IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 48, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2001 25 Success Factors and Future Challenges in the Management of Faster-Better-Cheaper Projects: Lessons Learned from NASA M. Elisabeth Paté-Cornell and Robin L. Dillon Abstract—In the last few years, NASA has shifted its mode of management of unmanned space missions from “flagship” missions to faster-better-cheaper (FBC) projects with reduced scope, budget, and schedule. In order to examine the successful attributes and potential weaknesses of this new management style, we prepared four case studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA) in 1997 and 1998. Based on these case studies, (Cassini, Mars Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, and Deep Space 1), we identified a number of management features that seem to have contributed to the success of the early FBC projects. These features generally involve simplification, stan- dardization, and the use of commercially available components and talents. We also pointed out that most of these features had potential downsides, and we expressed some concerns about the long-term viability of some of these features. The recent failures of two Mars missions have also shown the limitations of this mode of operations. Therefore, in the future, some of these features may have to be revisited to account better for risks and uncertainties. In this paper, we describe these management factors, some of the challenges that remain, and a set of recommendations based on our observations, many of which apply to other industries subjected to similar constraints. Index Terms—Faster-better-cheaper, management, risk, space mission. I. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND T HE National Aeronautic and Space Administration’s (NASA) management of its unmanned space program has changed dramatically in the last few years. Since the 1970s, NASA had developed primarily large “flagship” missions that focused on the characterization of entire planetary systems, such as the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn. The current shift is toward sequences of smaller missions, both in terms of scope and resources. A primary objective of NASA in the development of faster-better-cheaper (FBC) missions is to reduce the risk of program failure by spreading the scientific scope over a larger number of smaller projects (i.e., not putting too many “eggs in the same basket”). Yet, when project resources are tightly constrained, missions cannot be “gold-plated” and may face additional risks of either technical or managerial failure. Management risks are especially high when a project involves the development of Manuscript received July 27, 1999; revised July 27, 2000. M. E. Paté-Cornell is with Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA. R. L. Dillon is with Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech, Falls Church, VA 22043 USA (e-mail: dillon@vt.edu). Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9391(01)01638-5. new technologies, for example, the airbag landing system of Mars Pathfinder. With FBC missions, NASA hopes to gather more information overall at the cost of an increase in the risk of technical failure in each individual mission. This problem is not unique to spacecraft and space programs. It can be found elsewhere in U.S. industries where cost cutting and increases in productivity have to be carefully managed because they also increase the risk of technical failure. The FBC formula at NASA has had, so far, some successes (e.g., Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor) and some failures (e.g., Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter). These failures suggest that under the tight budget and schedule constraints of the FBC projects, some management tradeoffs are unavoidable and probably cause an increase in the risks of technical failure. In 1997–1998, we studied four missions that were ongoing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL): Cassini, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Pathfinder, and Deep Space 1 [12]. We chose missions that represent a progression from the “flagship” mis- sions of the past to the FBC missions of the future. Cassini is considered, at least at this time, to be the last of the “flag- ship” missions and, therefore, provides a base of comparison for the FBC mode of operation. The Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor missions represent an intermediate stage, in- cluding both the new management formula and inheritance from previous missions. Finally, the Deep Space 1 project provides an example of a true FBC mission within which major new technologies are developed in an environment of tight resource constraints. These case studies were developed using several sources of information: 1) personal interviews with the mission project managers and their teams, including project scientists, subsystem managers, and mission assurance specialists; 2) a follow-up survey of the project managers focusing on cost and schedule issues; and 3) an extensive review of available project documentation and lessons learned. We used these case studies to assess the performance to-date of the FBC mode of manage- ment, as well as its needs for improvements in the future, ac- knowledging the recent failures that have occurred since then. In this paper, we present the results of these case studies and the observations and recommendations that we made. We rec- ognize that this set of missions does not represent a sufficient statistical sample to provide a controlled test of hypotheses. It is, however, a base of experience that can already be used to im- prove the management of ongoing and future projects at NASA and in other government agencies as well as commercial indus- tries that face similar problems. 0018–9391/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE