So maybe Agile works for small projects but it couldn’t possible work for large projects? You couldn’t work in iterations for a multi-million, let alone billion, pound project with thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of people, you’d need to carefully gather all the requirements, draw up a detailed design, put together the project plan and carefully stick to the plan?
Well the biggest engineering project I can think of is the American space program of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo which ultimately put a man on the moon.
It is difficult now to appreciate how little was known about space. Assuming that the Soviets had not lied about Yuri Gagarin NASA knew it was possible for a human to briefly survive in space, but that is all they knew, they did not know even the basics, could a man drink in space, could a man eat, could he sleep let along the longer term physiological effects of being weightless for days. Then there was the mechanics of space flight, docking two space craft, men operating outside of a vehicle in space, the list is almost endless.
So what NASA do? Well they didn’t come up with a grand design, built it and deployed it (sent it to the moon). Project Gemini was a series of 10 manned missions, each one building on the knowledge gained from the previous. Apollo then built on Gemini.
- Gemini 3 – Cautious test flight, just 3 revolutions
- Gemini 4 – First American space walk
- Gemini 5 – Long duration 8 day flight,evaluated guidance and navigation system for future rendezvous missions
- Gemini 6 – First space rendezvous
- Gemini 7 – Long duration 14 day flight
- Gemini 8 – First docking in space
- Gemini 9 – 3 different rendezvous
- Gemini 10 – First use of Agena’s power
- Gemini 11 – Altitude record using Agena propulsion system
- Gemini 12 – Aldrin set an EVA record of 5 hours, 30 minutes
- Apollo 7 – First test flight
- Apollo 8 – 2nd manned flight, all the way to the moon
- Apollo 9 – First flight of CSM/LM combination (Earth orbit)
- Apollo 10 – Dress rehersal, LM taken within 50,000 feet of lunar surface
- Apollo 11 – Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon
Typically Agile projects are time boxed with scope being variable, with the space program both time (”before the decade is out”) and scope (”of landing a man on the moon”) were fixed, as was quality (”and returning him safely to earth”), it was cost that was variable.
Ok, so the projects you’ve worked on haven’t been as intimidating or as significant to mankind as sending someone to the moon but if you’re honest with yourself there were probably a great many unknowns when you started and your future projects are likely to be the same.
So what prompted this post, after all Apollo ended over 3 years before I was born? I read Andrew Smiths “Moondust – In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth” and “Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys” by Michael Collins (he’s the third astronaut on Apollo 11) , both highly recommended.