I’ve recently been rereading Charles Murray’s “Apollo: The Race to the Moon” (link here
) which is not only perhaps the best single book on the history of the Apollo program ever written, it’s one of the best books ever written about a massive, complex project- and I’m including the oft-lauded “The Mythical Man Month” in that comparison. It’s 500 pages of absolutely riveting narration about the people, the history, and the hardware, and the decisions at all levels.
When I first read the book (this is probably my third time through) I ws most interested in the development of the hardware and the missions; on my second reading, the people caught my attention- the engineers who built the machines, and the astronauts that flew them. This time through I find myself more focused on the managers- the people from NASA Jim Webb on down- and the ways in which the successful and not-so-successful ones worked. And I find myself comparing the ways they worked with the styles and characters of the various managers I’ve worked with here at the University.
Some of the NASA managers and directors were hardasses, who would browbeat anyone whom they didn’t think was giving 100%. Others were more concilliatory types who sought to build group cohesion and cooperation. But what all sucessful managers had in common was that they were highly competent engineers first and foremost, who could understand every step of every process they managed. Even Werner von Braun, who had a reputation as a sort of figurehead in his later years at NASA was remembered as someone who was basically a brilliant engineer whose technical judgment was valued on any topic he might concern himself with.
Looking around me at the U, what I see are a lot of project managers who are first and foremost hardasses, whose expertise seems to begin and end at kicking people in the ass and forcing them to adhere to arbitrary project schedules. I was at a meeting last year headed by one such hardass- my division hired him away from one of the big computing services company- where we were discussing a project management intiative he’d been put in charge of. Part of his spec involved having copies of all project documents stored in two ways: As HTML pages, and as MS Word .doc files that could be downloaded. I said “that runs the risk that the two versions would get out of synch. Why don’t we store all the project documents as XML documents in an SQL database? That way we can use the same document for a web template or a printed copy, and users can fill out the forms on line without having to download them, edit them in word, and upload them again.”
The project manager and most of the others at the meeting gave me a sort of blank look and the manager mumbled something about priorities and scope and such, so I dropped it. After the meeting, I was walking back to my office with the one member of the team who was in my department, and I remarked, “Was I correct in thinking that you and I were the only ones in that room who knew what I was talking about?” He nodded and rolled his eyes.
That sort of summed up a good part of why good managers have to understand the issues and the processes that they manage. I’ve had two really good managers here at the University- both have left, and both are good friends of mine. Both had a very strong technical background. Even when the discussion headed out into the newest paradigms- neither had ever programmed in an object-oriented language- they were quick studies, and understood the essential concepts. Both also had a great appreciation fro the problems of software development, testing, and quality.
I’ve also worked with a number of idiots throughout the University who fit the ignorant hardass mold- including more than one at the executive level. I’ve seen scores of really skilled, sometimes brilliant, people leave because management had no appreciation or understanding of the skills that person brought to the organization. One of my lj friends worked for a director who told him flat out that he wouldn’t get a higher level managment position in his organization that he’d applied for because he was too important in his current position. Guess how long he stayed there?
The Apollo team managed to reach the moon only eight years and eight months after JFK’s historic speech, building the most complex and advanced machine the world had ever seen in the process. If the management at this University was given the task of building a soap box racer they’d never make it out the door of the garage. Of course they’d probably still give themselves plenty of awards, promotions and bonuses for meeting deadlines.
