tituted a policy of ‘no surprises,’ meaning that all team members immediately communicated any and all information to all parties interested, both in management and in the other potentially affected teams,” Abramovici says.

The teams were given considerable autonomy under the “no surprises” rule. Management was informed of developments, but sign-off was not require. Database technicians, additional secretaries and numerous engineering students relieved engineers of mundane tasks, allowing them more time to concentrate on their primary responsibilities.

Peer reviews helped resolve issues. For example, the systems engineering technical review (SETR) allowed engineers to debate technical problems and solutions. “By acting as an early review forum, the SETR helped ensure that individual engineers did not spend time investigating or developing ideas for changes or solutions to problems that ultimately would not make it into the design,” Abramovici says.

The SETR also facilitated quick management buy-in for engineering activities. Abramovici says management representatives attended the SETRs without attempting to steer decisions toward “programmatically palatable3” solutions, and in most cases granted management approval for the SETR decisions on the spot. “In 18 months, not a single SETR decision was reversed by the management team,” he says.

Timing is Everything

NASA planned to launch the robot in 2004, and it was clear MD Robotics could not miss its promised delivery. The schedule, defined in the SPDM SOW, detailed the major milestones and deliverables.

Based on past projects, MD Robotics used bottom-up estimates to arrive at costs. Two external groups reviewed and validated the numbers. Considering the risk associ

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