ASK Magazine Staff

  You’ve been with JPL for 41 years. What were some of the early lessons you learned from the project managers you worked under?

The Project Management Development Process has been a great boost for my professional development.

As Associate Administrator for Space Flight at NASA, William Readdy has spent much of the last year addressing Agency plans for future Shuttle missions in the wake of the Columbia accident.

  After being a project manager of the Human Research Facility for six years, what brought you to Headquarters?

Starting out as a bench engineer and later serving for a decade as Director of Astrophysics, Dr. Charles (Charlie) Pellerin’s NASA career spanned nearly 30 years.

Many people at Marshall say you are the best mentor they’ve known. What does mentoring mean to you?

Is there a golden age of project management at NASA?

Good project managers understand that it is important to involve the customer in the project deeply. Involvement can mean a lot of things, but generally it requires the project manager to listen to and be responsive to the customer’s needs.

I remember reading in Project Management Success Stories: Lessons of Project Leaders how you once took aside someone who was driving a forklift carrying an expensive piece of hardware and explained to him what he was handling, what it was supposed to be used for, how it would affect his life.