Steps to Facilitate Principal-Investigator-Led Earth Science Missions (2004) / Chapter Skim
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5 Project Implementation: Improving Life-Cycles Processes
5 Project Implementation: Improving Life-Cycles Processes
Pages 30-48
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From page 30... ...
LIFE-CYCLE OVERVIEW NASA projects, including PI-led missions, are guided by procedures in the NASA project management handbook NPG 7120.5B,1 which identifies the general process structure to be used in both programs and projects2 and establishes the project life cycle. The PI-led mission project life cycle includes the three fundamental processes of solicitation, selection, and execution.
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From page 31... ...
. All three elements of the checks-and-balances process must work properly to establish an effective solicitation, select viable mission proposals, and carry out the projects to achieve mission success.
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From page 32... ...
establish a management system relevant to PI-led missions, including an essential checks-and-balances formalism for the three PI-led mission project life-cycle processes of solicitation, selection, and execution. Recommendation: NASA's Earth Science Enterprise should emphasize formal and regular reviews of the life-cycle system of checks and balances as applied to PI-led missions and should continuously strengthen the processes on which the system is based.
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From page 33... ...
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From page 34... ...
Mission success requires that major technical and programmatic issues be identified and jointly addressed by both the PI team and the NASA program office during the formulation phase. While extending competition between PI teams through the entire formulation phase provides NASA with additional insight into the effectiveness of the PI teams and the maturity of the mission designs, it delays the integration of the PI and NASA teams and motivates the PI teams to emphasize strengths and minimize weaknesses.
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From page 35... ...
The GRACE mission was launched in March 2002; the VCL mission experienced implementation difficulties such that it was necessary for NASA to postpone indefinitely further phases of project execution; and CloudSat and CALIPSO are in prelaunch implementation phases. The declared cost caps at the times of the solicitations have risen over the history of ESSP: in 1996, the ESSP-1 solicitation called for one mission at $90 million (GRACE)
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From page 36... ...
A well-written solicitation provides sufficient time and budget resources to implement missions that satisfy program expectations, and defines a selection process that ensures that this occurs. This section provides a discussion of areas in Earth Explorers solicitations that could be enhanced to increase the likelihood of mission success.
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Finding: The threat of project cancellation has not proved effective either in motivating the submission of PI-led proposals with adequate reserves or in constraining costs to meet the cost cap. Recommendation: NASA's Earth Science Enterprise should redefine cost caps from a threshold that triggers an automatic termination review to a threshold for a remedial review that includes an examination of how the division of responsibility and authority between the PI and ESE might be revised to better control costs.
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From page 38... ...
While the ESSP project office plays a critical role in mission success, avoiding duplication and conflict between the project office role and that of NASA centers/institutions on the PI team is desirable. In order to augment science content within the ESSP PI-led mission cost cap, it has become common for PIs to establish partnerships outside NASA with domestic and/or international agencies that contribute funding to the mission.
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From page 39... ...
are important for ensuring that ESSP missions achieve their scientific objectives. Finding: Scientific results are the primary objective in PI-led missions, but postlaunch science funding commitments are not adequately identified in the mission solicitations.
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This section provides a discussion of areas in the current Earth Explorers selection process that could be enhanced to increase the likelihood of mission success. Selection Criteria As noted in Chapter 3, the Earth Explorers Program faces the challenge of balancing the scientific potential of proposed missions with the likelihood of achieving a successful mission outcome.
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From page 41... ...
Recommendation: NASA's Earth Science Enterprise should carefully review the selection criteria for PI-led missions to ensure that they adequately identify and promote missions that can succeed. Reviewers The selection of an effective evaluation panel is important to the success of the ESSP mission.
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From page 42... ...
Lessons-Learned Workshop," Hampton, Va., June 26-27, 1996, available at |
From page 43... ...
These problems should not be attributed to flaws in the PI-mode process, but rather applied as general lessons for all small-mission projects. Recommendation: NASA's Earth Science Enterprise should establish management processes for PI-led missions that emphasize understanding all PI-led and non-PI-led mission issues and the inclusion of appropriate lessons learned from both types of missions.
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From page 44... ...
Split as opposed to shared authority is appropriate for achieving mission success and is healthy for the PI community; split authority and the resulting allocation of responsibility should be explicitly recognized in the project plan and should also reflect the philosophy inherent in PI-led missions that the mission is to be defined and developed by the science community itself. Recommendation: NASA's Earth Science Enterprise should explicitly recognize that mission success is a combined responsibility of the PI team and NASA and should establish project management plans, organizations, and processes that reflect an appropriate split, not a sharing, of authority, with the PI taking the lead in defining and maintaining overall mission integrity.
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From page 45... ...
must be developed and adopted by both the PM and team leaders in order to properly implement a project schedule or cost-reporting system, even on relatively small projects such as ESSP missions. A good WBS should accurately reflect the manner in which work will be performed.
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From page 46... ...
Requirements Management. NASA should expect to see in place on PI-led missions a requirements management process tied to the mission's systems engineering process, which synthesizes science goals and objectives into requirements and specifications for use by the instrument and spacecraft teams in developing their equipment.
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The higher the TRL the more likely the mission success, especially for small missions. A mission should begin its implementation phase with a sufficiently high TRL, adequate resources and margins, a good systems engineering process, and a comprehensive verification program.
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From page 48... ...
Recommendation: NASA's Earth Science Enterprise should establish and enforce a comprehensive set of minimum standards for program management to be applied to all PI-led missions, while accepting that such missions may employ management processes that differ from those of NASA. These minimum management standards must invoke the rigor that experience has shown is required for success.
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