability.

• Building a cohesive team upfront is always crucial to

project success—but when a quick response is required,

cohesive teamwork becomes even more important.

QUESTION

How do you prepare your team to cope with surprises?

In addition to her role as project manager of the NASA portal, JEANNE M. HOLM is Chief

Knowledge Architect at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and she leads the NASA Knowledge

Management team. In June of 2003, she received an International Competia Award for

Competitive Intelligence. Holm and four other award winners were selected from a pool

of over 110 international candidates, representing the top professionals in the fields of

Competitive Intelligence and Strategic Planning worldwide.

In recognition of her achievement, the judges cited Holm’s background in publishing scientific and technical information and creating distributed information systems, as well as

her “clear, concise and simple approach, which facilitates buy-in.” For NASA this means

helping practitioners share knowledge and act upon information in ways that will measurably improve the performance of NASA and its partners.
24 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

The Long Joby Wur

. Scott C

ne

ameron

y
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 25

EARLY IN MY CAREER I WORKED WITH AN EXPERIENCED,

highly regarded design engineer who continually stated

he would change assignments or companies for a

nickel-an-hour salary increase.

I thought this a strange comment, as a nickel an hour

didn’t seem significant enough to warrant changing jobs,

but I was young and hadn’t really given much thought to

my career path. When I finally asked him about his

statement, he explained he was trying to teach me to

understand and master my unique set of talents and

capabilities. This way I could leverage them throughout

my career to obtain the best assignments or offers.

Thus, he taught me the need to become a recognized master in what I did. As I made career choices over

the years, I came to realize that this advice is what drives

me to deliver or exceed my customers’ expectations. If I

can’t do that, then the value of my services diminishes

and my negotiation space shrinks on future assignments.

Other mentors would influence my career development, but this engineer’s advice, as well as my own

learning, has become the main source I draw from when

talking to engineers of all career levels.

What do you (really) need?

When I coach and mentor people regarding their career

aspirations, one of the areas we discuss in great detail is the

short- and long-term “musts” and “wants.” In analyzing

people’s careers I ask them to define and write down one

to three things they must have in an assignment, and as

many wants as they wish.

We then compare their list to the must and wants of

potential assignments to see if there is a match. This has

become an interesting and revealing exercise as I see

people begin to clarify what is of vital importance to them

(a must) and what are they willing to negotiate to get a

new assignment (a want).

I was recently working assignment planning with a

subordinate and was engaged in the must/want discussion. She indicated her primary must was that she had

to have a reduced work schedule assignment. She

indicated she was having a hard time finding one. I

suggested she apply for a full-time assignment. If after

the interview she felt she could do the work on a reduced

work schedule, then she should explain to the hiring

manager that if she were offered the job she would only

accept it on a reduced work schedule basis. She didn’t

like my idea, as others had told her the hiring manager

considered all the listed job criteria “musts,” and if she

were offered a full-time job she would have to take it.

She reluctantly decided to try my concept and bid

on a full-time assignment she felt was right for her

career. During her interview the hiring manager

indicated she had the correct skill set for the assignment.

He believed that she was the correct person for the job

and he wanted to offer it to her. She then negotiated with

him to accept the job, but as a reduced work assignment.

The manager indicated he had never thought about the

assignment in this way but agreed to her condition/must.

Thus, the hiring manager’s perceived must was really a

want, and there was more room to negotiate the assignment than she had originally perceived.

Do as I say

Sometimes, as managers, mentors, and coaches, we need

to re-examine our career “musts” and “wants,” and the

actions we’re taking to achieve them.

I was discussing career coaching with another

manager not that long ago, and we talked about our

approaches to coaching people regarding assignment

planning. We learned that our coaching patterns were

similar. And, as the conversation progressed, we discovered we were also both looking for new assignments—but

not following any of the advice we were giving to others

on how to manage their careers or obtain new assignments. After a long pause in our conversation, we agreed

it was time to walk our talk, and follow our own advice.

Career development by definition is a long journey.

As we help shape the careers of others, it does us no

good to forget that our own careers will continue to

develop—whether we take charge of them, or let others

shape our future. •

W. SCOTT CAMERON is the Capital Systems

Manager for the Food & Beverage Global

Business Unit of Procter & Gamble. He is

also a regular contributor to ASK Magazine.

In analyzing people’s careers I ask them to define and write down one to 

three things they must have in an assignment, and as many wants as they wish.
26 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

sink

swim

BY TERRY LITTLE

or
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 27

THE TRADITIONAL VIEW OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT IN THE

government goes something like this: Start your career

as a functional apprentice. Become a functional expert

over time by exhibiting “technical leadership” (whatever

that means). Over time, seek out positions of increasingly greater responsibility with corresponding job titles.

Make a gradual transition from a specialty focus to a

managerial focus.

Along the way submit to some vaccinations such as

getting a Masters or PhD degree, attending some

prestige courses, accepting a Headquarters assignment,

and working at two or more

field locations. Show some

significant persistence and

heaps of personal sacrifice.

Avoid the big mistake. Burn

no bridges.

We have the perfect

model for career development, right? Senior Executive

Service is virtually in the bag.

Not quite. In fact, what we

have is the perfect formula for

a federal bureaucrat: great

resume, no beef.

I propose an alternate

approach that I call “sink or

swim.” Let me illustrate with

a story. Lorene worked for

me as a program manager.

She was about 50 and 

had begun her career as a

secretary, gradually working her way up to a GS-13; she

had been a GS-13 about ten years even though she had

filled all the squares for promotion. I liked her work. She

was a better-than-average manager, but admitted to

being intimidated by engineers because she didn’t have

“a technical degree.”

Confronted with any technical issue she would

invariably defer to the judgment of a government

engineer, even when she understood the technical issue

well enough to develop her own conviction. The unfortunate byproduct was that her program usually had cost

and schedule difficulty because she was always pushing

to reduce risk and develop the optimum solution.

One day she came to me and said that she was

going to have to find another job. She told me that her

husband had prostate cancer and that she wanted to

spend more time with him. She said she couldn’t

continue to travel extensively. After thinking about the

situation I suggested to her that she become my

financial manager. I knew she was well-organized, disciplined, and caring—traits my financial manager at the

time lacked. She would also not have to travel in that

job. She demurred, declaring, “I don’t have a financial

background. I will get you into trouble.”

I listened. When she finished, I told her that she was

going into that job whether she liked it or not. Her getting

me into trouble would be my problem, not hers. Making a

long story short, she did an absolutely superb job turning

the entire financial management operation around in

less than six months. I was

able to get her promoted to

GS-14 and later supported

her for a program manager

position in another organization as a GS-15. She 

again excelled. I have since

lost track of her, but have 

heard that she was recently

promoted to the Senior

Executive Service.

How did all this

happen? Basically she

jumped (or more properly,

allowed herself to be

pushed) into water that was

way over her head. She

could have drowned, but she

didn’t. It was an enormous

personal and career risk for her, but she came up a

swimmer—a powerful, purposeful swimmer. The normal

career development path is one that never leads to getting

into water over our heads. But, wading comfortably

around doesn’t produce swimmers. •

The normal

career

development

path is one that

never leads to

getting into

water over 

our heads.

TERRY LITTLE is the

Director of the Kinetic

Energy Boost Office at the

Missile Defense Agency.

One of the most seasoned

program managers in DoD,

he is also a regular contributor to ASK Magazine.
28 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

In July, the Academy of Program and Project Leadership (APPL)

conducted a two-week class in Advanced Project Management at Ames

Research Center. In the heart of Silicon Valley, Ames is known as one of NASA’s

strongest Centers in software development and information technology. To take

advantage of these local resources, course manager John Newcomb structured

the class with a specific focus on managing complex software projects.

Included in each Advanced Project Management class is a practicum,

otherwise known as the Enterprise project assignment. The students are asked

to solve an ongoing problem faced by one of NASA’s project teams. In this case,

Newcomb invited the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, managed by

Mike Sander of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to use the Enterprise project as

an opportunity to address a problem facing MSL. “We’re rapidly coming up on

our concept review,” Sander stated. “Getting a firm handle on the technology

development plan for MSL is very much of an issue.”

Sander, and his deputy Rich Doyle, came up with the following problem for 

the class: To create a workflow process, description, and test case that identifies,

selects, matures, and integrates new software with existing software to create

flight code for MSL. Integral to the assignment, class members, who

represented seven of the ten NASA Centers as well as Headquarters, had to

make certain to address costs, schedule, and risk constraints.

SPECIAL FEATURE: CAREER DEVELOPMENT
IT FELT AS THOUGH WE WERE GETTING NOWHERE THAT FIRST

night as we tried to discuss the problem. We were

twenty-three people thrown together in a room, without

a leader, and we didn’t have anything to go on beyond

what we had heard from Mike Sander.

Finally, the class agreed on two things that we

needed to accomplish immediately: One was to define

the problem; the other was to define a process for

accomplishing the task we had been given.

We broke up into groups. In my group it was total

chaos. Eventually, we managed to define the problem,

but we completely failed to come up with any kind of

process for getting things done. At that point, I started

thinking that we only had three more nights to work on

this. How would we get anywhere if we didn’t even have

a process? 

When we regrouped as a class, it turned out that

we had all come up with similar definitions of the

problem, but the processes were all over the map. It

took us at least another hour to agree on the wording

of a mission statement, and then we couldn’t come to

any agreement about what came next. I started to say

we need a leader. Nobody was listening. So I kept

saying, “We need a leader.”

Finally, someone said, “Well, why don’t you be our

leader?” It was classic. You know, I said, “We need this,”

and then they said, “Okay, you do it.” I should have seen

that coming—the old be-careful-of-what-you-ask-for

scenario. We had a vote, and I became the leader.

It was now my job to lead the discussion about how

to proceed. It was clear to everyone that we would need to

break into groups to accomplish anything. It took a while

I looked at this thing with two agendas in mind. Agenda

number one was to give the class a problem, which was

challenging and stimulating. Agenda number two was to

see if a bright group of people might come up with some

notions about how to bridge these worlds of technology

development and flight system development. 

We had actually been thinking about this problem for a

couple of years, off and on. I thought, well look, here is

an opportunity to get some bright folks who bring a lot of

capability to the table. I’ll explain the problem to them

and see if they can offer some fresh insights and ideas. 

It’s a very powerful process and one that we have now

already put to use in MSL in a number of different areas:

getting people who haven’t been in the middle of the

forest, but are still very strong technically, to step in 

and think about the problem for a while and offer 

their observations. 

ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 29

THE ENTERPRISE PROJECT

BY WENDY DOLCI

MIKE SANDER, Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
30 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

NASA scientists and engineers demonstrate new

robotic technologies that they hope to employ on

the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) at a “Marscape”

test facility at Ames Research Center.

errowom T TyPhoto b
but we came to the consensus that each group would

work the problem and present a solution, rather than

dividing up the problem into pieces. As a class we would

decide which of the solutions to present to Mike Sander.

My plan was to go around the room, count off, and

randomly select the three teams. It would be fast and

easy. But as it turned out, there were people who felt

strongly about working with other likeminded people.

As a result, the class as a whole would attack the

problem from different perspectives. So, we broke into

teams that way.

One group that emerged said, “Yes, we can do this.

It’s not so hard.” They were optimistic that they could

put together a good workflow for the problem based on

their collective knowledge. It was simply a matter of

identifying useful software that had already been

developed and finding a way to evaluate and integrate it.

Another group that emerged said, “No, we don’t

think that’s even been done successfully before. It’s not

a problem that we know how to solve at this point.”

They wanted to try to come up with some innovative

ideas, push the envelope, and explore things that hadn’t

been tried before.

Then there was a third group that kind of said, “You

know, you guys are making such a big deal of this. Why

don’t we just do it?” I called them the Nike group. It

wasn’t that they didn’t care about working the problem;

they just didn’t see the point in all the philosophical

discussions about approaches. They simply wanted to

get to work.

We spent quite a bit of time that next night getting

organized. We came up with a plan for the rest of the

week’s schedule, how we were going to achieve this work.

On a small scale, we were seeing demonstrated many of

the things being taught in the class: the value of putting in

time up front to define requirements, the need for flexible

leadership, the importance of team building, and more.

What became immediately obvious was that we had

an amazing amount of technical expertise in that room.

I think that was another great lesson for me, just

listening and seeing how divergent ideas that emerged

from individuals strengthened the group as a whole. I

saw in practice that you have to listen to the input of the

team, or you’re going to do the project harm.

And I also came to see that having these different

perspectives grouped together, rather than randomly

selecting teams, enhanced the entire exercise. For one

thing, our productivity would have been much less

because there would have been too much time spent

saying, “I want to do it this way” and “Well, I want to do

ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 31

YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO 

THE INPUT OF THE TEAM, 

OR YOU’RE GOING TO DO 

THE PROJECT HARM.

When it was time to divide up into teams, I joined with

a group of people who, like me, felt the project

assignment wasn’t as easy or straightforward as other

people in the class made it out to be. Almost instantly,

we were dubbed “the pessimists.” But I never felt that

was an accurate description.

I would like to think that a more accurate name for our

group was “the realists.” We were simply saying that a

major revamping of the mindset at NASA would need to

occur to solve this problem we were handed. We didn’t

think the assignment was trivial or easy to do; trying to

recruit autonomy knowledge from the private industry and

university sectors was an extremely difficult challenge. 

Everyone on our team had a software background. All of

them, except for me, came from Ames—but none of

them knew one another well. We got started with some

brainstorming concepts that the folks from the design

company, IDEO, taught us on the first day of class. I think,

as a result, that we all felt comfortable sharing our ideas.

We didn’t always remember to apply the rules they gave

us (such as the one that says to “defer judgment”), but

we did work collaboratively and courteously. Someone

would draw an idea on the easel we were using, and

then someone else would build on it. Before long, our

ideas began to coalesce.

ROB TOAZ, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
32 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

it that way.” The teams probably wouldn't have gotten as

far as they did as fast.

As a class, we did some work to make certain that

we all understood our mission, that we shared a

“common vocabulary” when it came to critical terminology, and that we understood what each team was

going to produce. Then, the next night, the class broke

into teams and worked independently on producing our

main deliverable: a workflow that described how to find

existing software, integrate it with new software, and

produce code.

During our last Enterprise meeting before talking to

Mike, each team got up and presented their solutions. I

had put together a management team and we set up

selection criteria and produced an evaluation form that

asked the class to rate each solution: Did the solution

meet the requirements? Was the solution innovative?

Was the solution feasible? 

Both the “pessimist” and the “optimist” teams, as we

had come to call them, came up with strong solutions,

and when we tallied up the class votes, their scores were

close. One rated higher in innovation, the other in feasibility. Together, they offered a balanced approach. Our

plan had been to down-select to one solution, but

eventually we agreed to present both.

Class Participants Front Tri Nguyen/JSC, Steve Huning/JSC, Keith Nicewarner/ARC, Oscar Brooks/KSC, Ronald Clayton/JSC, Cliff Madrid/JSC, 

David Richwine/DFRC, John Newcomb/Course Manager Middle Greg Dees/HQ, Anthony Lisotta/ARC, John Chiorini/Course Trainer, Bill Huddleston/HQ,

Wendy Dolci/ARC, Rob Sherwood/JPL, Rob Toaz/JPL, Walter Schneider/MSFC, Jimmy Black/MSFC, Richard Chase/ARC, Paul Gowler/JPL 

Rear Deepak Kulkarni/ARC, Warren Smith/ARC, Joan Pallix/ARC, Greg Dorais/ARC, Jeff Gramling/GSFC, Tom Hinke/ARC, Pat Crouse/GSFC, Scott Wolf/JSC

After the three teams presented their solutions, the

class voted. Though our team didn’t come out on top, we

ran a close second. I listened to the discussion that

followed the vote as the class planned the final

presentation. After a while, I raised my hand.

“Look,” I said, “there’s no doubt this team came up

with a good approach, and they won in terms of the

votes of the class. But there’s obviously merit in the

other presentations, and I think it’s going to be more

beneficial to Mike Sander and the JPL organization if

we present them with more than one path they might

go down.”

In the end, the class agreed to present two approaches

to Mike—one dealt more with the development of

software, the other with how to find what applicable

software was already out there. 

I felt as though presenting both approaches was the

right decision, and I think that Mike confirmed that the

night that we delivered our solutions to him. After the

first pitch, about approaches to software development,

Mike sounded apprehensive. 

After the second presentation, he sounded more

excited. It’s not that the presentation or the concept was

better, but I think that he started to get a more complete

picture of what we had to offer him. 

He made it very clear that he understood and

appreciated the value in what we had prepared—to the

point that he was going to share our input with his

management. His response was gratifying.

Bill Huddleston, NASA Headquarters
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 33

My job that last night, when we made our class

presentation to Mike and to his deputy, Rich Doyle, was

to summarize our work. Preparing for that summary, I

became more aware of the shared concepts that the

three teams had come up with, such as how to mitigate

risk when dealing with flight code developed by people

outside the Agency, and the importance of thinking

beyond the immediate mission.

I think this was a good assignment. We got to

experience an entire project from start to finish within

a few days. That’s an experience you don’t have in

NASA because our projects take a long time. They’re

huge. And they can be daunting, with so much at

stake. Here, we had the freedom to explore the process

itself and examine the roles involved. The Advanced

Project Management class handed us a microcosm of

a project that helped me, and I think others, to see the

forest for the trees. •

WENDY DOLCI is the Assistant Director of the NASA

Astrobiology Institute at Ames Research Center. The

Astrobiology Institute, established in July 1998, employs

a multidisciplinary focus to bring together astronomers,

biologists, chemists, exobiologists, geologists, and

physicists. A key goal of the institute is to search for the origins of life—

on Earth, elsewhere in our solar system, and beyond.
34 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

A Fly on the Wall

BY DR. GERALD 

MULENBURG

PRACTICES
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 35

THE EMAIL WAS ADDRESSED NOT ONLY TO ME, BUT ALSO TO

all the Project Knowledge Sharing Community at Ames

Research Center. We were invited to sit in on a major

project review as a new experiment in knowledge

sharing. This first-of-its-kind opportunity had been

conceived by Claire Smith, who leads the knowledge

sharing program, as well as heading up the Center’s

Project Leadership Development Program and serving

as coordinator of the APPL-West program at Ames.

The objective was to offer Ames project practitioners the opportunity to observe project-review

processes as they happen. Not that I haven’t participated

in my share of project reviews, but this seemed like a

great way for me to get up-to-date about a new project,

the Kepler mission, and to experience a review from a

new perspective.

Typically, when you’re being reviewed, it’s difficult

to see what’s happening objectively—the same way it is

on a project. Presenters are always thinking, “Okay,

what’s on my slides? How much time do I have left?

What are they going to ask me?” So when Claire’s email

pinged on my computer, I quickly responded by asking

her to save a place for me.

It was to be an informational review about progress

on the project: what the team had done, where they were

going, and what they needed to do to get there. There

were people on the project team from all over the United

States, and it was the first time for them to get together

from all aspects of the project.

For our part, as observers, we were asked to abide by

a couple of rules: Don’t ask any questions, and don’t talk

about the specifics of what we saw or heard. The idea

was that we weren’t supposed to be noticed. We weren’t

to buzz around and bother people. Hence the name for

this experiment: Fly on the Wall.

I got there early because I wanted to find a seat

without disturbing anyone. By the time the review got

underway, there were probably about fifty people in the

room. The main members of the review board were at a

large table. Subject Matter Experts on the project were

seated in three rows on one side of the table. Many of

the people in the room never spoke. Some of them could

have been observers like me, but I don’t know that. I may

have been the only one to observe, although I hope not.

It was a remarkable experience.

Project Manager Chet Sasaki from JPL kicked off

the review by introducing the Deputy Project Manager,

Larry Webster from Ames, and the Principle Investigator,

William Borucki, also from Ames. I was impressed right

away that the meeting started on time, and then stayed

on time, even finishing a little ahead of schedule for the

morning session that I attended—this in spite of a lot of

Typically, when you’re being

reviewed, it’s difficult to see

what’s happening objectively.
36 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

discussion of the management strategies and who has

what responsibility.

One thing that they did that I thought was unique

was that one person at the table was appointed to be an

ombudsman. His job was to cut off discussion when it

was more appropriate to take a conversation off-line. In

the past, I had seen people take on a role like that at

reviews out of frustration, but in this case it was a designated role. This person cut off discussion several times

during the meeting. This was

done in a polite, professional

manner, often at the request of

one of the participants in the

discussion, and it worked quite

well. Everyone deferred to that

person’s judgment when it was

time to move on, and that was

an important reason the

meeting kept on schedule.

The review was structured

well, too. No fewer than eight

separate functional organizations across the U.S. who have

integral roles in the project attended the meeting

including Mission Operations, the Science Office, Mission

Management, Flight Planning Center, Flight Control

Center, Science Processing Center, Data Management

Center, and the Deep Space Mission System.

Representatives from participating international organizations also attended.

One person ran the presentations, handling the

transition from one presenter to the next, and actually

taking part in the presentations. Most of the reviews that

I’ve been involved in have been just a constant series of

slides, somebody talking for awhile and then moving on

to the next person, and so on, and so on. The Kepler

review was much more interactive. They stopped after

every presentation and said, “Okay, time for questions.”

Each time a question was asked, it was decided immediately whether the question was appropriate for the entire

group and, on several occasions, a question was deferred

to be taken up later by a relevant group. In addition, the

ombudsman had to announce a couple times, “Okay, it’s

time to move on.”

I’ve been in a lot of meetings where discussions

have spiraled out of control and, before you know it,

you’re way behind schedule. These folks had their

agenda down precisely. I told the facilitator afterwards

how impressed I was at what they’d accomplished in the

four hours I was there and how smoothly it went. He

said, “Yes, but you didn’t see the pre-runs that we did

before we came into the room, and the things we cut out

that we felt we could do away with.” So, they had done

an excellent job in their preparation to make sure that

everything fit in the time available.

The only thing I found that didn’t work well was a

minor set-up detail. They had used pushpins to hang

huge sheets of paper with diagrams and information on

the walls. With the seats arranged

as they were along the wall, people

pushed their chairs back into these

charts and they started to fall

down. It got to be a little annoying

because it was noisy and it

disturbed the people presenting,

although they did their best to

ignore the distraction. A couple of

us grabbed a handful of additional

pins and fastened down the sheets

when we saw this was going to

continue to be a problem.

I was under one particularly

defiant chart that kept falling on me. Except for that, being

a fly on the wall was a safe experience. Seriously, it

provided an interesting perspective of the presentations

going on and the interactions in the room. I believe Claire

has hit on a simple but extremely valuable knowledgesharing technique that can be easily duplicated

with other projects at other centers.

As a matter of fact, I think it should be

required that senior managers make their

younger managers observe a review like this

before they find themselves on the hot seat. By

simply listening, there’s so much to learn from

what’s going on. In addition, capturing some

of the tips from observers and sharing them

with project managers and teams across

the agency might be another highpotential outcome of a Fly on the Wall.

My hat is off to the Kepler

Mission team for their thoroughness,

professionalism, and focus, but also

for their cooperation in this helpful

and important experiment. •

I was impressed

right away that the

meeting started on

time, and then

stayed on time.

PRACTICES
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 37

Tips from the Kepler review

Some useful practices that I picked up from being an observer:

Not introducing everyone in the room at the beginning of a meeting, but sticking to the 1 key players at the table. Participants who gave parts of the presentation introduced

themselves at that point, and others gave brief introductions when they contributed to

the discussion related to their specialty. Some of these people were high-level

representatives from other government agencies and participating companies who didn’t

seem to mind not being introduced initially.

2 Clearly stating the purpose of the meeting at the beginning, and even more importantly,

clearly stating what the meeting “was not.” This set the stage for the efficiency of the

meeting, and I am sure reduced the number of distracting comments that often come up

in these types of meetings.

Assigning someone at the table (strong enough to do it) as an ombudsman to cut off 3 discussion when it would be part of a later presentation (not relevant now), wasn’t

contributing much (those who love their own voice), or was more appropriate for off-line

conversations (people who just can’t let go, but might have something important to say).

Posting a roles-and-responsibilities matrix with the key organizations across the top as 4 column headings, and functional elements in rows down the left-hand column. The

intersecting row-column blocks in the matrix clearly stated which organizations were

responsible for what in each of the functions.

DR. GERALD MULENBURG is the Manager of the Aeronautics and Spaceflight

Hardware Development Division at the NASA Ames Research Center. He has

project management experience in airborne, spaceflight, and ground research

projects with the Air Force, industry, and NASA. He is a member of the ASK

review board, and can be reached at gmulenburg@mail.arc.nasa.gov.

Mulenburg observed a review for the ground segment of the Kepler Mission, a special-purpose

mission in the NASA Discovery Program with a planned launch in 2007. According to Principal

Investigator William Borucki, the mission seeks to discover the presence of terrestrial-like

planetary systems around other stars to “answer one of the most enduring questions humans

have asked throughout history: are there other planets like our Earth in the universe?” For more

information about the mission, visit www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov.
38 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

HE HAS RETURNED TO JOHNSON SPACE CENTER (JSC),

where he is Director of the International Space Station

Bioastronautics Research Program Office with the

NASA Life Sciences Projects Division.

Under his management, the Human Research

Facility (HRF) was developed to support a broad range of

scientific investigations pertaining to human adaptation

to the spaceflight environment and issues of human

space exploration. The HRF rack was developed to international standards in order to be compatible with

payloads developed anywhere in the world, thereby

streamlining the process of getting payloads on the

Space Station.

Grounds has worked with NASA for more than 15

years. Prior to joining ISS, he worked with General

Electric as a manager of payloads and analysis in support

of the NASA Life Science Projects Division at JSC. ASK

spoke with Grounds in Washington, D.C., during his

Headquarters assignment.

After being a project manager of the Human Research

Facility for six years, what brought you to Headquarters?

I was invited. The former Bioastronautics Flight Program

Manager had been promoted and wanted to go off to his

new job. He didn’t have anyone selected to take his place.

So, they asked me if I would fill the job for a year, and the

opportunity coincided with a natural time for me to make

a change. The Experiment Utilization Program I was

managing was underway and stable, and it was a good

time to step aside and let it be managed by somebody else.

On top of that, it was something my family was

enthusiastic about. I have two eleven-year-old sons, who

are probably as “portable” right now as they’re ever going

to be. My wife also works for NASA. We could arrange for

her to come up here and work for a year, and then go back

to her job. We looked at it and said, “Here’s an opportunity. We can act on it if we want to.” And so we did.

Do people typically come straight from the field to the job

you’re in now? Or were you an anomaly bringing the

sort of field experience you had brought to the job? 

I think that my assignment was unusual because a

permanent person usually fills this position. They would

normally be here for years and years and years. It’s

INTERVIEW 

Dennis Grounds

Dennis Grounds recently finished a one-year assignment

at NASA Headquarters in the Office of Bioastronautics as

the Acting Flight Program Manager
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 39

unusual that someone comes in and does this particular

job for one year simply because it requires continuity. I

was a stopgap fix; when I leave, they’ll be looking for a

permanent replacement.

What is exciting about the work you’re doing now? 

Actually, there’s a good bit that’s exciting. As with any

new job, and particularly one that requires a different

perspective, there’s always the novelty of simply figuring

out the elements you weren’t previously familiar with.

There’s an international element to this job that has

been particularly interesting for me.

Another thing, of course, is the nature of the

environment here at Headquarters. You can’t really

learn this being at a Center. I would have guessed that

there was a lot more external political pressure—

answering inquiries from Congress and so on—here at

Headquarters. I expected that pressure to create

something of a “reaction” environment here. As it turns

out, politics play a role here, but it’s less than I thought

it would be.

That was a nice surprise, as I take it.

Yes, it was. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there’s

still plenty of room for people to set out a program

management objective and not be interfered with. In

other words, you can set a goal and achieve it.

How much did you know about the assignment before 

you got here?

I had a pretty good idea of what the job would be like.

The person I’ve replaced is the same person who I was

interfacing with while I was still at the Center. Having

worked directly with him, I had some idea without

actually having done the job what the job was about. We

If you’re going to continue to work at the Center with Headquarters

interfaces, especially direct interfaces, there can’t be any better experience

than to have looked at issues through their eyes.
40 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

INTERVIEW CONTINUED

The International Space Station (ISS) moves away from the Shuttle Discovery

after a crew exchange on the STS-102 mission, March 2001.
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 41

worked problems together, with me as the Center-level

person and him as the Headquarters-level person, for

five or six years now.

What would be the benefits to someone like you, a

successful project or program manager at a Center,

spending time at Headquarters? 

You know that the Agency is putting a lot more

emphasis on rotations or jobs other than at your home

Center as a requirement for promotion. There is an

emphasis on that, and I think for good reason. However,

in my case, I wasn’t really looking for a promotion.

It does broaden your perspective. If you’re going to

continue to work at the Center with Headquarters interfaces, especially direct interfaces, there can’t be any better

experience than to have looked at issues through their eyes.

Someone might look at your situation and say these

circumstances were unique. What would you say to

somebody who wouldn’t necessarily see a Headquarters

rotation as an important career step? 

I’m going to return this to you as a question. Would you

agree with me that some of the better program and

project managers are always trying to find the broadest

perspective on their program that they can? What is

their Headquarters organization expecting? What is

their Center expecting?

I think the best program and project managers are

always trying to take the point of view of their

customers. Hardly any of them are just focused on

getting their job done.

I will have a much better feel for personalities and how to work problems. 

You know whom you can talk to and what they know or how they are 

likely to react.

Astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and John Herrington install the Port One (P1) truss on the International

Space Station (ISS) in November 2002.
Is there a stage in one’s career where you’re ready for this

kind of assignment? When you can bring back what you

learn here in the most useful way?

Somewhere in that project manager-program manager

zone, I would say, would be the natural time to do that.

I would say that you need to have gone through that

experience at the Center before you go off and try to

look at that job from a Headquarters perspective.

Let’s turn things around. What do you think is the most

important thing Headquarters can learn from the

project manager or program manager who comes here

on rotation?

At the project level, you’re clearly focused on how to

solve the problem of implementation. The Centers have

the people on the ground. They’re doing the work. They

have the problems.

Up here at Headquarters, you own the top-level

requirements, in terms of being able to change them or

negotiate them with a project. A lot of what they do

depends on the information they get from the implementing Center. The more you understand what the

work is and how it gets done if you’re at Headquarters,

the better both of you can take a question and translate

it into a discrete request for information and target it at

the right person.

As a matter of fact, this comes up every month

when we do status reports. If someone here at

Headquarters sends down a “fuzzy” question that’s not

appropriately directed, it causes unnecessary work.

Because I have a good understanding of the work that’s

being done in the field and who’s doing it, I send down

specific questions and I try to direct them to the right

person. In a way, I pre-work any problem I detect by

narrowing the focus of my question and by proposing

alternative solutions to the problem. It reduces the

amount of work required by the project team.

After this rotation, when you return to your Center, how do

you think you will be more effective as a manager? 

When I go back to the Center, my interfaces at

Headquarters will be these same people with whom I

have worked for a year. So, for one, I will have a much

better feel for personalities and how to work problems.

You know whom you can talk to and what they know

or how they are likely to react. All of those things help

you be more effective in supporting them when you go

back to the Center. Having seen it from their perspective is a benefit.

That sounds like valuable information; I’m curious

about the way that you’ll share it with other people at

your Center.

There are expectations at the highest levels that flow

through the associate administrators into this office. I

know how it works. I'll take that knowledge back with me.

In addition, since I'm working now to revise

programmatic processes and I'm part of making those

new designs and decisions, I understand the changes in

a way I never could have had I not been part of this. I

expect that I'll be the person that gets to communicate

these new processes.

As your yearlong assignment winds down, do you have

advice for other project managers who might be considering a Headquarters assignment?

Just that I would encourage people who are at the right

point in their careers to take these temporary assignments. The Agency wants to see it happen, and it’s of

benefit to the individuals concerned. The idea of moving

to Headquarters for a year was never on my radar before

I fell into the opportunity; but for anyone in a transitional period of project work, or someone looking to

advance their careers, it’s something they should

seriously consider.

For my entire family, it’s been a wonderful educational experience living here in Washington. It’s a good

place to be for a year, because there’s plenty to see and

do. I’m guessing that, in the future, all of us will mark

time by the year we spent here. I know that I will. •

42 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

INTERVIEW CONTINUED

This computer-generated scene of the International Space Station (ISS)

represents the first addition of hardware following the completion of Phase II.
ASK 15 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 43

I understand the changes in a way I never could have had I not been part of

this, and I’ll be taking that knowledge back to my Center.
44 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP

PROCTER & GAMBLE HIRED ME IN THE EARLY 1990’S AS A

management consultant. I participated in training

programs, procedural reviews, and the like—but I wasn’t

satisfied with these traditional approaches. I sought to

inspire significant change in the way that project practitioners approached their work, and I thought I had

found the right vehicle: stories.

Why stories? To put it simply,

stories are powerful learning tools

because they stimulate curiosity,

they provide context to lessons, and

they’re memorable. Stories are also

“unlearning” tools. Logical arguments

don’t convince people that a change in

paradigm is needed; observable action is

more convincing. And stories by credible practitioners

are as close to observing action as possible.

I wanted to collect the stories of some of the most

successful project managers and share them with others

in the company. First, I found a sponsor with enough

vision to support my idea, and then I assembled a team

of eight highly successful project managers who were

willing to examine the idea of writing stories about their

project work. My long-term goal was to collect their

stories in a full-length book.

Transformation efforts take time. After several

months, I had no doubt that we could eventually

produce a winning product, but I saw that the pace of

our progress had slowed, and I worried that enthusiasm

for the project was waning as competing development

projects vied for attention and dollars.

I proposed we put together a short, preliminary

edition of our book and present it to a test audience. The

idea seemed to invigorate my team. Soon thereafter, we

produced a booklet, a prototype you might call it, and

arranged to have it used in one of the company’s project

management seminars. Suddenly, our project was more

than just an idea. With a tangible product in hand, the

project plan had become a reality.

Not only was the booklet an

overwhelming hit at the class, we

received a lot of useful feedback, upper

management took note, and the

number of new stories being written

increased. But we didn’t stop there.

Recognizing the value of our test

product, we produced another interim

edition and presented it to an advanced

project management workshop. Again, the results were

invigorating. We recruited volunteers to write additional

stories, and collected more useful feedback.

By the time we published our final product, In Quest

of Project Excellence through Stories, there was already

demand for the book. We had generated interest in our

project at the same time that we tested and refined our

product. We motivated our team and our stakeholders

while we “de-motivated” our detractors. (Who wants to

bet against a proven winner?)

It’s a lesson I’ve seen demonstrated time and again.

Effective change agents don’t string their audience

along. They don’t spend all their time on processes and

plans. They quickly produce interim results, building

support for their project as they work towards their goal.

Producing “small wins” along the way makes ultimate

success more likely. •

Small Wins

While it might not seem so radical these days to see the words “story” and

“business” in the same sentence, that certainly wasn’t the case when I set

out to put together my first collection of business stories 

FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Dr. Alexander Laufer

Effective change

agents don’t 

string their 

audience along.