scope:

Description of Driving Event:

The Project underwent several significant transitions including going from a proposal team to an implementation/project team; Principal Investigator (PI)lead academic or science team to a Project Manager (PM)lead hardware development/delivery team; and PM to PM. Within these transitions the Project struggled with two issues that were major obstacles to implementing a "project" oriented environment. First, the Project had difficulty recognizing the incoming PM as an authority over the PI, who in this case was a well-known and respected scientist that germinated the Project concept. The Project team's loyalty to the PI coupled with the abruptness with which PM's were assigned lead the project team to view the incoming PMs as outsiders unfamiliar with the Project's purpose or style who insisted on unfamiliar and time-consuming operating requirements/processes. Second, the Project, which had originally been a small scientific research team, had difficulty establishing and applying formal/rigid project management processes.

Thus, the inadequate PM involvement during the proposal stage coupled with the un-facilitated/ unmanaged transitions never allowed the team to mature into an integrated project. The result was that the Project's initial planning was off (as described in a companion LL on cost estimating) and the subsequent attempts to redirect it through formal PM processes were unsuccessful.