Alex Mccool Academy Sharing Knowledge
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Academy Sharing Knowledge The NASA source for project management INTERVIEW Alex McCool ASK Magazine • Volume Ten J ANUARY 2003 appl.nasa.gov On projects requiring that people exhibit resourcefulness and innovation, they need to be given not only the responsibility but also authority to spread their wings. —Allan Frandsen, from his “Learning the ABCs (of Project Management)” (p 12) ASK 10 January 2003 Table of Contents ON THE COVER The tower of the Zero Gravity Facility at Glenn Research Center drops 460 feet AL LUKAS STORIES IN THIS ISSUE • 3 6 So This Is Knowledge Sharing Who Do You ASK? At the heart of the problem was the review itself. We had tried to cram too much BY TODD POST information into only three days BY SUSAN MOTIL 10 Dressing Down CONTRIBUTORS • 4 I was the one taking the notes and so it fell on me to be the one to capture everything that was said BY HARVEY SCHABES FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK • 5 15 A Little Goes a Long Way My Son’s Requirements BY DR. EDWARD HOFFMAN I made observations as we began to work together; one of them was that no attention had been given to the control room where we worked BY KIMBERLY R. JENKINS LOOP • 33 17 Thanksgiving Hocus Pocus Book Reviews First order of business: Help the client survive the shock. Nobody on our team said anything about “we told you so” BY CHRISTIAN ZAZZALI REVIEW BOARD • 35 SPECIAL FEATURE: REFLECTIONS 12 Learning the ABCs (of Project Management) LETTER FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF • 36 Of course, a good project manager always knows, at least in general terms, what is supposed to happen next BY ALLAN FRANDSEN Communicating By Walking Around FEATURES BY DR. ALEXANDER LAUFER 21 The Project Management Tool Kit A good sense of humor rarely seems to be one of the deciding factors in choosing someone to be a project manager BY W. SCOTT CAMERON 24 I Hate Reviews! I think there are a host of donut-eaters and coffee-drinkers out there that are professional reviewers BY TERRY LITTLE PRACTICES 30 Pragmatic Leadership Advice from Donald Rumsfeld Rumsfeld’s management philosophy is unique and direct, and the best part is he’s written it down BY DOUGLAS R. TEANY INTERVIEW 26 ASK Talks with Alex McCool From Redstone in the ’50s to SkyLab in the ’90s, NASA pioneer Alex McCool talks about mentoring, methods, and motivation appl.nasa.gov STAFF APPL DIRECTOR AND MANAGING EDITOR WELCOME TO THE ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT Dr. Edward Hoffman Leadership (APPL) and ASK Magazine.APPL is a [email protected] research-based organization that serves NASA program and project managers, as well as project teams, at every EDITOR-IN-CHIEF level of development. In 1997, APPL was created from an Dr. Alexander Laufer earlier program to underscore the importance that [email protected] NASA places on project management and project teams www.edutechltd.com/NASA/Laufer/index.htm through a wide variety of products and services, including knowledge sharing, classroom and online EDITOR courses, career development guidance, performance Todd Post support, university partnerships, and advanced [email protected] technology tools. ASK Magazine grew out of our Knowledge Sharing ASSOCIATE EDITOR Initiative. The stories that appear in ASK are written by Jody Lannen Brady the ‘best of the best’ project managers, primarily from [email protected] NASA, but also from other government agencies and industry. These stories contain genuine nuggets of CONTRIBUTING WRITERS knowledge and wisdom that are transferable across W. Scott Cameron projects. Who better than a project manager to help Terry Little another project manager address a critical issue on a project? Big projects, small projects—they’re all here in ASK. KNOWLEDGE SHARING MANAGER I hope you enjoy this edition of ASK and will Denise Lee become a regular reader of what I think is one of our [email protected] most exciting publications about project management. EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Michael Derocher [email protected] DESIGN Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group, Inc. Dr. Edward J. Hoffman www.hzdg.com Director, Academy of Program and Project Leadership SENIOR PRINTING SPECIALIST Dave Dixon [email protected] Please direct all inquiries about ASK Magazine editorial policy to Todd Post, EduTech Ltd., 8455 Colesville Rd., Suite 930, Silver Spring, MD 20910, (301) 585-1030; or email to [email protected]. 2 APPL THE NASA ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP IN THIS ISSUE Todd Post Who Do You ASK? When we started publishing ASK two years ago, we envisioned our readers, largely project managers, learning things from these stories and giving them a try on their own projects GLENN RESEARCH CENTER PROJECT MANAGER SUSAN we plan to publish other stories about knowledge Motil’s story, “So This is Knowledge Sharing,” emerged sharing, and we’d love to hear from you if you’ve learned out of a phone conversation she had with Marty Davis something in ASK that you’ve applied on your projects. of Goddard Space Flight Center after reading his story in Like Marty Davis, Alex McCool, the subject of our ASK 4 about tailoring reviews. Motil, who was working Interview this issue, has over 40 years of experience with on a microscope experiment scheduled to fly on the NASA. Let me tell you, few interviews I’ve done for ASK International Space Station, was preparing for a prelim- have been as enjoyable for me as this one with Alex. It inary design review when she ran into the Davis story. was wonderful sitting in Alex’s office at Marshall Space I met Sue on a visit I made to Glenn. When I heard how Flight Center and listening to stories stretching the she’d read the story and then called Marty and how he breadth of his career. How often do you get to learn from helped her, I asked her to write about it. Fortune shined someone who has personally worked with Werner von on me that day. She agreed. Braun? Alex’s warmth and generosity are truly as When we started publishing ASK two years ago, we plentiful as his knowledge. We have only mined a envisioned our readers, largely project managers, fraction of it here, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy hearing what learning things from these stories and giving them a try he has to say about leading projects and teams. on their own projects. Not surprisingly, some of our There are other fine examples of knowledge sharing enterprising readers have sought out the authors to and knowledge shared this issue, but at the risk of doing pursue a story further. We know this has been anything more than whetting your appetite for what’s happening, and in this issue we bring you a story by Sue inside, I trust you’ll take my word and plunge in at your Motil that describes one such case. own speed. Enjoy the issue, and keep in touch. • When Sue picked up the phone and called Marty, she might not have realized that she was tapping someone with 40+ years of experience at NASA. Marty is truly one of the NASA “gray beards,” although the earring he wears he says is no ruse to convince us otherwise. We were delighted when Marty agreed to tell his story. That Sue was able to use ASK to learn from Marty is a great example of knowledge sharing in action, and it’s an important thing to share with our readers who’ve wanted to know the impact of ASK.This knowledge sharing business isn’t just academic. Sue estimates what she learned from Marty saved her approximately $500,000 on the project. In future issues, ASK 10 FOR PRACTITIONERS BY PRACTITIONERS 3 CONTRIBUTORS W. SCOTT CAMERON is Capital Systems Manager for the Food & TERRY LITTLE is currently the Director of the Kinetic Energy Beverage Global Business Unit of Procter & Boost Office of the Missile Defense Agency. Gamble. He has been managing capital projects Before that he was the head of the Air Force’s and mentoring other capital management practi- Center for Acquisition Excellence. He is one tioners for the past 20 years at Procter & Gamble of the Air Force’s most seasoned program within its Beauty Care, Health Care, Food & managers. He entered the Air Force in 1967 Beverage and Fabric & Home Care Businesses. and served on active duty until 1975. In 1997 he was promoted to the grade of SES. ALLAN FRANDSEN retired from NASA after a 36-year career, most of it at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in SUSAN MOTIL has been at NASA Glenn Research Center for Pasadena, California, working on space science 13 years, with 9 years in Project Management. programs. His last assignment was as Science Her management experience has primarily Payload Manager for the Advanced Composition been with flight experiments under the Explorer mission. During the 1980s he spent Microgravity Science Division at Glenn. She is four years at the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters, currently working on the Critical Viscosity where he managed a number of successful programs. Xenon 2 experiment, scheduled to fly in January 2003, and the Light Microscopy Module, an International Space Station payload. DR. EDWARD HOFFMAN is Director of the NASA Academy of Program and Project Leadership. He is respon- TODD POST is editor of ASK Magazine and works for EduTech sible for the development of program and Ltd. in Silver Spring, Maryland. He has written project leaders and teams within NASA. Dr. about ASK for KM Review and Knowledge Hoffman develops training curricula, Management Magazine. Contact Todd at consulting services, research projects and [email protected], and tell him what you special studies in program and project management.