HBS Working Knowledge:
"Sean Silverthorne: What drew you to the NASA/JPL Mars program as potential case material?
Alan MacCormack: First, it was an ideal context in which to explore one of my current research initiatives, which looks at how organizations design 'programs' or sequences of projects over time in order that learning is maximized. Most past research on innovation has focused on the management of individual projects. As a result, we know a lot about topics such as determining the optimal team structure or designing the best type of development process for a project. But my past work (studying projects in high-tech industries) had convinced me that we were missing an important level of analysis.
It seemed that decisions made in a project sometimes worked against the broader objectives of an organization, even when managers had the best of intentions. This led me to believe that some decisions are best made at the program level rather than within individual projects. So I began looking for an organization that had tackled this problem.
The second reason for studying the Mars program was opportunistic. In the early 1990s, NASA had implemented a program called 'Faster, Better, Cheaper,' (FBC) which involved making fundamental changes to the way the organization developed unmanned spacecraft. It was a massive organizational transformation effort that sought to deliver dramatic improvements in efficiency, robustness, and flexibility. A 'natural experiment' if you like. In 1999, however, the failures of two successive missions aimed at Mars brought the initiative to a halt. In the aftermath, the finger was pointed squarely at FBC as the cause of the failures. I was intrigued by what had gone wrong, especially given that many of the early FBC missions had been tremendously successful. And I was convinced that the answers could help inform a wide variety of situations in which organizations were attempting the type of transformation NASA had sought with FBC."
"Sean Silverthorne: What drew you to the NASA/JPL Mars program as potential case material?
Alan MacCormack: First, it was an ideal context in which to explore one of my current research initiatives, which looks at how organizations design 'programs' or sequences of projects over time in order that learning is maximized. Most past research on innovation has focused on the management of individual projects. As a result, we know a lot about topics such as determining the optimal team structure or designing the best type of development process for a project. But my past work (studying projects in high-tech industries) had convinced me that we were missing an important level of analysis.
It seemed that decisions made in a project sometimes worked against the broader objectives of an organization, even when managers had the best of intentions. This led me to believe that some decisions are best made at the program level rather than within individual projects. So I began looking for an organization that had tackled this problem.
The second reason for studying the Mars program was opportunistic. In the early 1990s, NASA had implemented a program called 'Faster, Better, Cheaper,' (FBC) which involved making fundamental changes to the way the organization developed unmanned spacecraft. It was a massive organizational transformation effort that sought to deliver dramatic improvements in efficiency, robustness, and flexibility. A 'natural experiment' if you like. In 1999, however, the failures of two successive missions aimed at Mars brought the initiative to a halt. In the aftermath, the finger was pointed squarely at FBC as the cause of the failures. I was intrigued by what had gone wrong, especially given that many of the early FBC missions had been tremendously successful. And I was convinced that the answers could help inform a wide variety of situations in which organizations were attempting the type of transformation NASA had sought with FBC."
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