Faster, Better, Cheaper

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a government agency which invents and implements aeronautical, space, and Earth science programs. NASA is currently led by an administrator, Daniel Goldin, who has done a good job leading NASA into the twenty-first century. In the early 1990’s, through Goldin’s leadership, NASA adopted the Faster, Better, Cheaper (FBC) approach to the project management of its space and Earth science missions. The goal was to shorten development times, reduce cost, and increase the scientific return by flying more missions in less time. This goal was driven by politics and funding. Politics play an important part in NASA’s management strategies and has led to many changes in management style. Politics for all intents and purposes started NASA.

NASA was formed as a result of Russia’s Sputnik program successes. The official start of NASA was October 1, 1958. NASA inherited the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other government organizations, and almost immediately began working on options for human space flight. NASA’s first high profile program was Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive in space, followed by Project Gemini, whi

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As with any major human endeavor, there have been successes and failures in the stress and strain of venturing onto new ground, trying new things, and taking risks to gain significant return. This was not what was meant when Dan Goldin said, "It’s OK to fail. In addition, a long-term stable funding environment must be established to foster these world class centers.

In the current NASA transition, they have moved from a few to too many Missions, requiring many more Project Managers, Project Teams and institutional support including Review Teams. Moving into the last decade of the 20th Century, it was already clear that for NASA to remain viable and credible, it must become more business-like, treat cost and schedule as important as Mission performance, and deliver on time for the advertised cost. An FBC Project in a pre-project phase must be permitted to develop correct cost and schedule caps for the Mission scope by working estimates from the "bottom up" with all members of the Project Team participating, who then own their Project Plan. NASA must stay the course, benefit and grow from its lessons learned, and move on to the next level of FBC. They become totally excited about their work and they have fun! This has extended outside of the home base team, to industry and other NASA Center partners.

At this point we must define FBC.

In 1992, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin challenged all of NASA, including its industry and contractors, to do projects in a Faster, Better, Cheaper (FBC) mode. Also, management attention has become diluted across these many Missions. These kind of failures can be honorable, even if they are traumatic to the Project Team. The most recent failure, Mars Polar Lander has prompted NASA to review its FBC policies. FBC boils down to two basic things, efficiency and teamwork.

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