Faster Cheaper Optimization of the Management of Space Programs of Interdependent Projects

M. Elisabeth Pate-Cornell
Burt and Deedee McMurty Professor, School of Engineering
Stanford University

Many complex engineering programs have experienced substantial budget or schedule overruns in the development phase, or catastrophic failures in operations. Complex enterprises such as space programs are often divided into modules, projects or missions. Total or partial failures of one module may affect the performance of others, and therefore, they should not be managed independently. At the same time, problems often occur because the project development team is tightly constrained for resources and must make difficult tradeoffs among the competing risk elements (cost, schedule, and technical performance). One critical issue in the development of these complex programs is to balance appropriately the risks of technical and management failures (cost and schedule overruns) according to the preferences of the decision makers. In this talk, I will present an analytical (probabilistic) framework to combine technical and management failure risks in a decision support system, and a simple application to the management of space missions.