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Would be interesting to see a comparison of project management approaches at SpaceX vs. Boeing. I suspect that Boeing has far more antiquated, politically motiv
by jtdev 7y ago
Would be interesting to see a comparison of project management approaches at SpaceX vs. Boeing. I suspect that Boeing has far more antiquated, politically motivated cruft scattered throughout.
- jessant 7y agoI recently watched this video comparing the philosophies of the two companies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3KNmQ_IysU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3KNmQ_IysU
- 83457 7y agoBoeing not Blue Origin but still an informative video
- aglavine 7y agoFrom what I've read it is analog to Waterfall (Boeing) vs. Agile (SpaceX)
- mattrp 7y agoI was just about to write something similar - the reason nasa projects fail is because they refuse to allow for iteration. Every flight from the first flight must be flawless. Look at Spacex ... they iterate just fine for their own private fleet but the minute they start work with nasa they grind to a a slow pace.. boeing, bless their poor hearts, grew up on the nasa pork so they aren’t structured to iterate if they wanted to... like a declawed cat who has never been outdoors pretending to be fierce, they thrive on the impression that what they are doing is space exploration. And now when it’s starting to become real... oops...
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago> the reason nasa projects fail is because they refuse to allow for iteration Could this be a relic of the era when we needed people in the spacecraft? As far as I'm aware, SpaceX has never had manned flights - a catastrophic explosion is momentary bad press, but they can continue on. Every time someone died in NASA it was a real tragedy. Plus every NASA launchpad explosion is more obviously "wasted" tax payer money.
- jtdev 7y agoI think NASA had unmanned test flights even in the early days.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Unmanned_test_missions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Unmann...). I think everyone would agree that manned flights should be as thoroughly tested as possible. Although SpaceX has never had manned flights, they do dock with the ISS, a failure of which could have very real consequences including possible loss of life. The belief that an iterative, agile approach is too "fast and loose" for complex engineering projects has been throughly debunked, but for some reason continues to pervade.
- bumby 7y agoYour comment comes across as if it's a forgone conclusion that agile development is adequate but it seems like there is still plenty of debate on this in terms of safety-critical systems. "The quality control mechanisms supported by current agile processes (e.g., informal reviews, pair-programming) have not been proven to be adequate to assure users that the product is safe. In fact there is some doubt these techniques alone will be sufficient. Formal specification, rigorous test coverage, and other formal analysis and evaluation techniques included in software engineering approaches provide better, but also more expensive, mechanisms to tackle the development of safety- or business- critical software" [1] SpaceX has shown quality control issues on their hardware processes in the past, which, from the outside looking in seems like they should have been caught.[2] I wonder if the fact that they are a relatively young organization is why these processes were lacking to begin with. It seems to be the nature of the learning process that as the 'unknown unknowns' are uncovered, processes will become more robust (and possibly cumbersome) by extension. The real question is whether they should have been unknown to begin with. I also wonder if they will start to look less like the agile upstart as they create more mature processes. [1] https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1409/1409.6600.pdf https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1409/1409.6600.pdf [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/structural-failure-likely-cause-of-rocket-explosion-spacex-chief-says-1437426821 https://www.wsj.com/articles/structural-failure-likely-cause...
- jtdev 7y ago
- LeifCarrotson 7y agoFrom 1958, when McDonnell (now Boeing) built the Mercury spacecraft, through 1969, when Apollo 11 (first stage and lunar rover built by Boeing, 3rd stage by McDonnel) landed on the Moon, Boeing rapidly iterated and was an 'outdoor cat'. NASA moved pretty quickly back then, too. They've just gotten comfortable indoors, growing fat, lazy, and old in the decades since then.
- bumby 7y agoI know your comment is the typical explanation, but to play devil's advocate, it may just be that as organizations mature they move away from "innovation" and towards "maintenance". There's a perspective that that may not exactly be a bad thing. [1] I've heard people say SpaceX looks very much like NASA during the Apollo days, including the average age being in the mid-20s in the control rooms. Contrast that with today where NASA's average age is north of 50. What I think will be interesting is if SpaceX maintains this over the coming decades or if they will become more bureaucratic as the organization ages. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance/
- davidmr 7y ago> I was just about to write something similar - the reason nasa projects fail is because they refuse to allow for iteration. If that's why they fail, do they regularly succeed in spite of it or also because of it?
- mattrp 7y agoThat’s fair criticism... can I qualify that I meant new development? Curious, what do you see as succeeding?
- davidmr 7y agoI mean, they regularly build robots, strap them on huge rockets, shoot them 300,000,000 miles away to mars, land them without a scratch, and drive them around for years. That’s awesome.
- Agathos 7y agoSo the same except everyone at SpaceX has an extra meeting in the morning?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wonderwonder 7y agoIn fairness, the SpaceX people likely also get the pleasure of getting to work a few extra hours each day in order to ensure they complete their sprint. So that's nice...
- aglavine 7y agohehehe ... true story.
- Robotbeat 7y agoBoth use waterfall to some extent.
- rige 7y agoGood point - I would guess that Boeing's process is a much longer and more extensive waterfall (i.e. one major iteration on a large scale), whereas smaller companies like SpaceX go through the waterfall for multiple shorter iterations. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, I assume.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- windexh8er 7y agoI worked at Lockheed Martin as a Systems Engineer for a few years. Everything we worked on as a project was waterfall. We did annual training using the methodology and did exercises around it as well. I think it's rather commonplace for defense contractors and wouldn't be surprised if this were still the case for Boeing.
- starpilot 7y agoSpaceX is better because they hire MUCH better engineers, it's night and day the caliber of workers each has.
- aglavine 7y agoalso, SpaceX relies way less on external providers.