A P P L

IN THIS ISSUE

Stories of Innocence, Stories of Experience

The title above is of course an allusion to the great English poet William Bl a k e

and his two masterw o rks Songs of Innocence a n d Songs of Ex p e r i e n c e. As I think

about the stories we’ve collected this issue of ASK, it seems right on the money

to me to invoke these contrary states. 

During our lives we lose our innocence and gain experience about the world on

myriad occasions. What do we learn about ourselves from this? Un c o m f o rtable as

such occasions may be when they occur, re f l e c t i ve practitioners will see them later

on for what they are: terrific opportunities to learn. 

Experience may come by way of profound moments of change, or occur ove r

long stretches of time by the steady accrual of small changes. A pro f o u n d

moment of change is what occurs in Ken Schwe r’s gripping story “Loss and

Re c ove ry,” about a NASA mission that is lost only seconds after launch. 

Se veral of the stories are by young project managers who’ve gained their experience when they stepped into positions of leadership. Tim Owe n’s story, “Less of

Me,” is in the same vain. So is “Boiling Point,” by Michael Jansen, and "When

My Name Suddenly Was 'Murphy'" by David Mitchell. Ken Schwe r’s story also

s h ows that leaders learn much about themselves when confronted with adve r s i t y. 

How would you lead people out of a devastating failure? 

Then there is Te r ry Little’s “T h ree Insights About Change.” He re a senior pro ject manager takes on a new job and relearns late in his career that change is va l uable because it presents us with the opportunity to learn new things about ours e l ves. As Te r ry Little points out, change doesn’t occur any less often as we get

o l d e r, but a lifetime of dealing with change certainly provides us with pre c i o u s

insights of how to weather our changes better. 

Essential to being a re f l e c t i ve practitioner is a willingness to test one’s assumptions and change what one believes with new knowledge. We find this theme

p l a yed out in all of the stories, but I find it especially intriguing in Ju l i e

S c h o n f e l d’s story “Is there a Pe rfect Organization?” After 12 years at NASA, she

took a leave of absence to work at CISCO Systems in an attempt to re s t o re some

of the idealism she’d lost over the years at NASA. At CISCO she thought she

would find the perfect organization. Did she? Read what she finds out and how

it helped to get her to become excited again about working for NASA. This story

appears in our “Special Fe a t u re: My Personal Quest.” Is it too banal to say all

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

page 3

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Todd Post is the editor of A S K

Magazine and works for

E d u Tech Ltd. in Silver Spring,

Maryland. He has written articles about ASK that have

appeared in KM Review and

Knowledge Management

Magazine. 

You can contact Todd at

t p o s t @ e d u t e c h l t d . c o m

and tell him what you think

about this issue of A S K .
p rojects are personal quests? Don't we learn something new about ourselves on

e ve ry mission? With eve ry team we work with? 

Hope you feel you learn something from this issue. Whether that comes by way

of a profound moment of realization in a story, or by a steady accrual of know ledge from reading all the stories, enjoy! 

Todd Post 

A P P L

Issue 8 I N T H I S I S S U E

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

Stories of Innocence, Stories of Experience (cont’d)

page 4 Issue 8 May 2002
A P P L

F R O M T H E D I R E C TOR’S DESK

Something Special

by Dr. Edward Hoff m a n

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

page 5

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Dr. Edward Hoffman is

Director of the NASA Academy

of Program and Project

Leadership. He is responsible

for the development of program

and project leaders and teams

within NASA. Dr. Hoffman

develops training curricula, consulting services, research projects and special studies in program and project management.

You can contact him at 

ehoffman@hq.nasa.gov.

Some of my best decisions have come from a gut feeling that tells me, “This is

right.” They spring from ideas that I know in my heart are true and import a n t .

As it’s a straight shot from heart to gut, and since you can’t do anything about

g r a v i t y, I guess that’s why they always end up in my gut. 

Well, my gut feeling about the APPL Knowledge Sharing (KS) effort is that

something special is taking place. And it’s not just my gut. T h e re is plenty of

i n t e rest and excitement to go around. 

Communities of Practice 

We have re c e i ved numerous requests for members of the KS Team to give presentations about what we’re doing. A recent Knowledge Ma n a g e m e n t

Roundtable at NASA He a d q u a rters drew re c o rd-setting attendance for the eve n t .

A few weeks later, I was invited to give a presentation for the Census Bu reau. Ro n

Ta y l o r, a senior leader of the organization, had requested the presentation. I was

looking forw a rd to a group of about 20 people or so. As it turned out, the auditorium was packed. Nearly 300 people we re in attendance. They we re exc i t e d

about what we’re doing and wanted to pick my brain as to how they could establish something like our KS effort in their organization. 

I also recently had the opportunity to address 120 participants of the Na v y’s

Defense Leadership and Management Program. As part of the presentation, I

asked the participants to generate and discuss their own success stories. I asked

for two volunteers to share theirs with the rest of us. I listened and hoped that

the examples would demonstrate the power and wisdom of practitioner-generated stories. No need to worry; the stories we re wonderful. My only disappointment that day was not having enough time to hear more stories from the gro u p. 

In My Own Ba c k y a rd 

Se veral months back I was conducting a presentation on “What the Academy is

Do i n g” to a group of project practitioners at Glenn Re s e a rch Center in Oh i o. In

the middle of my discussion, a project engineer mentioned that what she re a l l y

a p p reciated was ASK Magazine. She mentioned reading a story by Ma rty Davis of

Go d d a rd Space Flight Center and following up with him to gain ideas for applying his approaches to her project. Se veral managers also mentioned the usefulness

and wisdom contained in the ASK stories by their colleagues across NASA.

As I have mentioned in the past, I am thrilled at the way KS has been re c e i ved at

Ames Re s e a rch Center in California under the guidance of Claire Smith. 

“

She mentioned

reading a story by

Marty Davis of

Goddard Space Flight

Center and following

up with him to gain

ideas for applying his

approaches to her

project. 

”
A P P L

Issue 8 F R O M T H E D I R E C TOR’S DESK

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

Something Special (cont’d)

page 6 Issue 8 May 2002

In c re a s i n g l y, the KS Team is focusing on Center-specific activities that have

included workshops and visits to Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center,

Go d d a rd, Glenn, Marshall and Ames. In t e rest in the effort is further underscore d

by recent information that the KS portion of the APPL website has re c e i ve d

thousands of hits over the past month. Indeed, something special is going on. 

Flying with Talent 

I have always been a believer that if you want a solid measure of outcomes and

benefits, simply look around and see who you are flying with. It’s possible to

attract talent once or twice, but if class continues to show up at the table that

means you are serving them the right stuff. The most amazing part of this effort

has been the tremendous amount of NASA talent, experience and wisdom that

appear again and again. In addition to our NASA colleagues, we have had

i n c reasing amounts of collaboration with leaders from external organizations like

Proctor & Gamble, US Air Fo rce, IDEO, AOL, and Boeing. Bu s y, talented people don’t show up just for the free food. Ok a y, maybe a few. 
The KS effort has only been going strong for a little over a ye a r. It is probably a

little early to tell but on the whole it feels like the best thing I've been part of in

my twenty years at NASA. And believe me, I have had a wonderful twenty ye a r s .

A P P L

F R O M T H E D I R E C TOR’S DESK

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

Something Special (cont’d)

page 7
In one of my early studies, I examined the factors affecting the optimal size of a

c o n s t ruction crew. My list of factors was ve ry elaborate, and included work e r’s

experience, fore m a n’s training, complexity of work, and many others. 

I collected data via field interv i ews and on-site productivity measurements both

in Texas and Israel. Howe ve r, only after I completed collecting my data did I

learn that I failed to include one simple but sometimes ve ry crucial factor. It

turned out that for some trades in Israel, the deciding factor for the size of the

c o n s t ruction crew was no more nor less than the size of the pickup truck carrying the workers from their remote villages to the site. Literature surveys and

field pre-testing of the interv i ew guide we re insufficient. Deep acquaintance

with the phenomena under study is the key. 

Only when the re s e a rcher acquires a rich and intimate knowledge of the subject, or when the practitioner serves as an active partner in helping the

re s e a rcher formulate the right questions and design the right re s e a rch tools, will

any of us learn something meaningf u l .

A P P L

Issue 8 LETTER FROM THE EDITO R - I N - C H I E F

So Much Depends Upon a Pickup Tr u c k

by Dr. Alexander Laufer

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 8 Issue 8 May 2002

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

D r. Alexander Laufer is the

Editor-in-Chief of A S K

Magazine and a member of

the Advisory Board of the

N A S A Academy of Program

and Project Leadership. He is

Dean of Civil Engineering at

Technion-Israel Institute of

Te c h n o l o g y. You may contact

him at

allaufer@askmagazine.org. 
S TO R I E S

A P P L

Loss and Recovery

by Ken Schwer

As I stood harnessed in the bucket truck above the Ta u rus launch vehicle thre e

days before launch, all the difficulties, successes, and memories of this mission

came to mind. 

I had the privilege of being the project manager on the Quick Total Ozo n e

Mapping Sp e c t rometer (Qu i k TOMS) Mission. After a lot of hard work and dedication, our team had the mission ready for launch in less than two years. T h i s

p roject was started during the height of NASA’s Fa s t e r, Be t t e r, Cheaper (FBC)

era. Besides the normal difficulties of developing a mission under FBC conditions, we we re working under an increasingly risk-averse environment due to

recent Mars mission failures. This made things even more stressful than they

a l ready can be on an FBC project. 

Getting Qu i k TOMS through its final hurdles was especially difficult. Our most

recent troubles invo l ved getting eve rybody in place for the launch, scheduled to

occur just 10 days after the 9/11 tragedy. T h e re we re flight cancellations, doubts

as to whether the launch would occur as planned, and the obvious anxiety of

t r a veling by air to the launch site. With the help of NASA planes, charter flights,

and communication networks, we we re all in place the Monday before our Fr i d a y

launch. So with just 3 days before launch and after a ve ry successful Fl i g h t

Readiness Re v i ew, I felt we we re ready with our contingency plans in place. 

Loss 

T h e re we re no plans or work - a rounds for what occurred just a few minutes after

launch. Ei g h t y - t h ree seconds off the pad the Ta u rus launch vehicle had an inflight anomaly that caused the vehicle to veer off course. Ta u rus tried to corre c t

herself but she had lost too much ve l o c i t y. Our concerns grew as we neared separation from the launch vehicle. Separation went as planned and we had all

g round re s o u rces up trying to locate our spacecraft. Howe ve r, after separation, we

n e ver heard from Qu i k TOMS again. 

After a hectic few minutes, the informal word was that the launch vehicle neve r

reached orbit, meaning the spacecraft returned to Earth after separation. T h e

data re vealed three pieces came down in the Indian Ocean. As I drove over to

w h e re the Qu i k TOMS team was monitoring the launch, I couldn’t help but

think that the last two years we re all a waste. 

When I walked into the building, I saw tears in people’s eyes and many on the

team seemed lost. Our NASA He a d q u a rters teammates did an outstanding job

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

page 9

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Ken Schwer is currently the

Project Manager of Solar

Dynamics Observatory at the

Goddard Space Flight Center

(GSFC). During his tenure at

NASA, he has worked as the

Observatory Manager and

Lead Manager for the Quick

Scatterometer (QuikSCAT )

Mission. His other assignments have included the

Hubble Space Telescope First

Servicing Mission and the

Geostationary Operational

Environmental Satellite

(GOES). While at GSFC, Mr.

Schwer has been honored for

his work on several occasions.

These honors include the

Aviation We e k Laurel Aw a r d

and the NASA E x c e p t i o n a l

Achievement Medal for

Q u i k S C AT.
A P P L

Issue 8 S TORIES: KEN SCHWER

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

Loss and Recovery (cont’d)

informing management and preparing press briefings. As I tried to cope and

understand the loss, I re a l i zed my team was carefully watching and listening to

all my actions. Over the next few hours, we talked, made phone calls, and tried

to further understand what had happened to the launch vehicle. Se veral managers

tried to comfort the team by saying, “its not your fault, our industry is risky, and

some things are out of our control.” Since the team was still grieving, this had little effect. 

On my Sa t u rday flight home, I knew that I had to quickly help my team thro u g h

the loss. Of course there we re no pro c e d u res or lessons learned for this situation.

What can you do to console people who have just dedicated two years of their

l i ves on a project and then watched it fall to pieces in all of 83 seconds? And how

do I, a young project manager, younger by many years in some cases than my

teammates, lead them out of this wilderness of grief? 

I wrote the following memo in the early hours of Monday when I returned to

w o rk. Since people we re still scattered throughout the country, I elected to e-mail

it to the entire Qu i k TOMS Team and upper management. 

”I know it feels like we lost a friend. Friday evening as I went thru my

Qu i k TOMS Mission Operations information, I felt lost and had great difficulty

with the finality of our Ob s e rva t o ry’s fate. She never got a chance to show her

t rue colors in orbit. I kept thinking, “what a waste for all” but that didn't last for

long. Once I re a l i zed all the triumphs, lessons learned, and working re l a t i o n s h i p s

c reated on this small but important mission, the purpose of Qu i k TOMS start e d

to become clear. 

“I saw the telemetry stop after separation and unfortunately that was the last we

h e a rd of our Ob s e rva t o ry. Our Mission Operations & Ground System team used

e ve ry re s o u rce available in an attempt to establish contact with Qu i k TOMS. Ou r

Ta u rus team should also be proud. Ta u rus-6 was a sight to be seen on the pad as

she was flying the American Flag. Even after the in-flight anomaly, Ta u rus showe d

her strength & control by trying to correct her course. Ta u rus completed the

sequence of events but did not have enough speed to get us into orbit. I want to

thank our Ta u rus friends for their hard work and dedication. With the experience

and strength of the Ta u rus team, I know they will rebound even stro n g e r. 

“I truly want to thank all of you and your families for the tremendous effort, dedication, and personal sacrifices you gave to the Qu i k TOMS mission. Many of

page 1 0

“

As I tried to cope and

understand the loss, I

realized my team was

carefully watching

and listening to all my

a c t i o n s .

”

Issue 8 May 2002
you went way beyond the call of duty. I know this week will be difficult, especially for our Mission Operations team, so reflect on our journey and re a l i ze the

Qu i k TOMS Mission was not meant to be that of science, it was a mission for

human will and teamwork. 

“All of you moved a mountain for me and I am fore ver grateful.” 

S TORIES: KEN SCHWER

A P P L

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASAsource for project management ASK Magazine

Loss and Recovery (cont’d)

page 1 1

The largest-ever ozone hole, roughly three times the size of the U.S.,

was detected on September 6, 2000 by NASA's Total Ozone Mapping

Spectrometer (TOMS). The TOMS mission discussed in Ken Schwer’s

story “Loss and Recovery” would likely have expanded our understanding of the Earth’s ozone.

Re c ove ry 

I re c e i ved many encouraging responses from my teammates. They thanked me

for sending this note and not forgetting about the human factor in our pro j e c t .

A spirit of cooperation guided the negotiations during contract closeouts. T h e

we - d o n’t - w a n t - t o - w o rk-with-each-other-again approach gave way to teamwork
A P P L

Issue 8 S TORIES: KEN SCHWER

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

Loss and Recovery (cont’d)

and fairness. All of this led to an all hands “wake part y” where Center management expressed their appreciation and thanks to the team. I want to pass on the

kind words from the Di rector of Flight Projects at Go d d a rd Space Flight Center: 

“The reason that Qu i k TOMS was ‘q u i c k’ is that the team worked exc e p t i o n a l l y

h a rd to get the spacecraft ready in two years. On top of the normal challenges,

the Qu i k TOMS team was thrown the curve caused by the Mars failures, re s u l ting in a huge amount of unplanned work: Red Team, parts analysis and testing,

etc. It was only by extra hard work, near round the clock in the last few months,

that the Project remained ‘q u i c k .’ Under those circumstances it is part i c u l a r l y

d e vastating to have nothing to show for all that work. We are reminded that

although the rew a rds for our work are high, risk is high. The spacecraft was lost,

but not eve rything was lost. Relationships built over the past two years will

remain ever strong in the future and will be important in future projects and collaborations. Knowledge gained in teamwork and spacecraft development will be

the springboard for future successes and career growth. Please join me in offering

condolences to the Qu i k TOMS team, but also congratulations for a fantastic job,

well done.” 

We all know where the money goes on a project, but we often forget there is a

face and family behind eve ry dollar we spend. The loss of Qu i k TOMS hurt and

j e o p a rd i zed the uninterrupted monitoring of ozone. Howe ve r, the loss of good

people in our industry would have impacted our future missions. Even though

we can’t re c over Qu i k TOMS from the ocean, as asked to me by my kids, we

re c ove red from our loss with lasting relationships and a strong feeling of success. 

Q u e s t i o n

In high-risk projects, can a

team work together passionately and still be resigned to failure

in the event of that happening

unexpectedly? 

Lessons 

• Leaders lead by showing their humanity to the team. When the whole team is hurt

or grieving, perhaps the strongest thing a leader can do is to express his or her pain

and grief with them. 

• Never forget that missions are made up of the people who accomplish them. Honor

the experience of working together to achieve a goal as much as you do the accomplishment of the goal. 

page 1 2 Issue 8 May 2002
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

Academy Sharing Knowledge 

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine 

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R 

Michael C. Jansen w a s 

recently named the Te c h n i c a l 

Assistant to the A s s i s t a n t 

Business Manager for 

Assessments within the 

International Space Station 

Program's Business 

Management Office. This is his 

fourth story to appear in A S K . 

Others were published in 

Volumes 1, 2, and 5. 

page 1 3 

S TO R I E S 

Boiling Point 

by Michael C. Jansen 

One of my first experiences as a journeyman engineer paralleled Di c k e n s’ A Ta l e 

of Two Ci t i e s. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Not quite six 

months after I came on-board permanently, the Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 

seconds into mission 51L. Ne ver have I experienced such a period of unified purpose and unhesitating professional cooperation across organizational boundaries 

as I did during our activities following this tragic event--not since has the subject 

of work been so grim. 

As did many of my colleagues in Engineering, I doggedly threw myself into the 

piece of the accident investigation assigned to me. From the long-range photo 

and film footage, it was evident that a spurious plume had emanated from one of 

the solid rocket boosters (SRB), beginning roughly a minute into the flight. T h e 

visual data was backed by telemetered data that showed SRB nozzle gimbal angles 

changing to adjust for the slight loss of thrust in the affected booster. Judging by 

the ensuing glow, the plume had apparently impinged upon the External Ta n k 

( E T), fairly near its lower dome. From the telemetry data re c e i ved up to the time 

of the explosion, the propulsion team ascertained that the ullage pre s s u re in the 

E T’s hyd rogen tank, upon which the plume seemed to be impinging, began to 

d rop shortly after the glow was first visible in the film footage. This was an indication that the tank might have been breached, which spawned the theory that 

the liquid hyd rogen therein ignited explosive l y, there by triggering the 

C h a l l e n g e r’s destruction. Analysis was re q u i red to confirm or disprove this supposition, and, along with the above scanty information, I was given the task of 

supplying that pro o f. 

Problem was, I had an extremely limited background in this (indeed, any) type 

of thermal analysis, which was considerably complicated by our gaps in know ledge. The spurious plume’s heat flux level was unknown. The exact location of 

the plume’s impingement point was unknown, which meant that the geometry of 

the affected portion of the tank wall could only be guessed at. The analysis had 

to account for the presence of a cryogenic liquid on the inside of the tank wall, 

which surely would begin to boil locally, with who knew what impact on the heat 

transfer away from the tank wall. And, most hindering, I knew absolutely nothing about heat transfer in boiling liquids. 

As it turned out upon some quick re s e a rch in our tech library, few people in the 

world did, and when it came to cryogenic boiling, the number of experts was in 

the single-digit category. Hmmm. But there, amid the handful of Russian names 

in the literature, was one American and his academic affiliation was with a local 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

Issue 8 S TORIES: MICHAEL J A N S E N 

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners 

Boiling Point (cont’d) 

“ He returned my call 

almost immediately 

and showed great 

interest in the situation: Was I investigating the C h a l l e n g e r 

a c c i d e n t? ” 

u n i versity! I couldn’t believe my good fortune! After obtaining permission to contact a non-NASA source as part of what we we re supposed to treat as a secure 

i n vestigation, I called this pro f e s s o r’s office immediately to set up an appointment to get some valuable guidance on how to approach my problem. He 

returned my call almost immediately and showed great interest in the situation: 

Was I investigating the Challenger accident? I told him we at NASA we re under 

o rders to treat all circumstances of the investigation as confidential, and that I 

could there f o re not answer that (which, of course gave him his answer). He 

a g reed immediately to a meeting. 

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, don’t try to tell me it’s a moose! 

My first indication that I was in for a difficult meeting came when I walked into 

the pro f e s s o r’s office and was greeted not only by this world-class expert, but by one 

of his visiting Soviet colleagues as well. This being the pre-détente era, when the 

Soviets we re actively “borrow i n g” our technology to develop their own Sp a c e 

Shuttle system, and considering the confidential nature of the investigation I was a 

p a rt of, the man’s presence made me quite uncomfortable. The pro f e s s o r, perhaps 

i n s t i n c t i vely reacting to my obvious youth and his role as learned advisor, immediately justified his colleague’s inclusion in our meeting as a means of getting another expert to consider the technical problem in order to bring this serious situation 

to a rapid conclusion. Certainly I had no objections, right? Fresh from college, I 

a l l owed myself to fall into the professor-student relationship and acquiesced. 

He wasted no time in resuming his questioning: This was part of the Challenger 

i n vestigation, right? My attempts to deflect the question only strengthened his 

conviction that he was correct. His excitement was palpable: So, what are the 

details of the problem? I explained that I was interested in calculating the heat 

transfer away from an aluminum wall that had a heat source on one side and liquid hyd rogen on the other. What type of aluminum? I didn’t know, but could 

find out. What local wall thickness? Not sure, the heat source impingement point 

was only grossly estimable, and the local geometry changes dramatically in that 

region. What was the heat flux to the wall? Don't know; the engineers estimating that hadn't yet released any numbers. What is the inner wall surface ro u g hness? Do n’t know; I could perhaps estimate it based on manufacturing specifications. Si ze and distribution of bubbles coming off the inner wall? How would I 

k n ow that? Number and depth of nucleation sites? Huh?? 

What do you know? 

page 1 4 Issue 8 May 2002 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

S TORIES: MICHAEL J A N S E N 

Academy Sharing Knowledge 

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

Boiling Point (cont’d) 

Well, not much--that's why I came to you for help on how to approach this pro blem. 

The pro f e s s o r, obviously disgusted, rattled off the myriad variables that estimation of the heat transfer coefficient depended on, all of which we re import a n t , 

and none of which I seemed to know. I asked whether the general appro a c h 

c o u l d n’t be outlined, with best guesses and available data to be inserted later to 

a r r i ve at a good ballpark number? He scoffed, smirked at his Russian counterpart , 

and told me the problem could not be solved without knowing the variables he 

had laid out for me. Then the pro f e s s o r, in one of the more open displays of condescension I’ve witnessed, told me in essence to come back again when I knew 

what the heck I was talking about, or send someone else more experienced who 

might have a better handle on the problem. 

I fumed during the entire 45-minute drive back to my office. 

Seat-of-the-pants engineering... 

Bruised ego notwithstanding, I still had a problem to solve. I returned to the re fe rence books I had borrowed from the library and re e valuated the information to 

be gleaned there f rom. The problem that had caused me to seek assistance to 

begin with was that no single boiling point curve (in essence, a re p resentation of 

h ow quickly heat could be carried away from a surface by a boiling liquid) existed for cryogens. Myriad empirical formula existed, each typically valid for only a 

n a r row temperature range, specific surface material, surface finish, etc.; all of 

them sported the alphabet soup of variables for which I had no estimates. 

Well, if there was no single cryogenic boiling curve to suit my situation, I’d piece 

together one of my own. Se veral sheets of log paper later, I had in front of me an 

a p p roximation of a hyd rogen boiling curve spanning the gamut of temperature 

d i f f e rences ever tested in the history of cryogenic re s e a rch. Considering the 

i n c redible scatter in the empirical data I had synthesized to form my curve, I had 

no idea whatsoever if I was in the same universe with re a l i t y, but I had my start ­

point. I just needed to test it, but how? The team working on an estimate of the 

plume-induced heat-flux to the ET we re n’t quite ready with a heating range, and 

the kind of testing I had in mind wouldn’t be safe to do with liquid hyd ro g e n 

a n y w a y. Ah, but of course: inert liquid nitrogen! I quickly repeated my kludgew o rk, this time to approximate nitro g e n’s boiling curve. 

“ He scoffed, smirked 

at his Russian counterpart, and told me 

the problem could not 

be solved without 

knowing the variable 

he had laid out for 

me. ” 

page 1 5 
A P P L
 

Issue 8 S TORIES: MICHAEL J A N S E N 

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners 

Boiling Point (cont’d) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I consulted a friend of mine in the thermal analysis area and together we designed 

a test setup that included simple open-top aluminum box (of the same aluminum 

as the E.T.... I had re s e a rched the materials). We had the techs build and instrument several such tanks with thermocouples radiating from a central target zo n e 

on one side. We then set up a calorimeter-instrumented target and measured the 

heat flux from a blow t o rch at various distances along a centerline perpendicular 

to the calorimeter’s face. My friend then developed a simple two-dimensional 

conduction model of the tank’s face and made predictions, using my nitro g e n 

boiling curve, of the time it would take to melt the tank’s wall at the various heat 

flux levels for which we had blow t o rch distance data. Fo l l owing a test plan scribbled on a sheet from an engineering pad, we had the techs fill the first tank with 

liquid nitrogen and position the blow t o rch at the closest (highest incident heating) position. Then, with a roomful of bemused older techs watching and our 

c a u l d ron bubbling over with nitrogen fog, I signaled one of them to fire up the 

t o rch, the signal for my friend to click the stopwatch 

“Time!” I yelled at the first sign of nitrogen pouring from the new penetration 

into the ove rf l ow basin. 

And the answer is... 

“8.6 seconds!” answe red my friend, even as the tech shut down the torch. 

“What was the prediction?” Da red I hope? The actual time had sounded fairly 

familiar... 

After the moment it took my friend to search our handwritten matrix, the techs’ 

grins changed purpose and broadened. 

“8.8 seconds!” 

We repeated the process several times for various torch distances; in each case the 

experimental burn-through time matched our prediction to within ten per cent. 

Later plots of the thermocouple data re vealed that we had also matched the wall 

t e m p e r a t u re time-histories ve ry well, not just the time needed to reach the alum i n u m’s melting point. Having validated my nitrogen boiling curve and my 

f r i e n d’s two-dimensional wall model, we set our sights on the real problem at hand. 

Wo rking from the plume team’s estimates on where the jet was impinging on the 

E T, my friend developed two- and three-dimensional thermal conduction models 

page 1 6 Issue 8 May 2002 
 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

S TORIES: MICHAEL J A N S E N 

Academy Sharing Knowledge 

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

Boiling Point (cont’d) 

page 1 7 

of the local ET wall geometry. Since the models’ thermal responses turned out to 

be only negligibly different, we felt that the validation provided by our test re s u l t s 

could be extended to our three-dimensional approach as well. From that point 

o n w a rd it was a mere matter of plugging in my hyd rogen boiling curve, making a 

b u r n - t h rough prediction based on the plume team’s estimated time-va rying incident heating rates, and comparing our prediction against the flight data. 

Our prediction matched within four percent. 
 

A P P L
 

Issue 8 S TORIES: MICHAEL J A N S E N 

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners 

Boiling Point (cont’d) 

Ep i l o g u e 

The hypothesis that the ET’s liquid hyd rogen tank initiated the Challenger’s 

explosion turned out to be false. (The plume was determined to have melted the 

b o o s t e r’s aft attach strut, which allowed the booster to rotate about its forw a rd 

s t rut and puncture the ET’s liquid oxygen tank, which resulted in the initial 

explosion.) Ne ve rtheless, the plume’s penetration of the ET’s aft dome was confirmed by our analysis, which added to our understanding of the events that trans p i red during this tragic disaster. 

I took away from the experience a great appreciation for the ability of a group of 

focused, committed people to accomplish seemingly miraculous results within 

extremely short timeframes, with a minimum of information to go on. I also 

acquired a healthy skepticism for the infallibility of theoretical experts, coupled with 

new confidence in the ability of common-sense engineering to produce usable 

results even in the absence of all the data one would normally like to have. However, 

don’t take this to mean that I think engineers are better equipped than theoretical 

experts to address such problems as the one described in my story here. “Experts” 

can seldom give useful answers to unexpected questions without an opportunity for 

study, and it is rare that they will volunteer to put aside their own work to study 

“your” problem. Unless we are willing to fund them for an extended period, their 

advice must be used judiciously, and primarily in a review capacity. 

Still, in a pinch the back of the envelope can work quite well. 

Lesson: 

• Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to 

death as soon as they are nicked by the real world 

Q u e s t i o n 

In situations like the one in this 

s t o r y, is it better to try solving a 

problem without an expert's 

help, or is it better to try and 

collect more data and visit the 

expert one more time? 

page 1 8	 Issue 8 May 2002 
A P P L

S TO R I E S

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

When My Name Suddenly Was “Murphy”

by David Mitchell 

page 1 9

The 1995 - '96 timeframe was a busy period for NASA's Delta II missions. Se ve r a l

spacecraft we re slated for launch. During one particularly crazy stretch, four separate missions we re launched within four months, and we had to jump betwe e n

launch bases on both coasts (Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Fo rce Bases). 

I was the Launch Se rvices Ma n a g e r. My job consisted of the traditional re s p o nsibilities that go with a fixed price contract: managing schedule and budget, and

overseeing the delive ry of launch vehicles. The final step in each mission was, of

course, the launch. The Project Manager traditionally led the team through the

final two weeks at the launch base. 

My Project Manager took it upon himself to push me out into territory that I had

n e ver experienced before. For example, he had me plan the launch campaigns

( m a n p owe r, re s o u rces, durations), lead some of the launch vehicle re v i ews, pre sent launch vehicle readiness statuses to Center Management at Go d d a rd and JPL,

conduct pre- and post-launch press conferences, and be a part of the launch

readiness “g o / n o - g o” polls. 

Howe ve r, he did not just throw me out to sink or swim. He hammered away at

me to make sure I was thoroughly pre p a red. An example of this was when he

assembled a panel of three people to hear a dry run of my first pre-launch pre s s

c o n f e rence. His panel of mock re p o rters fired away at me with a series of questions to make sure I was quick on my feet in responding to some ve ry good and

sometimes “off the wall” questions 

As with eve ry mission, we always had to wrestle with late breaking launch ve h icle issues. In the case of the Mars Global Su rve yor and Mars Pa t h f i n d e r, two high

p rofile missions, that included a lot of scrutiny from senior management. In the

past I might be associated with the senior managers through a photo opport u n ity (i.e., award ceremony) or an “All Ha n d s” meeting. Now my project manager

had me briefing some of these individuals on a weekly basis. 

This was both an exciting and nerve wracking time for me. My project manager's confidence in me was a great motivator and I learned a lot about addre s s i n g

and solving issues from the technical, programmatic, and political perspective s .

Still, it all seemed to be going rather smoothly, until the unexpected occurred. 

We we re finishing our launch campaigns for '95/'96 with great success, leading

into the last mission, Mars Pa t h f i n d e r, in December 1996. Just one day before

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

David Mitchell is the Deputy

Program Manager of the

Geostationary Operational

Environmental Satellite

(GOES) Program at NASA's

Goddard Space Flight Center.

The GOES Program is responsible for the design, assembly,

integration, test, launch, and

on-orbit checkout of the GOES

weather satellites for the

National Oceanic and

Atmospheric A d m i n i s t r a t i o n

(NOAA). Prior to his work on

GOES, he concentrated on

expendable launch vehicle

programs. Mr. Mitchell joined

N A S A in 1987.
launch, I re c e i ved a call from my project manager who said he’d been incapacitated and would not be able to make the launch. It turned out that he had suff e red a heart attack. He said he had all the confidence in me and wished me the

“best of luck in tomorrow's launch.” 

Although our deputy project manager and other senior managers had now converged on the launch site in preparation for the following day’s launch, the decision was made to put me in the role of NASA Launch Vehicle Manager (LVM) for

the next day’s launch attempt. Fo rt u n a t e l y, and by design, I had participated in

many launch simulations and previous launches sitting next to my project manager observing his methods and actions as the NASA LVM. Now I was the person

giving the launch vehicle readiness go/no-go to the NASA Launch Ma n a g e r. 

Had my project manager not pre p a red me as he did, it would have been quite

daunting for me to be thrust into the limelight just a day before one of NASA's

highest profile missions. In the end, the preparation was good, and eve ry t h i n g

went off smoothly. 

You can never know when the unexpected will occur. And anybody who is intimately familiar with “Mu r p h y’s Law” knows that the unexpected is going to

occur at the worst possible time. My project manager wanted me to be as re a d y

as possible in case Murphy re a red its head. The bottom line is there is no better

way to be pre p a red than by experiential learning. 

My project manager taught me a valuable lesson. You pre p a re your people by giving them many different tasks, including tasks that are traditionally re s e rved for

you or other senior people. I was motivated to accept the challenge fate tossed my

w a y, but not just because I had trained for it. My project manager’s confidence in

me brought out my confidence in myself. It motivates the heck out of people when

you show them your confidence by giving them increasingly more responsibilities. 

Lessons 

• Learning by doing expedites doing something well. 

• Your trust in people whom you feel are potential leaders brings out their confidence. Tell them that they're doing a good job and that you have confidence

in them and they will generally become self motivated and exhibit a gre a t e r

d e g ree of confidence in themselves. 

A P P L

Issue 8 S TORIES: DAVID MITCHELL

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

When My Name Suddenly Was “Murphy” (cont’d)

page 2 0 Issue 8 May 2002

“

My project manager’s

confidence in me was

a great motivator and

I learned a lot about

addressing and solving issues from the

technical, programmatic, and political

p e r s p e c t i v e s .

”
• C o n vey that you expect much from people, and the chances are you will get

much from them. 

A P P L

S TORIES: DAVID MITCHELL

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

When My Name Suddenly Was “Murphy” (cont’d)

page 2 1

David Mitchell was launch manager on Delta II missions. Pictured here,

the Mars Pathfinder begins its journey with liftoff atop a Delta II expendable launch vehicle.

Q u e s t i o n

Looking back at your career, do

you agree that taking on a variety of responsibilities has

enhanced your performance? 
A P P L
 

Issue 8 

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners 

S TO R I E S 

Less of Me 

by Tim Owen 

Let's be frank, things just we ren't working out. The project was a micro g r a v i t y 

experiment that was supposed to be ready for launch in August 2000. Right fro m 

the get-go the hard w a re development team was behind schedule and over budget. 

The Principal In vestigator (PI) and his science team had been responsible for not 

only the science but also the hard w a re development. This was one of the first 

p rojects coming out of the Mi c rogravity office at NASA's Marshall Space Fl i g h t 

Center to use the PI mode for the bulk of the project management. "Thank yo u 

ve ry much for the money. Please leave us alone." That about summed up their 

relationship with NASA. 

My management asked me to step in and get a handle on the project. On the NASA 

end of things, we'd been relatively hands off until now. The culture at Marshall is 

steeped in systems engineering, and what we had set off to do on this project was 

180 degrees opposite of that. Now we were trying to get back in the picture. The 

way my management put it to me was like this: "You've got to--you know--roll up 

your sleeves and get down in there. Take back control. You're our guy." 

I came on as the project manager for NASA in the fall of 1999. In the winter of 

2000 initial verification testing began. Right off the bat one of the key technologies was failing. The PI needed to capture digital snapshots of the crystal grow t h 

p rocess in order to understand and determine the physics of crystal growth as it 

occurs in a microgravity environment. Clarity of resolution was re q u i red at two 

d i f f e rent points on the crystal growth chambers: one for capturing the digital 

images, and the other for measuring the laser light scattering ratio. In the case of 

the latter, the resolution of the laser light scattering ratio was not meeting the science re q u i rements. 

Such we re the kinds of technical problems I was expected to get a handle on. 

T h e re we re other problems beyond the hard w a re developer's control. De f i n i n g 

h a rd w a re re q u i rements, in particular hard w a re interfaces, was complicated by the 

fact that the development of the vehicle (Space Station) and carrier (EXPRESS 

rack) was taking place concurrently with the development of this experiment. 

If all this doesn't sound like enough high drama, it was my first assignment as a 

p roject manager. Na t u r a l l y, I wanted to prove myself and be successful. I also 

wanted to do right by NASA and live up to the example set for me by the best 

p roject managers I had worked for during my twe l ve years at Marshall Sp a c e 

Flight Center. 

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R 

Tim Owen is currently the 

Project Manager within the 

Transportation Directorate at 

Marshall Space Flight Center 

for the Expendable Launch 

Vehicle program. He has 

worked with NASA at Marshall 

Space Flight Center for over 

12 years in a number of diff e rent positions and organizations. He most recently served

as the Project Manager for a 

space station experiment 

called the Dynamically 

Controlled Protein Crystal 

Growth (DCPCG) within the 

Microgravity Sciences and 

Applications Department of the

Science Directorate. 

page 2 2 Issue 8 May 2002 
A P P L
 

S TORIES: TIM OWEN 

Academy Sharing Knowledge 

The NASAsource for project management ASK Magazine

Less of Me (cont’d) 

Sometimes described as "weightlessness," microgravity is a condition in 

which the effects of gravity are greatly reduced. In microgravity, researchers 

can isolate and study the influence of gravity on physical processes, such as 

the flame shown here. 

Bull in the China Shop 

It's a precarious situation to be in when you start off riding one horse across a 

r i ver and decide in the middle to get on another. The hard w a re deve l o p m e n t 

team was confused at first, and not exactly amenable to this new arrangement. 

They felt like they had been empowe red to go do this job and now NASA was 

telling them, "Look, yo u ' re not meeting your cost and schedule commitments. 

We ' re going to have to step up our invo l vement." 

Suddenly their relationship with NASA, including our level of technical invo l vement, had changed in quite a dramatic way, in part because we we re entering the 

page 2 3 
page 2 4 Issue 8 May 2002 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

Issue 8 S TORIES: TIM OWEN 

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners 

Less of Me (cont’d) 

“ Funny how natural 

tendencies, despite 

training to the cont r a r y, can undo our 

best intentions. ” 

testing and verification phase but primarily because of their poor perf o r m a n c e . 

T h e re's no way you can change from one way of working together to another 

without somebody on their side wondering, "What's going on here? Am I doing 

something wrong?" 

Pa rt of the problem was me, too. When I see that something is not going well, I 

h a ve a tendency to push eve ryone out of the way and take charge. Maybe that's 

why my management thought I was the person to step in and take hold of the 

reins on this project. I had been through enough project management training to 

k n ow the value of consensus building and the need to establish good communication across the team. Funny how natural tendencies, despite training to the 

c o n t r a ry, can undo our best intentions. Gi ven the state of the project, the pre ss u re I felt under, it was hard not to succumb to the urge to ove rc o n t rol. 

My objective was to stay focused on results. Schedules, deliverables. Did we pass 

that verification item, or did we fail? If we failed, what do we have to do to get back 

in line? We had some ve ry long meetings, and there we re painful discussions. In 

o rder to focus them on cost and schedule performance, we started each meeting 

with a schedule re v i ew. The schedule was generally about six pages long with maybe 

a dozen items on each page. As we worked through that, it became obvious to me 

that the hard w a re development team did not have a solid understanding of what 

was on their schedule and how it impacted other parts of the project. A lot of my 

questions started to sound the same: "Tell me what you mean by this activity." 

It was rough on them because they we re seeing that they really didn't know what 

their drivers we re. Not surprisingly, they developed something of a defensive post u re to me. I asked hard questions. A lot of these folks on the hard w a re deve l o pment team had been going along and never been held accountable. I came in and 

one of the first things I did was say, "Let's look at who the people are on the pro ject, what their responsibilities are, and hold each person accountable for what 

t h e y ' re supposed to be doing." 

Was it wrong to ask hard questions? Certainly not. But just like the impact of a 

joke depends so much on its delive ry, so does the ability of a leader to effectively communicate where the team is going. My approach rubbed some people the 

w rong way. Feelings we re hurt. The tone I was conveying, and none too subtly, 

was that you all are screwups and I'm here to fix things. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

S TORIES: TIM OWEN 

Academy Sharing Knowledge 

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

Less of Me (cont’d) 

L e a rning What I Already Knew 

Part of establishing accountability, and being a good project manager, is learning to 

work with your team. Because every project team is only as good as the weakest link. 

I re a l i zed soon enough that I could not do eve ryone's position. Who knows how 

long I might have kept pushing had I not recalled a similar situation on a pro ject about six years earlier? At the time I was working as a subsystems lead and 

t h e re we re some computer sequences that needed to be completed by a cert a i n 

time. I had a particular understanding of how I thought it ought to be done, and 

when I gave the job to the person who was going to do it I said, "Ha ve this re a d y 

in three weeks, and this is how I want it done." To his credit, he said to me, 

"Look, if yo u ' ve given me the responsibility and yo u ' ve empowe red me to go do 

this, then let me do it the way I think it ought to be done." 

That was a profound realization for me. You could even call it a "Eu re k a " 

moment. At that point I recalled working under project managers whom I cons i d e red to be the best. The ones who we re the best examples, my mentors, gave 

me the authority to go off and do the job my way. Because they gave me that 

a u t h o r i t y, I felt accountable to them and to the project. 

Eve n t u a l l y, the guy assigned to the computer sequences worked out the pro b l e m , 

and I was glad in the end that it was not done in the way I wanted. I was able to 

see the merits of what that person was doing, and this opened up my eyes to re a lizing that I was not alone on this project. Help was always there. All I needed to 

do was reach out to it instead of pushing it away. 

He re I was six years later, learning that same lesson all over again. You build yo u r 

team by building your people. T h e re was no doubt that people on this pro j e c t 

we re working hard. Clearly, they we re not focused on being accountable for their 

cost and schedule, but there was never any question about whether they we re 

putting in enough hours or doing enough analysis. 

T h e re are ways of getting people to be accountable, and some strike me as far 

m o re favorable to the overall good of the project. Just like in any re l a t i o n s h i p, 

you have to try to understand each other's point of view. You can't say, "Go do 

this, just because I said it." It doesn't work that way. Milestones and accountability are great, but the key is to agree upon goals. Once you do that you must 

let them work. You don't have the competencies of all the team members, and 

you don't have enough time to learn them all. 

“ ‘Look, if you’ve given 

me the responsibility 

and you’ve empowered me to go do this, 

then let me do it the 

way I think it ought to 

be done.’ ” 

page 2 5 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

Issue 8 S TORIES: TIM OWEN 

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners 

Less of Me (cont’d) 

A perfect example dealt with the concurrent development of the science instrument with the vehicle and the carrier. This was a tremendously tedious and complicated task. It re q u i red an enormous amount of coordination between the hardw a re development team, vehicle and carrier development organizations and the 

responsible engineering disciplines at Marshall. By empowering and allowing the 

lead systems engineers to perform their roles made a big difference in the pro j e c t 

running smoothly amidst the confusion. 

The significance of allowing the hard w a re development team, science team, and 

the engineering team and their discipline/element leads to do their jobs and 

k n ow that I, the project manager, was going to let them to do their jobs, but with 

the expectation that they would do it in a timely manner and in a cost conscious 

way was so crucial to the ultimate success of this project. 

In the end, we we re able to gain back some of our schedule after a major de-scope 

and launch date slips. Mo re import a n t l y, I learned something about myself, ye t 

again, that is going to make me a better project manager. The bull-in-the-chinashop approach leaves little room for movement. T h e re's only but two things left 

on the floor after the bull has had its way in a china shop, and neither one of 

them is ve ry nice. 

When I came onto this project, I was ve ry ambitious and ve ry sure of how I 

thought things should be handled. This is going be a brand new project, start i n g 

my first day. So r ry, but it doesn't work that way. As much as I wanted to take 

hold of the reins, grab the bull by the horns, be active, "You do this; you do that," 

it's just not the right way. 

You can't force people to do what you want them to do. Instead, what you re a lly want is to encourage people to take responsibility so that they're doing something because they want to do it, not because you want them to do it. A little less 

of me in this case went a long way. 

Q u e s t i o n 

What lessons have you had to 

relearn throughout your career? 

Lessons 

• Resist the urge to micromanage. Encourage the team effort. Inclusion and openness 

work better than exclusion and arrogance. 

• Be open to team members who can approach a problem and solve it differently than 

you because of their expertise. 

page 2 6	 Issue 8 May 2002 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R 

Julie Schonfeld is currently 

the acting Deputy Project 

Manager of the IT S t r a t e g i c 

Research Project. Previously 

at Ames Research Center. She 

has also worked at Ames on 

bio-instrumentation for life sciences research, including the 

Neurolab STS-90 Mission, and 

prior to that, chemical/gas 

detection systems at Kennedy 

Space Center. In July 2000, 

she took an eight-month leave 

of absence and went to work 

at Cisco Systems, and considers this one of the most valuable experiences of her career. 

S P E C I A L F E ATURE: PERSONAL Q U E S T 

Is There A Perfect Organization? 

by Julie Schonfeld 

Academy Sharing Knowledge 

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

When I was 10 years old, I decided I was going to be the first woman astro n a u t . 

By the time I was 12, I knew what schools I was going to attend, what degrees I 

was going to get; basically, I had the whole thing figured out. 

This is the way I've always been. I make a goal for myself and plan the best path 

to get there. 

In high school, I was an intern at the Kennedy Space Center. I went on to be a 

p re-co-op and a co-op student at Kennedy too, and when I graduated I was 

o f f e red a position at Ames Re s e a rch Center in California. 

Which is where I am now, still at NASA, the place I've always dreamed of working, and while I'm not an astronaut, I'm fine with that. Being a project manager 

has turned out to be wonderfully challenging, and I enjoy contributing to the 

Agency that way. 

But this story is not so much about dreams as it is about the real world. A couple of years ago I was feeling restless. After 9 years at NASA as a project manage r, I felt I had reached a point in my life where I needed a change. I took a leave 

of absence to find out what it was like to be a project manager in private indust ry. This was not an easy decision. All I ever wanted to do was work for NASA. 

In fact, it was absolutely heart wrenching for me to leave because I was thinking 

I might not come back. 

My personal philosophy of project management is that you should place the 

highest value on the people doing the work, your team. I believe that the people 

doing the work know better than anyone what should be done in their individual areas, not management. I've seen cases where project managers and upper 

managers above them will decide something on a project despite the views of 

someone who has more knowledge about the issue in question. Letting the team 

k n ow what the goal is and giving each individual a role in that and clearly defining what their responsibilities are and just letting them go--that's what I try to 

do as a project manager. In general, I don't find that to be the case. Too many 

managers are concerned with appearing to know more than anyone below them. 

I suppose this was the source of my dissatisfaction at NASA, and why I thought 

I needed a change. Was it like this eve ry w h e re? I needed to know. 

page 2 7 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

Issue 8 S P E C I A L F E ATURE: JULIE SCHONFELD 

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners 

Is There A Perfect Organization? (cont’d) 

“ After 9 years at 

N A S A as a project 

m a n a g e r, I felt I had 

reached a point in my 

life where I needed a 

c h a n g e . ” 

The Big Leap 

T h rough a process of elimination, I arrived at Cisco Systems. I knew they we re 

doing really exciting work there, and clearly, they we re a company that could produce. Eve rything that I'd read in the press about them said such marve l o u s 

things. And then it's rated as one of the best companies to work for. 

Now, what position I was looking for at first, I didn't have a clue, but I knew I 

could offer pretty solid skills as a project manager, so I went with it. Define the 

goal, and then develop a plan that points in that direction. 

It turned out there was an opening for a Project Manager in one of their 

Information Technology (IT) design groups. I applied and was hired straight away. 

Initially it seemed like a nice fit, and I was quite pleased. One of my goals was to see 

why Cisco was talked about in such glowing terms. I wanted to find out if it was just 

hype or if Cisco really was different. So I set out to see if they "had the goods." 

Cisco has a different take on project management than I was used to at NASA. 

They do not assume that the project manager is necessarily the technical expert 

in her gro u p. In this particular IT group that I was part of, I was part n e red with 

a network architect, and we worked together as a team. It was a partnership in 

the true sense of the word. The network architect was responsible for the technical direction, and as the project manager I was responsible for managing the 

e f f o rt and being the interface to upper management and to other lines of business within the company. At the same time, I was not excluded from the technical side of the project, and I felt that my contributions there we re welcome. 

At Cisco, teams have more say than any one individual. Project teams can eve n 

ove r rule vice presidents. If a Vice President says you will do this, the project team 

can say, "Well, these are all the reasons why we think we shouldn't go in that 

d i rection." Naturally you have to do more than just offer an opinion. You must 

build a case, but it is a real policy. I saw it in action several times. 

The project that I was working on dealt with video conferencing, and they wanted to deploy a product immediately. We showed all of the problems that would 

occur if it we re deployed too soon, and how it would prove to be unmanageable 

and unreliable. Because we could not guarantee service, we convinced them it 

was best to wait. 

page 2 8 Issue 8 May 2002 
A P P L
 

S P E C I A L F E ATURE: JULIE SCHONFELD 

Academy Sharing Knowledge 

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

Is There A Perfect Organization? (cont’d) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What impressed me about Cisco is that management focuses on enabling 

e m p l oyees to succeed. That's why their acquisitions of other companies are so 

successful. Within two weeks, all the employees of the acquired company have 

their benefits, salary packages, and computers. The beginning-to-end transition 

p rocess is three months. These people are not suffering, wondering what is going 

to happen to them. 

A major focus of the company is "What's good for Cisco as a whole is what's 

good for eve ryone." That focus makes for a constru c t i ve work environment, and 

it's within that environment that people remain enthusiastic about their jobs and 

hence maximize their pro d u c t i v i t y. That aspect of "the people element" is what I 

b e l i e ve management should be about. 

Straight Down 

Now why did I return to NASA when it seems I had found my niche at Cisco? 

The reason that I left actually was because a situation developed that was incong ruous with what the Cisco culture was supposed to be about, and I wasn't sure 

that they we re going to live up to their reputation. 

The manager who had hired me thought our group was getting to be too large. 

He decided to break us up into three subgroups and was going to put a new laye r 

of management between him and the gro u p. We actually got to help hire this person, and in the interv i ew he seemed fine. Well, he turned out to be someone who 

assumes that he knows more than anyone. 

He didn't respect anybody's input. The whole team would say, "We think we 

should go here," and he would say, "Well, that's fine, but I think we need to go 

h e re, and so we ' re going to do what I say." 

When I showed him a presentation, he told me what I needed to do technically 

and was clearly wrong, but wouldn't listen to me when I tried to explain. I 

watched him publicly belittling someone, and additionally, performing stro n g ­

armed "corre c t i ve measures" with someone who was one of the best perf o r m e r s 

in our gro u p. "You will be on my calendar eve ry single day and I'm going to 

monitor your pro g ress daily," he told him. 

One Friday at the end of the day, many of us who we re disgruntled held this 

meeting to discuss the situation, how he was micromanaging this process that we 

page 2 9 
 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

Issue 8 S P E C I A L F E ATURE: JULIE SCHONFELD 

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners 

Is There A Perfect Organization? (cont’d) 

we re supposed to be developing, and what we should do. T h e re we re just a lot of 

hostile comments from eve ryone in the group and how this was totally incong ruous to the way things we re supposed to be done at Cisco. 

We went to our original boss and said he's being horrible. We expected him to 

be fired, or moved to somew h e re else in the company at least, but this didn't happen. Our original boss said, "I'm going to work with him, and we'll see about 

i m p roving this." 

Do virtual realities and perfect organizations have something in common? 

Hope it's not the dress code. 

page 3 0 Issue 8 May 2002 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

S P E C I A L F E ATURE: JULIE SCHONFELD 

Academy Sharing Knowledge 

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

Is There A Perfect Organization? (cont’d) 

A month later we we ren't seeing any improvements. I actually went to my original boss's manager, and then I went to a Vice President, and I said, "There is a 

big problem. He's horrible, we ' re miserable, and our productivity is being affected." I did this because John Chambers, Cisco's CEO, says in his meetings, "We 

cannot afford to have bad managers. We cannot afford to lose good employees. If 

you have a manager who's bad, you need to escalate it, you need to take it to yo u r 

manager's manager, and if they don't address it, you take it higher." When it was 

clear that my manager wasn't going to take any action, I went higher. 

A round this same time my leave of absence was about to come up. I had to either 

go back to NASA or resign. I called and begged for a month's extension on my 

l e a ve, and NASA said okay. At the end of the month I still wasn't seeing any 

i m p rovements. I lost faith that Cisco was going to do anything about him, and 

so I decided to return to NASA. 

Pa r a c h u t e 

I was the first one to go, a month later somebody else left, and then when the 

t h i rd person quit, Cisco did what it should have done at the beginning. T h e y 

demoted him, six months after we raised the issue. 

When I returned to NASA, I was afraid it was going to feel like I was mov i n g 

back in with my parents after I had gone to college, but instead it turned out that 

I felt re f reshed and ready to take on a new challenge, set new goals. 

I don't re g ret leaving. It was a huge learning experience for me, personally. A 

g rowth experience. I became a little wiser, a little more realistic about organizations. None are perfect. Mostly what I wanted, I re a l i ze, was to work with re a l l y 

s m a rt people doing really interesting work, and that's right here. Maybe I had to 

l e a ve NASA to see that, but I'm glad for the experience I had at Cisco, and the 

re n ewed sense of optimism I have about my future at NASA. I'm still idealistic. 

In fact, I feel even more so now than eve r. 

I'm on this crusade now to change things at NASA to the way that I think they 

ought to be. NASA's a great organization. When I compare the best people 

t h e y ' ve got at Cisco with who we have here at NASA, I see the same high caliber. 

Let's allow the people who are doing the work to use their intellects to do the 

best job that they can. 

page 3 1 
 

 

 

 

A P P L
 

Issue 8 S P E C I A L F E ATURE: JULIE SCHONFELD 

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners 

Is There A Perfect Organization? (cont’d) 

A lot of it is bringing over some of what I learned about the culture at Cisco. I'm 

talking to people whenever I get a chance, advocating for some of the things I 

saw in the culture at Cisco, like individual empowerment, focusing on the team. 

I want to take this to people in upper management who will listen to me. 

I feel like this is my NASA, and I want to do what I can to make it what it should 

b e . 

Q u e s t i o n 

How do you maintain the right 

balance between realism and 

i d e a l i s m ? 

L e s s o n s 

• Cultures do exist that respect the knowledge of practitioners and the power of team. 

They are not just artfully crafted success stories. 

• Even excellent organizations have their own limitations because people are just people. 

• Change is a great opportunity to rejuvenate oneself. When you feel frustrated with 

your situation, don't dwell on your frustration but see it as an opportunity to restore 

your idealism. 

page 3 2	 Issue 8 May 2002 
F E AT U R E S

A P P L

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

page 3 3

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

W. Scott Cameron is Capital

Systems Manager for the Food

& Beverage Global Business

Unit of Procter & Gamble. He

has been managing capital

projects and mentoring other

capital management practitioners for the past 20 years at

Procter & Gamble within its

Beauty Care, Health Care,

Food & Beverage, and Fabric

& Home Care Businesses.

A Big Raise, A Promotion, Or...

by W. Scott Cameron

I recently got an e-mail requesting nominations for our 11th Capital

Management Leadership and Ma s t e ry (L&M) Aw a rd program. This program re co g n i zes capital management practitioners in project management, constru c t i o n

management, capital purchasing, facilities engineering, design management, capital finance, and initiative management for their functional leadership and mast e ry throughout their care e r. 

This e-mail caused me to reflect on how organizations re c o g n i ze peoples' contributions in traditional (pay and promotion) and non-traditional ways (re c o g n ition, etc.). I was fortunate to be chosen as the project manager of the first L&M

p rogram. As our company's Capital Management Organization matured, we disc ove red we had a lot of experts in various capital management functions who we

wanted to re c o g n i ze but we re limited as to how to do that within our traditional pay and pro g ression programs. Thus, the stage was set to explore new ways to

re c o g n i ze individuals and their contributions. 

A team of project managers, including myself, evaluated a number of re c o g n i t i o n

p rograms and proposed our own to re c o g n i ze individuals within the disciplines

noted above. Our objectives we re clear: 

• Establish a program where there were no winners and losers, only award recipients. 

• Get Capital Management practitioners and their hierarchy to view the program as a

positive development. 

• Establish simple nominating criteria. Nominees had to have demonstrated sustained

technical mastery and leadership in ways that led to significant contributions to their

business areas. 

• Limit the number of award recipients so that getting an award would be regarded as

something special. 

We proposed an awards luncheon where each award recipient would re c e i ve a

plaque commemorating their achievements in front of their peers and hierarc h y.

Hi e r a rchy agreed to this proposal. 

Thus, the process began: 

• Nominations were requested and received. 
Issue 8 F E ATURES: W. SCOTT C A M E R O N

A Big Raise, A Promotion, Or... (cont’d)

• Nomination Committee reviewed nominations and recommended award recipients. 

• Award recipients and their hierarchy were informed of their selection. 

• Invitations to the luncheon and awards presentation were sent out to all practitioners. 

• Luncheon and award presentation were held on schedule within cost. 

Eve rything was going along as planned until the day of the luncheon when something totally caught me off guard. I knew each of the award recipients but on the

day of the luncheon I noticed I had never seen each of them so happy in all the

time I had known them. As I talked to each of them, I learned how much it

meant to be re c o g n i zed by their peers. 

I ' ve attended each L&M celebration and been invo l ved in managing other re c o gnition events. The one thing that continually stands out in my mind in all of

these occasions is the happiness of each individual on being re c o g n i zed by his or

her peers. 

A P P L

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 3 4 Issue 8 May 2002

“

As I talked to each of

them, I learned how

much it meant to be

recognized by their

p e e r s .

”
F E ATURES: W. SCOTT C A M E R O N

By being a participant in the formation of this recognition event and watching it

flourish over the years, I feel I have had a rare opportunity to better understand

h ow important it is to individuals to be re c o g n i zed for their accomplishments

t h roughout their careers. It is easy to become cynical about traditional and nontraditional rew a rds and recognition programs. Howe ve r, as we continue to raise

the bar on what we expect out of our project managers, we need to look for new

and exciting ways to celebrate not only their team's successes but also their individual success. 

A P P L

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

A Big Raise, A Promotion, Or... (cont’d)

page 3 5
F E AT U R E S

A P P L

Issue 8

Three Insights About Change

by Terry Little

Re c e n t l y, I changed jobs. I moved from Eglin Air Fo rce Base in Florida, where I

had worked for 30 years managing programs, to a newly created job in

Washington, D.C. as the Di rector of the Air Fo rce Acquisition Center of

Excellence (whatever that means!). This experience has led me to reflect some on

job changes and how to adapt to them. 

Insight #1

My first insight is that I have had to re s t a rt the process of developing my cre d ib i l i t y. While I am well known within the Air Fo rce as a program manager and,

h o p e f u l l y, a capable one, it is clear to me that I have to re-establish my cre d i b i lity in this new job. In other words, I cannot live on my past laurels. How do I

get people to listen to what I have to say? Mo re import a n t l y, how do I get them

to act based upon what I have to say? 

C e rtainly neither my position nor rank is ve ry helpful in my new role. Lots of

people at the He a d q u a rters have high-sounding positions and high grades, but

don't deliver anything other than words of caution or dissent. Many view their

roles as keeping something bad from happening rather than helping make something good happen. These folks have no credibility and the system merely tolerates them. 

I have to prove that I can be effective here - - e f f e c t i ve not just in generating new

ideas, but also in making them bear fruit. That's tough. It demands that I don't

p romise more than I can deliver which, in turn, infers that I should know re asonably well what I can delive r. Right now, I don't know because a lot of it

depends upon my ability to persuade people to my way of thinking. I do have

some confidence in my ability to persuade, but I know that results will hinge on

my skill in getting people to buy into my agenda for change and to accept

accountability for it. As a program manager, I never had that challenge. I had (or

took) lots of authority to act unilaterally and my goals seemed clear. Now I have

come to understand how fragile credibility is and that establishing and maintaining it is continuous. 

Insight #2

My second insight has come from pondering over the answer I give when people

ask me how the new job is going. My stock answer is that "It's too soon to tell."

The real answer is "I don't know." The reason is that I still haven't grasped what

constitutes success in this new job. Is it as simple as making my bosses happy?

How about pleasing my customers--program managers and industry part n e r s ?

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 3 6 Issue 8 May 2002

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Terry Little is currently the

head of the Air Force's Center

for Acquisition Excellence.

Before that he was the

Program Director for the Joint

Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile

(JASSM). He is one of DoD's

most seasoned program managers. He entered the A i r

Force in 1967 and served on

active duty until 1975. In 1997

he was promoted to the grade

of SES. 
I am not comfortable with these measures because they imply that making people happy or comfortable is equivalent to doing the right thing. My experience

tells me otherwise. Ap p roval-seeking behaviors virtually always produce bad

results both because (1) we never really know what will make others happy and

(2) making others happy often hinges on telling them what they want or expect

to hear. I am still working on this one and am fairly certain that there is no easy

metric for this. 

Insight #3

T h i rd, I am finding to my surprise that my experience as a program manager is,

on balance, a liability in my new job. The problem is my unconscious reliance on

that experience to know what is right without taking into account that eve ry situation is different. No matter how well intended, one-size-fits-all appro a c h e s

n e ver work. The reasons are simple. Eve ry situation is unique and thus demands

d i f f e rent appro a c h e s - - d i f f e rent than what may have worked in the past for me or

for others. Mo re import a n t l y, I know the key to success is implementation, not

strategy or approach. T h e re are plenty of OK approaches to eve ry problem, but

the best one will always be the one that someone can implement well. 

For example, one of my first tasks in the new job was to totally rewrite the Air

Fo rce's instruction for managing acquisition programs, starting with a clean sheet

of paper. I wrote the instruction based upon what I thought would be some guiding principles for an empowe red manager; it contained no long list of "how - t o "

i n s t ructions. To my dismay, many in the field have been critical of the instru ction because they don't know how to translate guiding principles into action.

They want more detailed guidance. What I concluded was that I wrote the

i n s t ruction as one that I would want and didn't consider that most managers in

our system view lack of guidance as a problem and not an opport u n i t y. T h a t ' s

something I mean to change, but it hasn't happened yet. My experience playe d

too dominant a role in my thinking. 

Fi n a l l y, I have already confirmed what I previously thought. This change is

healthy for me. It has re-ignited my passion and given me a new challenge that I

n e ver would have had where I was. Admittedly it is uncomfortable, but it is also

e xciting in a way that my previous job was not. I had done it so long that my ze s t

and sense of vitality we re gone. In short, I was bored and didn't even re a l i ze it.

T h ree cheers for change!!! 

A P P L

F E ATURES: T E R RY L I T T L E

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

Three Insights About Change (cont’d)

page 3 7

“

Many view their roles

as keeping something

bad from happening

rather than helping

make something good

h a p p e n .

”
A P P L

Issue 8 P R A C T I C E S

Continuous Risk Management

by Phil Sabelhaus

Ba c k g ro u n d

Risk identification is an ongoing activity that takes place during the routine pro ject work f l ow. Project activities such as programmatic and technical meetings,

telecons, re v i ews, and other forms of communication often bring to light pro j e c t

risks. When this occurs, we re c o rd and analyze the risk on a Risk In f o r m a t i o n

Sheet. The process outlined below helps the project team identify and cope with

p roject risks throughout the life of the project. 

Pro c e d u re

1. Team identifies list of potential risk items. Not all items identified are accepted. Risks

can be current problems or potential future problems. 

2. Risk Mitigation plan with action items and due dates is developed for each accepted risk item. 

3. Team meets regularly (every 2 weeks for us) to assess risks and add new risk items,

if necessary. See Status section on Risk Information Sheet below. 

4. Risks are closed when all the actions to close the risk have been taken. Some risk

items are closed quickly; others are open for a long time. Some are considered

watch items and the action plan doesn't kick in until certain negative events happen. 

5. Action plans include second sources of some items, requirements redirection, different technologies, etc. 

6. Closed risks remain in the base for future learning. 

Example of a Risk Information Sheet

see opposite page

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 3 8 Issue 8 May 2002

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Phil Sabelhaus is the Deputy

Director of Flight Programs

and Projects for Earth

Sciences. He has also served

as Project Manager for several

Goddard projects, including

TOMS, Landsat-7, EOS A u r a ,

E S S P V C L and EOS A q u a .
A P P L

PRACTICES: PHIL S A B E L H A U S

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

Continuous Risk Management (cont’d)

page 3 9

Example of a Risk Information Sheet

ID TS 001 Risk Title Chemistry DRAM Identified 4/19/99

Priority Statement

Since there are a limited number of DRAM spares between the Aqua and Aura

Probability spacecraft and Aqua is given first priority; there may be inadequate DRAM to meet

Medium the two-orbit data storage requirements for the Aura Solid State Recorder (SSR).

Impact

High

Timeframe Submitter Name Class Assigned to

Near Term Andrea Razzaghi

Context

TRW plans to meet the current two-orbit data storage requirements by augmenting the DRAM units

reserved for Chemistry with DRAM units currently being reserved as PM spares. There are no more DRAM

units available beyond those currently allocated for PM and Chemistry. The Common Bus SSR design is

based on these 5.4V DRAM units (current technology is 3V).

Mitigation Strategy

A. Track the Usage and Attrition of DRAM

B. Enable OMI Data Compression

C. Challenge Data Storage Requirements

D. Redesign SSR

Contingency Plan and Trigger

• Spacecraft trigger point for using mitigation B is when the amount of DRAM available for the Chemistry

SSR is less than the amount required to meet the two-orbit data storage requirements without OMI data

compression implemented (less than 104 Gbits). IAM trigger point is TBD. Ground system trigger point is

TBS.

• Spacecraft trigger point for using mitigation strategy C is when the amount of DRAM available for the

Chemistry SSR is less than the amount required to meet the two-orbit data storage requirements with OMI

data compression implemented (100 Gbits).

• TRW indicates that there would be an impact to the launch date for using mitigation strategy D due to the

immaturity (not flight qualified) or the alternative high-density technology.
A P P L

Issue 8 I N T E RV I E W

ASK Talks With Joseph Rothenberg

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 4 0 Issue 8 May 2002

A S K : Is there a golden age of project management at NASA? 

Ro t h e n b e r g : It's an interesting question. I never thought about it as a golden

age, but when you look at it that way, the first one probably would have to be the

1960s with Ap o l l o. Managing the Apollo program was the biggest challenge

NASA had at the time. Something that large, as complex as that, with as much

n ew technology as there was, clearly, that was a feather in NASA's cap. Eve ry b o d y

wanted to be a part of it, to make it succeed, so it had a tremendous priority. T h e

best and the brightest we re struggling to be a part of the team. If you look at the

age of some of the key people, they we re young even by today's standards for

p roject managers, and in those days they we re handling the largest projects in the

c o u n t ry. They we re managing those projects, leading them, making decisions,

billion dollar decisions, and with great success. I think that was something

unique to the Apollo era, it attracted the best and brightest, and it enabled a lot

Joseph Rothenberg has had a re m a rkable career at NASA. In December 2001

he re t i red as the Associate Administrator (AA) for Space Flight in charge of

Human Exploration and De velopment of Space. Under his tenure as AA, the

International Space Station began orbital assembly and human operations, a

n ew Space Shuttle upgrade program was initiated, and a joint Human and

Robotic Space Exploration Plan and Technology initiative was deve l o p e d .

Be f o re this, he was Di rector of NASA's Go d d a rd Space Flight Center. Du r i n g

his tenure as Di re c t o r, he developed a new strategic plan for the Center and

transformed Go d d a rd from an internally focused organization to a customer

focused one. In addition, he established a large number of new outreach activities, including using NASA programs to help increase the math and science literacy of America's students. Be f o re becoming Di re c t o r, he was Associate

Di rector of Flight Projects for the Hubble Space Telescope at Go d d a rd. He is

widely re c o g n i zed in the Ae rospace and Space Science community for leading

the development and execution of the highly successful first Hubble on-orbit

s e rvicing mission, which corrected the telescope's flawed optics.

Long before his ascent into these high profile positions at NASA, Joseph was

a project manager. He started at NASA during the Apollo era, and was managing his first project almost as soon as he exchanged his cap and gown foll owing college graduation for a suit and tie at the Agency. We spoke in

Fe b ru a ry at the Fo u rth APPL Fo rum of Master Project Managers, where he

was invited to talk about his career at NASA. 
A P P L

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

page 4 1

I N T E RV I E W

of young people ve ry early in their career to take on leadership roles. 

A S K : You we re a project manager during the Apollo era. How we re you invo l ve d

with the program? 

Ro t h e n b e r g : I was on the periphery of Ap o l l o. I worked on the robotics side.

T h ree months out of school I was managing my own little project. I could barely spell the word 'project.' I was 24-years old, right out of school, and I was give n

my own budget, my own set of deliverables, and a team of engineers who work e d

for me, some of them twice my age. 

A S K : That must have been exciting, managing a project at 24? What we re some

of the challenges being that young and having so much responsibility? 

Ro t h e n b e r g : Like anybody that age, I worried about the decisions I was making. I had no basis to make them on after all. I'd be doing technical calculations

as well as managing the project, and I'd be spending a fair amount of time at

night, just re-checking all my calculations, and still I got one out of five wro n g .

Of course I made eve ry mistake one could make, but I was learning, and I'm still

learning. 

A S K : One of the things Je r ry Madden told me when I interv i ewed him for an

earlier issue of this magazine (see issue 5) was in those days the project manager

could hold the whole spacecraft in his head. He said now that's just impossible.

The systems and subsystems are so complicated. 

Ro t h e n b e r g : That was certainly the case for small satellites like the ones Je r ry

w o rked on, but you think about Apollo, and then the Sky Lab a little later, and

then the Shuttle--I mean those we re never systems that one could get your arms

a round. In fact, there's a big distinction in the role of the project manager on

those large human space flight missions and the smaller robotic spacecraft. In

human space flight projects, they manage the paper, the specifications, and the

i n t e rfaces, and the contractors worry about the hard w a re performance. Largep roject managers depend much more on configuration management systems and

i n t e rface control systems to manage the end-item products. With the smaller

robotic spacecraft, it's much more hard w a re and product oriented. 

A S K : Is there a difference in the kind of person you would choose to manage a

large project as opposed to a small one? 

“

I was 24-years old,

right out of school,

and I was given my

own budget, my own

set of deliverables,

and a team of engineers who worked for

me, some of them

twice my age.

”

ASK Talks with Joseph Rothenberg (cont’d)
A P P L

Issue 8

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 4 2 Issue 8 May 2002

I N T E RV I E W

Ro t h e n b e r g : In a large project, the technical skills are important to re c o g n i ze

what's important, but day-to-day technical decisions are made layers below him.

The important thing is to be able to communicate to ve ry large teams of people.

He's much more working through other people, where the small project manager is often looked to for technical input. Not always, it depends on the individual, but a smaller-project manager can be much more technically oriented. 

To d d : Earlier you said the 60s was NASA's first golden age of project management. Are there others? 

Rothenberg: Oh, I think the 90s could be called a golden era, and I don't mean

that because it was the Dan Goldin era. You think about the 90's. We started out

still in the traditional large observa t o ry mode. We went to the Fa s t e r, Be t t e r,

Cheaper mode to try and go back to that time when the project manager could

get his arms around the whole thing. The goal was to build smaller spacecraft,

and have smaller teams building them. T h e re we re lots of opportunities in the

90s to manage projects of that magnitude. The 80's we had a few large pro j e c t s ,

and we we ren't developing a lot of project managers. In the 90's we went back to

smaller spacecrafts and built more of them. So why was that a golden age? To

some extent, there we re lots of project management opportunities. T h e re was also

the ability to learn, and a little bit more tolerance for mistakes than on the ve ry

large projects. Although the failure of the two Mars missions right in a row set us

back a little bit. I still think the 90's and the Fa s t e r, Be t t e r, Cheaper concept, or

at least the ability to have lots of small spacecrafts, really was a better way to go

than putting all our money into a few large observatories. And I think it trained

people, it was more fun, and people we re able to be more cre a t i ve. 

A S K : If you look at those two eras, the 60s and the 90s, do you find any differences in the project managers themselves? 

Rothenberg: Well, people are still people. The big difference to me is in the

automated tools today that project managers have at their disposal. Just take

email. Years ago communication was slow; it re q u i red paper to be circulated. T h e

tools for re p roducing things, the analytical tools that people had to use, all of

these things we re far more labor-intensive years ago, far more cumbersome.

To d a y, we can do more with less people mainly because we ' ve other ways of communicating. Management practices I think are the same, and in fact one of the

things we have to re-learn periodically is some of the practices, the discipline,

that is, the project management discipline. Take monthly re v i ews, for instance. 

ASK Talks with Joseph Rothenberg (cont’d)

“

Right now there is

not a training ground

for project managers

for the next generation of human space

flight programs. 

”
A P P L

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

page 4 3

I N T E RV I E W

You want to use them to nurt u re people, not beat them up. Yo u ' ve got to encourage people to re p o rt problems, and deal with them in a constru c t i ve way, not a

p u n i t i ve way. These are things we have to re-learn periodically. 

ASK Talks with Joseph Rothenberg (cont’d)

Spacewalks like the one shown here were required on the first servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope. Joseph Rothenberg is widely recognized

in the Aerospace and Space Science community for leading the development

and execution of the highly successful first Hubble on-orbit servicing mission. 
A P P L

Issue 8

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 4 4 Issue 8 May 2002

I N T E RV I E W

A S K : In what way should NASA be focused on developing good project managers? 

Ro t h e n b e r g : Pa rt of it is just the exposure to project management techniques.

Some of the centers continue to do a ve ry good job on their own in deve l o p i n g

a pipeline of project managers. I'm most familiar with Go d d a rd, and I think

t h e y ' ve always done a good job there in grooming the younger people to take on

p roject management responsibilities. The same is true of JPL, I think. In the

human space flights, the ve ry large programs, for lots of reasons, we have not

d e veloped a large number of people capable of managing those sorts of pro j e c t s .

In fact, if I went out to look for one today to replace somebody like To m m y

Ho l l ow a y, it would be ve ry, ve ry difficult. The choices are limited. I also think

that on the human space flight side once we get the Station problems behind us,

and I think we will, there will be opportunities to start training the next generation of project managers to manage those projects. Right now there is not a training ground for project managers for the next generation of human space flight

p rograms. Pa rt of it is the fact that we haven't had programs. Another part of it

is we haven't been hiring. We don't have a lot of people, and so there's going to

be some holes in the pipeline. And I think rebuilding both the technical workf o rce as well as the project management work f o rce in human space flight is going

to be a real challenge. 

ASK: What advice do you have for NASA's project managers today? 

Ro t h e n b e r g : Use eve ry opportunity you have to train the people below you with

management skills. Don't only have them solving technical problems, but make

s u re they learn how to re c o g n i ze costs, to re c o g n i ze cost trends at the contractor,

and to analyze manpowe r. Gi ve them a set of management skills that allows them

to plan something well, to control re q u i rements. Eve ryone on a project needs to

understand that the most important thing is controlling re q u i rements. Ty p i c a l l y,

you get a set of re q u i rements in place and some technical guy will dream up a

better way of doing something. The first question you have to ask is why do I

need to make it better, and if you absolutely must make it better, how do you get

the funding for it. I can point to a number of missions where they made things

better without shoring up the funding. They dipped into the re s e rves to spend

money on new re q u i rements that we re unfounded and got themselves into tro uble. Somebody who understood the consequences of such things would have

asked early on why do I need to make it better. 

ASK Talks with Joseph Rothenberg (cont’d)

“

My view, and I’ve had

this view for a long

time, is that we must

excite the next generation of children in

this country to go into

science and math, to

stir their imagination. 

”
A P P L

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

page 4 5

I N T E RV I E W

ASK Talks with Joseph Rothenberg (cont’d)

A S K : To your mind, what is the biggest challenge facing NASA as an agency? 

Ro t h e n b e r g : Establishing a vision for the future. We do not have a vision of

w h e re NASA is heading. We have a space science program that sort of has a ro a d

m a p. We have an earth science program that has a road map. These are fragmented things. I could take the space transportation work, and I could put it

some place else. I could certainly take the space science work and put it under the

National Science Foundation. I think we need an integrated vision of what

NASA's role is in society. Eve rybody has a different view. If we went away, would

anybody miss us? Certainly it's the role and responsibility of the Ad m i n i s t r a t i o n ,

of which NASA is a part, to provide a vision that's believable, credible, afford a b l e

and re l e vant. T h e re are some things one can do to excite the nation. My view, and

I ' ve had this view for a long time, is that we must excite the next generation of

c h i l d ren in this country to go into science and math, to stir their imagination. I

think we have an obligation to do this, all of us who are invo l ved with NASA, for

the good of the agency and the country. 
A P P L

Issue 8

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 4 6 Issue 8 May 2002

“

On learning to think

like a project manage r, Stokely talked

about how she had to A B O U T T H E A U T H O R “unlearn” to think like

a scientist. 

”

C O N F E R E N C E R E P O RT

Conference Report: Masters Forum IV, February '02

by Todd Post

The purpose of the APPL Masters Fo rum is to bring together some of the best

p roject managers at NASA, as well as those in industry and other gove r n m e n t

agencies, for 2 1/2 days of knowledge sharing. The project managers come eager

to reflect on their project experiences, to learn new things from one another--and

to unlearn a few things, too. 

This was the fourth Masters Fo rum, and the first one held outside Wa s h i n g t o n ,

DC. Fifty participants from across the country came to Dallas at the American

Airlines Conference Center, a wonderful facility that was conveniently located by

the airport and yet still seemed isolated from the rest of the world. Ma s t e r s

Fo rum IV was also the first one held during the winter. Previous Masters Fo ru m s

h a ve been during the summer. Hot, sticky Washington, D.C. in the summer may

sound unpleasant, but frankly the popularity of earlier Fo rums is what led to this

annual event becoming a semiannual one. 

Mo n d a y, Fe b ru a ry 11, 2002

On the first night, the keynote presentation was by Judy St o k e l y, a program manager in the Air Fo rce, who discussed the Ad vanced Medium Range Air-to-Air

Missile (AMRAAM) program; howe ve r, the most compelling part of her pre s e ntation was about leadership. 

For St o k e l y, leading is more than just motivating, it's empowering people to be

leaders themselves. The ones who rise to the challenge in an organization are

whom she calls the “change agents,” and she had some advice on how to spot

these people and how to nurt u re them. "You must find them, trust them, and

rew a rd them, because your change agents are the most precious re s o u rce you have

as a project or program manager." 

T h e re we re many notable observations in her presentation. For instance, on

learning to think like a project manager, Stokely talked about how she had to

"unlearn" to think like a scientist. 

On the subject of metrics, she advised, "Ask[ing] the people doing the work what

you should be measuring. Tell people what you want to achieve and ask them

what should you measure." 

And more about her favorite topic, leadership: "Don't toss out the problem and

expect the work f o rce to manage it. Toss out the vision, what we want to achieve ,

and then let people go off and create it." 
A P P L

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

page 4 7

At the outset of the Masters Forum, Alex Laufer told the participants that one of the

objectives, beyond those mentioned in my first paragraph, is to help participants

become more reflective practitioners. Stokely seemed to be the quintessential reflective practitioner, inspiring us to reflect on ways that we can be better leaders on our

own projects, and so it seemed fitting that she be the first speaker at this Forum. In

the evaluations at the end of the Masters Forum, several people pointed to Stokely's

presentation as the high point of the whole thing. Maria Littlefield, a project manager from Kennedy Space Center, remarked, "Judy Stokely was inspirational. She

was successful in spite of typical government garbage, which is hopeful and refreshing. I wish I could bottle and distribute her sense of duty for her country." 

C O N F E R E N C E R E P O RT

Conference Report: Masters Forum IV, February '02 (cont’d)

With 40 years of experience at NASA, Marty Davis exemplifies the kind

of talent there is at the Masters Forums.
A P P L

Issue 8

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 4 8 Issue 8 May 2002

“

Howell has thought

long and hard about

p l a n n i n g — m a y b e

longer and harder

than anyone.

”

Later in the evening, participants teamed up in small groups to participate in a

fun little "learning activity" organized by Craig Lawrence of the Silicon Va l l e y -

based design firm IDEO. For those whose day had begun with a flight in another part of the country, it seemed to be just what they needed to inspire a second

wind. Groups of small teams we re given a deck of cards, a large marble, and a ro l l

of tape in a container, and we re instructed to try and launch the marble from as

far away as possible so that it landed inside the container. T h e re we re seve r a l

ingenious designs, but then what do you expect at a NASA conference? Jo s e p h

Rothenberg, a re t i red Associate Administrator at NASA and a guest speaker the

next night, arrived about the time the teams we re ready to go head to head. A

good thing he re c o g n i zed some faces. Ot h e rwise he might have thought he had

stumbled into the wrong conference--or a marbles tournament. 

Tu e s d a y, Fe b ru a ry 12, 2002

Among the many virtues of stories, one is how they disentangle contradictions in

such a re m a rkably concise way. Some things may well be black-and-white issues,

but in project life these sorts of distinctions do not always exist. Stories typically

a l l ow the many hues of gray to show through. 

For instance, Ken Schwer's story about the Qu i k Toms mission demonstrates that

a story about a catastrophic project failure can also be a success story. Although

Qu i k Toms was lost at sea, Schwer understood it was his responsibility as the pro ject manager to pre vent his team's heart b reak from destroying all that they'd

accomplished before the launch. What he did in the aftermath transcends the loss

of the launch vehicle. His presentation opened the conference on Tuesday morning, and his story about the Qu i k Toms mission, "Loss and Re c ove ry," appears in

this issue. 

We also heard presentations by NASA project managers Dennis Grounds (J S C ) ,

Tim Owen (MSFC), Joan Salute (ARC), Jeff Bauer (DRFC), Lynne Cooper

(JPL), Julie Pollit (HQ), and Ed Mauldin (ARC). In the evening, Jo s e p h

Rothenberg spoke about his career with NASA from being a project manager during the Apollo era to retiring as an Associate Administrator for Space Flight in

charge of Human Exploration and De velopment of Space a few months earlier. 

Fe b ru a ry 13, 2002

The final day of the Masters Fo rum was over by lunchtime. It was a short day,

yes, but it was chock full of excitement. Chuck Du f f, Pro c u rement Officer out of

Ames Re s e a rch Center, opened with a presentation on the relationship of proC O N F E R E N C E R E P O RT

Conference Report: Masters Forum IV, February '02 (cont’d)
A P P L

Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

page 4 9

c u rement to project management. Duff flew in the night before just to give this

p resentation and had to leave immediately after. Be l i e ve it or not, he had just had

s u r g e ry! 

C O N F E R E N C E R E P O RT

Conference Report: Masters Forum IV, February '02 (cont’d)

Group discussions are some of the most exicting moments at Masters

Forms. Here a table of participants are engaged in a small group discussion that will broaden to include all the tables. These discussions follow the presentations by the individual speakers and are perfect examples of why this is truly a knowledge sharing conference.

Watching Du f f, I couldn't help but be reminded of a wonderful story I'd heard

about Teddy Ro o s e velt. Having barely surv i ved an assassination attempt, the bullet still in his breast and his suit soaked in blood, Ro o s e velt told a crowd who had

come to hear him speak, "I will give this speech or die!" We have since learned

that Chuck is doing well and showing great signs of a full re c ove ry. We we re

delighted he could make it, but would certainly have understood had he decided

to cancel under the circumstances. 

Fo l l owing Duff came Greg Howell. Ac c o rding to most evaluations, this was

another of the high points of the Fo rum. Bob Menrad, a project manager at

Go d d a rd, stated, "All the folks we re ve ry good, but this one hit the chord the
A P P L

Issue 8

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

page 5 0 Issue 8 May 2002

C O N F E R E N C E R E P O RT

Conference Report: Masters Forum IV, February '02 (cont’d)

most for me." Don Margolies, also from Go d d a rd, re m a rked, "Greg Howell's talk

was among the highlights of the meeting for me. Thought provoking, radical (in

my experience) and screaming out for future considerations." 

Howell is an expert on planning, especially as it bears on large construction pro jects, and that was the subject of his presentation "Lean Project De l i ve ry." Howe l l

has thought long and hard about planning--maybe longer and harder than anyone. He shared with us how his ideas have evo l ved, and that in itself was fascinating. Like St o k e l y, Howell is another exe m p l a ry re f l e c t i ve practitioner. He re is

a man who has spent the better part of his life thinking about why things occur,

and what is the most likely way to get a desired result on a project. Howell dazzled the audience with graphs and interactive slides to spice up his Powerpoint. It

reminded me ve ry much of listening to a college professor again--one of the good

ones--and that image was re i n f o rced afterw a rds by the number of people surrounding him, unwilling to let him go without bending his ear. 

After Howell's presentation there we re some re m a rks by a handful of guests outside of NASA re g a rding what they'd heard over the past 2 1/2 days and how it

c o m p a red to project life in their domains. Irv Kieback, a project manager fro m

Proctor and Gamble, put it best: "This was a great experience. It helped me to see

h ow other organizations are dealing with the same problems, and through stories

I can go utilize the knowledge." 

All that was left then was to lock up the room, head to lunch, and say our

f a rewells. Many seemed to think this was the best Masters Fo rum yet. In d e e d

t h e re we re a rich variety of presentations and some exceptional discussions by the

small and large groups. All I can say is keep up the good work APPL. 

Talk with you next time about Master's Fo rum V at Tysons Corner in August '02.