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Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 04/12/2012 01:18 PM
EXPERIENCE
HBR.ORG
Case Study
A complex project for the space station must
come in on time and on budget—but the push
for speed might be its undoing. by Tom Cross
The Experts
A Rush
To Failure?
Gary L. Moe
Director, McKinsey Business
Technology Office
T
ILLUSTRATION: BRETT AFFRUNTI
Tom Quinly
President, CurtissWright Controls
HBR’s case studies present fictionalized
accounts of actual dilemmas faced by
leaders, and offer solutions from experts.
here is absolutely no reason why
the contractors shouldn’t be able
to give us rapid product development and awless products—speed and
quality both,” David MacDonagle said as he
tried to light a cigarette. The warm wind,
portending rain, kept blowing out his
matches. Finally he gave up and slipped
the cigarette back in his pocket.
MacDonagle, the head of the Canadian
Aeronautics Administration, was nervous.
Everyone at CAA headquarters was nervous. Very shortly, the project that many
of them had devoted the past four years
to would have its rst real-world test, 350
kilometers above the earth. Feeling cooped
up in the executive o ces and oppressed
by the presence of the media, MacDonagle
had gone outside to breathe some air—
actually, some tobacco smoke—and had
invited the sharp young program manager
Samantha Van Sant to join him.
Van Sant, a former Canadian army
major, had a lot of skin in the project too.
Since 2006 she’d been managing the two
contractors the CAA had commissioned
to build the $1.2 billion set of giant robotic
arms known as Retractable Extended-
Arms Compatible Holder, or REACH, for
the International Space Station.
“So how do you deal with nerves?” MacDonagle asked.
“I usually go out for a run,” Van Sant said,
looking down the road that led from CAA
headquarters through the corn elds, on
which she’d logged many miles.
They turned to look back at the
agency’s buildings, which despite their
grandeur looked small in the empty Quebec...