One Hundred Rules for NASA Project Managers

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

One Hundred Rules for NASA Project Managers

One Hundred Rules for NASA Project Managers

"Jerry Madden, Associate Director of the Flight Projects Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, collected these gems of wisdom over a number of years from various unidentified sources. Rod Stewart of Mobile Data Services in Huntsville, Alabama edited and updated them. I found and kept a copy of these during the early nineties. Over time, the NASA link disappeared, so this version of the rules was posted to make sure that it stayed available.

...Naturally, not all of Madden’s wisdom made it into his ’100 Lessons Learned for Project Managers.’ Marty Davis, who worked under Madden at Goddard, recalls one of the unwritten lessons: ’Show up early for all meetings; they may be serving doughnuts.’"

The version that NASA has re-posted is a little different, including some additions...."

I DIG this list... 100 short and sweat project management rules/tips.

Here are just some that caught my eye

"The Project Manager

Rule #13: A manager who is his own systems engineer or financial manager is one who will probably try to do open heart surgery on himself.

Rule #14: Most managers succeed on the strength and skill of their staff.

Engineers and Scientists

Rule #55: Over-engineering is common. Engineers like puzzles and mazes. Try to make them keep their designs simple.

Hardware
Rule #61: Most equipment works as built, not as the designer planned. This is due to layout of the design, poor understanding on the designer’s part, or poor understanding of component specifications.

Program Planning, Budgeting, and Estimating
Rule #74: All problems are solvable in time, so make sure you have enough schedule contingency-if you don’t, the next project manager that takes your place will.

Decision Making

Rule #82: Wrong decisions made early can be recovered from. Right decisions made late cannot correct them.

Rule #83: Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. It is also occasionally the best help you can give. Just listening is all that is needed on many occasions. You may be the boss, but if you constantly have to solve someone’s problems, you are working for him.

Rule #84: Never make a decision from a cartoon. Look at the actual hardware or what real information is available such as layouts. Too much time is wasted by people trying to cure a cartoon whose function is to explain the principle.