So let's take a look at what probably is the most famous program of all time as well as also probably
the most expensive program of all time and the risk.
I am of course referring to the Apollo program.
So this is the program were the United States decided to send astronauts to the moon and back in the
1960s.
And this is like I say one of the riskiest and most expensive programs but it was ultimately a success.
And there's plenty that we can learn from their success.
Some will have a look at some of the things that we can learn from it as a little bit of a bonus to
to this course.
So starting with the one of the ones which is the way that they planned the Apollo program Apollo program
was super ambitious super massive task.
So what do you do when you need to try and achieve a huge task and it seems so daunting to begin with.
Well you break it down into manageable chunks and that's exactly what they did on the Apollo program.
They decided that they'll break it into three different phases.
So the first one was to test the materials and the safety the quality and the strength.
The second one was to circle the moon but not land on it and return.
And the third one was then to actually push it and actually land on the moon and then return to the
earth.
So those are the three phases.
They broke it down too and this allowed them to iterate through the program to analyze the scope the
workability the costs the time the resources and the skills that would be needed to be allocated to
make sure that the program was a success by make him bite sized chunks as well they could define those
priorities within those chunks.
And that helped to set some limitations around what they were trying to achieve in the different different
areas of the program and the different priorities that they needed to achieve and have a really big
learning lesson is using teamwork across different locations particularly.
So if you watch the film Apollo 13 I know that's a film but it is very true to life or if you watch
anything on youtube about the real Apollo missions you'll see that what they did was they sent the astronauts
up in their spacecraft.
But there was a whole team of people back on the ground in camp in Mission Control in Houston and they
were there for the astronauts to help them help them have a successful mission.
And each one of those team members was empowered to make decisions.
They were experts in their field and had responsibility for their areas and they were also highly trained
and did lots of simulations particularly simulations around things that went wrong and already came
up with processes in order to fix problems that could happen mitigate them or to have a process in case
things went wrong.
So what this meant was when they had an error the entire team were ready and had the responsibility
and the knowledge and expertise to fix problems and come up with solutions on the fly so that they were
able to have a successful mission.
One of the first problems that the Apollo pilot program run into was when one of the first Apollo rockets
went up and the spacecraft began running low on fuel and started veering nine miles away from the landing
strip.
Now it wasn't the astronauts on board the Apollo spacecraft that fix this problem.
There's actually the team back in the control room who identified the error and then restored calm by
coming up with a solution to get them safely back on the ground.
So again great teamwork so and another aspect to this is the ability to communicate and how how well
they communicated.
So communication is often cited as the number one reason why projects fail what they did was they were
able to communicate with the astronauts and in very very professionally they didn't panic.
If we watch Apollo 13 can imagine what it must have been like when they ruptured the oxygen tank and
I mean there are oxygen time Russians running low on the hundreds of thousands of miles from earth open
space but the astronauts didn't panic and they didn't panic on the ground.
They took a really positive attitude of OK.
There's a serious issue here.
Houston we have a problem.
Understatement of the century.
But they took the vision of we are going to get to work to solve this problem.
We're not going to panic about it.
We're not going to get stressed about it when I get each other's throats about it.
There were very professional and they just set to work on solving the task.
And of course we know they actually got them back down safely which was incredible.
Another thing that they did to their advantage for the Apollo program and communication was to make
use of communication technology to facilitate that communication.
So today we use video conferencing and multi multi conference calls and e-mails and electronic communication
which is fast and allows face to face communication even when we're not in the room.
What they had in the Apollo program was something revolutionary as well.
They had unified band radio which allowed them to carry voice TV telemetry data and communications all
across that microwave spectrum.
So the team down on the ground had so much information coming back from the spacecraft.
They had all the information about the astronauts health.
They had information about how the spacecraft was performing how its telemetry data was fuel was on
board how much CO2 was built enough pumps oxygen was in the tanks and all this wealth of information
all sent back from the spacecraft through this revolutionary technology at the time unified s band.
And with that information it went to all of the individual people in the control center who had the
responsibility for their area and with the information are empowered to be able to make the right decisions
and to find out their problem find problems and own problems to fix the problems
another thing you'll notice if you watch any of the videos is they had very direct and clear communication.
Now this is something that you do over the radio as a private pilot.
I have to do this as well when I'm flying.
I talk to the control towers and we have set formats of the way that we do we communicate.
So the when the tower send instructions to me I know what format they're going to send those in and
when I reply to them they know what format I'm sending them back.
So this allows good communication and makes it direct your.
You think I already know exactly what you're going to say.
They know the key information that you need to pick up from when you get radio interference which makes
it difficult to hear.
It gives you a much better chance of actually picking out the key information because you know what's
coming in hand in what order.
So this is something that the data are obviously on the Apollo program as well.
One good example of this was when Neil and Buzz Armstrong were about to land on the moon are really
really dangerous maneuver.
They were in communication with one person and one person only on the ground and that was Capcom Cup
Comet.
Houston was the only person authorized to talk to the astronauts and this allowed a single voice for
them to listen to a unified voice so that they didn't receive conflicting information from other people
in the room.
And it was one person making those decisions.
And the astronauts aboard Apollo 11 when they were Miles of course low on fuel and dealing with computer
alarms going off all the time.
Hey it was a lot easier for them to communicate with just one person rather than having to communicate
with multiple people just one voice.
So what we learn from this today is that your team needs to have a unified voice that needs to be one
final decision maker and this will be the program lead the program lead my guy everybody's input.
But everybody should understand and respect the fact that it is the program leader who makes the ultimate
decisions and that is the team's unified voice.
Another big lesson we can learn from the Apollo program is risk now Apollo program obviously was an
incredibly risky undertaking probably riskier than anything that you guys or I am ever going to do.
So what can we learn from the management of risk.
So obviously what they did was they did a lot of what if what if this happens what if that happens.
And they did a lot of training and a lot of simulations everything that they do in the space and space
missions.
Even today is they practice everything on the ground first and simulator it and is simulated going right
and then they simulate what if this happens what if that happens.
So they can mitigate the risks before they go up in space and they can already have procedures in place
if something goes wrong and it's already practiced so it becomes second nature.
So it's a brilliant thing that they did with risk and by thinking about what would happen just by doing
lots and lots and lots of simulations one example of a big risk that was happening in the Apollo program
was the lunar lander which was behind schedule and overweight.
Now they couldn't compromise on quality.
It was the lunar lander that was going to land on the moon and then take back off again.
So what the engineers did was they used Gantt charts change control boards configuration management
and manage risks to resolve them all things that we'll look at in this course.
Another big lesson that we can learn is the leadership role that the Apollo program had they had very
strong leaders and what they did was they centralized a lot of processes and standardized them.
And this meant that they could be repeatable and would have less disruption to workflows.
And it went meant that when they did their lessons learned they were let learning the lessons and improving
those processes and then repeating those processes.
So it helps things move a lot more smoothly.
And this is a something that the program office does today.
The program management office will have standardized processes that have been improved over lessons
learned and then that enables your job as a program manager to be easier because you already have an
outline process to follow.
So that's something that they did in the Apollo program which we're also doing today.
So that's just a brief look at what we can learn from the Apollo program.
Now the Apollo program is a good one to do because it's a fascinating piece of history.
It was successful and it represents the extremes it's one of the riskiest things ever done one of the
most expensive things ever done.
One of the grandest visions.
Well one of the biggest goals in such a short period of time.
So by looking at what they did back in the 1960s we can learn from success.
And those are just a few things that we've learned from them.
OK.
So let's continue with the costs.