1. Should Lee recommend the launch or delay of Mars Mission?

How
do you decide this?
Post the Critical Events Readiness Review (CERR), it was observed that though
the tiger team and project engineers had solved most of the BMSA instruments
issue, new issues continued to crop in. There were two critical reasons remaining

BMSA Risks were reduced to 3 but likelihood continued at 3 .Overall

BMSA remained a yellow risk, which was above the Boards acceptance
level

Landing site-20% likelihood that lander would not land successfully. At

likelihood of 3 and consequence of 5, landing site remained a red zone risk
with score of 15.

The overall probability of success of the EDL stage was about 80% while the
board wanted about 96% probability of success before it could recommend a
launch.
Hence it is recommended that the project be delayed since that would
facilitate

New images could be obtained in a few months which would reduce the
likelihood of landing site failure below 5%.

Developing, testing and if successful substitute new components in the BMSA

package.

Though delay could severely diminish the reputation and erode taxpayer and
Congressional support for future projects ,however the project failure can
have catastrophic effects on the prospectus of future projects in the pipeline

Comparing costs associated with delay $149-$298 million (20-40% of $ 745

the cost of the entire project),and the cost of losing multiple projects in the
pipeline and the failure of the mission ,it was better to delay the launch
5
4
3

BMSA

Radar SSAS

LIKELIHOOD

Landing
Site

Heat Shield,
Parachute,
Solar Array
1

CONSEQUENCE
Flagship missions costing more than $2 billion 96%probability of success
expected
Discovery mission at cost of $0.5 billion90%
Low cost missions 70%

2. Identify principal risk management processes in MBE? What roles

each play? Compare it with your organization Risk Management
Processes. (one organization may be considered for each group)
The MBE project had a 12 person risk review board, chaired by Lee and comprising
experienced and respected technical experts from JPL, NASA and the projects prime
contractor. The review board created a culture of intellectual confrontation during
three critical review meetings during the project. The board would question and
challenge project engineers thereby overcoming the challenge pointed by Lee with
regard to risk mitigation which Lee believed was not a natural event for humans and
gave an outsiders perspective to the project engineers. The 3 critical review
meetings

Preliminary Mission and Systems Review- Occurred 51 months before

target launch date.

Critical Design Review- Occurred 22 months before target launch date.

Critical Events Readiness Review- Occurred 7 weeks before target

launch date.
The MBE project team identified critical risks through a project risk
assessment process that classified each mission or implementation risk
along two dimensions-consequences if risk occurred and likelihood of
risk occurence.
The team assessed the risks likelihood of occurrence based on
experience, an estimate inferred from a statistical sample, or an
educated guess.

The team displayed the criticality of each risk on a two dimensional

heat map .Each cell represented the product of risks likelihood and
consequence. Based on this the risks were classified as
Risks with score<=5 Green Zone
Risks with score(6-12)Yellow Zone
Risks with score(>=15)Red Zone

Risk Management at our organization is an enterprise wide function with a qualified

team of specialists with deep industry experience who create frameworks and
methodologies for risk assessment and mitigation. Since its at enterprise wide it
works in collaboration with the Business, Legal, Finance, HR, Quality, CIO, Audit and
other functional teams.
Risk management process typically is a 5 step process

Identification

Analysis

Evaluation

Treatment

Monitoring

Categorization

of

risks

Governance,strategic,operational,compliance,reporting
Typically, across the organization,

Risk Register is formed for each process in the organization.

Risks and controls are mapped to the business objective of each process.

Risks are collated from all known internal and external sources.

Risk captured with a neasurable KRI (Key Risk Indicator) and associated
mitigation plans.

Periodic reports and dashboards to track risk levels

Risk and mitigations tracked jointly with concerned teams to enhance

accountability and have transparency

Periodic risk dashboards are placed for review with Senior Management and
Audit committee.

3. Do you consider Lee as a Good Chief Risk Officer (CRO)? Justify your
decision.
Yes, Lee was a good Chief Risk Officer since

Strong Understanding of organizational culture :

o

He understood that risk mitigation was not a natural act for humans to
perform.

Psychological and experience based inferences lead engineers to

overlook important risks and underestimating and undermanaging
them.

JPL engineers from top schools used to getting things right and got
them to get comfortable with the thought of all the things that could go
wrong.

Established Credentials: Lee, a graduate of University of Texas and MIT,

had worked with JPL from 1969-1976 as part of the Viking project team
responsible for the first successful landing of a spacecraft on Mars.

Changing risk assurance from a peripheral activity to embedding it

as a continuous process throughout projects life.

Classification of risks right from project start- Known unknowns and

unknown unknowns and writing down every possible risk at the start of the
project

Change

from

Faster,

Better,

and

Cheaper

toIntellectual

Confrontation- Risk taking at NASA and JPL was rampant and culturally
accepted especially after the faster, better, cheaper mission which resulted
in two major failures. Countered the overconfidence and optimism of the
technically strong and capable project engineers.

Risk Review Board 12 member risk review board chaired by Lee

challenging,questioning project engineers and pushing them to constantly
question what could go wrong.

4. What challenges Lee faced in MBE? Suppose you are the CRO at your
organization what will be the challenges you face (one organization
may be considered for each group)
The challenges that Lee faced were that at the PMSR stage there were about 6
yellow category risks which later in the CDR and CERR stages changed to six with 2

of them being critical(one in YELLOW and the other in RED category).The overall
probability of success of the EDL stage was at 80% which was lower than the boards
comfortable limit f first digit in the likelihood of success at 9.For flagship missions,
costing more than $ 2billion,the board expected a 96% probability of success before
it could recommend a launch. The challenge that Lee was the critical decision
whether to go ahead with the launch and risk the failure of the entire Mars mission
which if failed would adversely affect the future prospectus of projects in pipeline,
and delaying the project which could add between 20-40% to the cost of the entire
project and require re-analysis and diminish the reputation and erode the taxpayers
and Congressional support for future projects.
The challenges faced in our organizations are typically associated with the rapid
changes in the business models and increased competition and the market risks,
fluctuations in the exchange rates, constant up gradation of technology and most
importantly retention of the skilled manpower.
5.

Is the risk management policy aligning with JPL's strategy and

Culture?
Yes, the risk management policy was in alignment with JPLs strategy and culture.
The objective of JPL was to have successful projects for which they encouraged a be
bold, take risks strategy which required risk mitigation to be embedded in the
lifecycle of a project and constant questioning, challenging of accepted facts and
intellectual confrontation which was crucial in an organization like JPL where risk
taking was rampant and consisted of top engineers who were too used to getting
things right always. This was a major improvement over the previous strategy of
Faster, better, cheaper strategy which overlooked critical risk factors at the cost of
project launch leading to subsequent project failures.