February 26, 2010 Vol. 3, Issue 2
PM Challenge’s first-ever international forum featured representatives from over a half dozen space agencies as well as industry, academia, and nonprofit organizations.
With international cooperation and collaboration poised to play an increasing role in NASA’s future, the international forum at PM Challenge 2010 provided an opportunity for NASA to bring together partners from around the world to share perspectives, challenges, and opportunities.
Greg Balestrero, President and CEO of the Project Management Institute (PMI), kicked off the forum with an overview of the context for global projects. Challenges such as space exploration require an enabling environment, he said. “The enabling environment is here, and we have to talk about in terms of a global solution.”
Michael O’Brien, NASA Assistant Administrator for External Affairs, set the stage by describing the extent of NASA’s international partnerships. Historically, the agency has had over 3,000 international agreements with over 100 countries. It currently has 458 active international agreements with 118 countries, with just 10 partners accounting for half of those agreements. He emphasized that the successful implementation of existing agreements is critical for NASA’s credibility. “Do what you say you’re going to do,” he said.
Representatives from three partner agencies provided their perspectives on working with NASA. Andreas Diekmann of the European Space Agency (ESA) suggested that a new trend might be toward more integrated cooperation, with missions that are jointly planned and developed. He contrasted this with past and current international missions that have emphasized discrete contributions from partners. Yoshinori Yoshimura of the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) noted that changes at NASA can have a dramatic impact on JAXA, and he said that when difficulties arise, partners should try to indicate a common path and build consensus. “The best agreements are difficult to negotiate but don’t have to be referred to later,” said Benoit Marcotte of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). “They have to be fair for both or all parties.”
Looking at the current framework for international collaboration, Kathy Laurini of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate provided a brief overview of the Global Exploration Strategy, written by 14 countries in 2006, and the associated International Space Exploration Group, composed primarily of active participants in the ISS. She said that that partner interdependencies and full utilization of the ISS are two of the greatest challenges that need to be addressed in the future. “It’s up to all of us to make sure we take advantage of that,” she said of the ISS.
Representatives from some of the active ISS partner agencies, including Benoit Marcotte, CSA, Kuniaki Shiraki, JAXA; Alexi Krasnov, Russian Space Agency (RSA); and Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations; shared their lessons learned from the station. Gerstenmaier prefaced remarks by NASA’s international partners by referring to the lessons learned document that the ISS partnership released in the summer of 2009. Noting that Japan’s Kibo module for ISS was in development for 20 years, Shiraki mentioned the need for sustainable support from partners as well as the public. Marcotte said it was important to be prepared to “seek and work compromises.” Krasnov echoed a similar theme. “We can do better together,” he said.
The forum also considered new opportunities for international collaboration in space exploration. European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain emphasized the longstanding close relationship that ESA enjoys with NASA. “We don’t know what it means not collaborating with NASA,” he said. At the same time, he held up ESA’s success in running a space agency with 18 stakeholder nations as an example others could learn from. “If there is one field ESA can teach the world, it is international cooperation.” Dordain spelled out the reasons for international collaboration in space exploration and constructed three plausible future scenarios, concluding that the future should be based on the partnership of the International Space Station (ISS). “The most important asset of the station is the partnership,” he said. “We should not take any risk to weaken that partnership.”
One of the key areas for international collaboration in the future is Earth observation. Michael Freilich, Director of the NASA Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate, said, “The problem of understanding and predicting climate change is far too large for any single agency or even any single nation, and therefore we must have good collaborations.” Jean-Louis Fellous, Executive Director of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), explained that climate change is hard to monitor because of the long-term, precise measurements required to make meaningful predictions. Fellous identified four challenges posed by Earth observation — financial and geographical; compatibility among measurements; modeling and forecasting; and knowledge and innovation — and encouraged the idea of developing virtual constellations that would image the land surface, and measure ocean surface topography and global precipitation. The next challenge, said Freilich, is in understanding how these individual pieces interact in the larger system. To do this data must be rapidly collected, reliable, and available to all. Project managers in Earth observation must identify partners early to sort out overlapping political and scientific interests as well as to determine commonalities among agency operations and visions.
Space science also holds high potential for continued international collaborations. Bob Mitchell, program manager of the Cassini mission, pointed out that difficulties in multinational missions do not necessarily stem from cultural or geographic differences. “Where we have had issues on Cassini, it has not been along national lines,” he said. Rather, there were often disagreements among scientists about the mission’s priorities. (For instance, those involved with the Huygens probe had different interests than those working on the Cassini orbiter.) Peter Michelson, Principal Investigator of Fermi (also know as the Gamma-Ray Large Area Telescope, or GLAST), said that Fermi handled one of its management challenges by forming an international finance committee so that finance committees from different partner nations could meet to review the status of their commitments to the project. “They developed a working relationship in which they could talk frankly,” Michelson said.
The forum made clear that there is significant variation in international approaches to spaceflight project management. Himilcon de Castro Carvalho, Brazilian Space Agency (AEB), said that project management in his organization is under severe budget and human resources restrictions, and that as a result, the focus is on work breakdown structure (WBS) planning, activity definition and sequencing, quality and verification planning, and risk planning. B.N. Suresh of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology described the overall management processes, milestone reviews, and quality management processes, which bear some similarities to those of NASA. Dr. Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute provided an overview of his involvement with the Chandrayan-1 lunar mission launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in 2008. Spudis was the Principal Investigator for the Mini-SAR imaging radar experiment on Chandrayan-1, one of 11 instruments on the spacecraft. He spoke of the challenges of dealing with a foreign press environment on an international mission. “Follow your partner’s lead with the press,” he counseled. “Keep quiet and let them set the tone.”
The commercial space sector will clearly play a key role in future international collaborations. Andy Aldrin of United Launch Alliance (ULA) noted that the United States government spending currently accounts for the majority of global spending on space, but that flat U.S. budgets and growing expenditures abroad will lead to changes in that balance in the coming years. Bo Behmuk, former General Manager of Sea Launch for Boeing, said, “The international way of doing business is our future.” Greg Pech of ULA emphasized the importance of maintaining close contact with partners and suppliers around the world. “There are times when you just have to get off the phone, get on the plane, and go visit them, sit across the table and face to face, and really connect. There’s just no substitute for that.”
Increased collaboration in space exploration will also place greater demands on the international program/project management community. Edwin Andrews of PMI said that PMI forecasts a 31% increase in the global number of project-oriented employees in project industries between 2006 and 2016, which translates as 1.2 million new project-oriented jobs annually. The international space agencies represented at the forum varied widely in their approaches to the development of their project workforces. Takashi Hamazaki of JAXA said that on-the-job training accounts for most of JAXA’s professional development efforts. Bettina Bohm of ESA explained that her agency focuses on ensuring that there is a qualified applicant pool, providing training courses for project managers, selecting individuals for key assignments, and extending lessons learned across the agency. Dr. Ed Hoffman, Director of the NASA Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership, offered an overview of the Academy’s framework to promote individual, team, and organizational learning.
The NASA Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership organized the international forum in collaboration with the PM Challenge organizing team. The Academy received significant assistance from James Zimmerman of International Space Services.
