CHAPTER FIVE - Confirm Common Measurements - The Mars Climate Orbiter

This series has been revised and compiled into 'Map. Measure. Move. - Building Clarity for Shared Success', available in paperback, Kindle, and hardcover formats.?Feel free to continue to reference the index to all entries in the LinkedIn series, but future revisions and improvements will be made in the book!

Imagine yourself as the project manager accountable for ensuring that a three-quarter-ton vehicle loaded with measurement and communication equipment inserts itself safely in orbit around Mars.? Once there, this orbiter will measure the water content of Mars and any changes in the planet’s atmosphere.? It’s a super expensive project.? A massive rocket is required to send the orbiter on its way.? That and many, many other expenses contribute to the $328 million dollar price tag on the mission.

Would you feel some pressure to make sure things go as expected?

Don’t answer yet.? There’s more.? An earlier, identical mission resulted in the loss of the spacecraft. So, really, there’s over $600 million invested so far.? It has taken six years to prepare another attempt.? The orbiter vehicle for the second attempt, launched from Earth nine months ago, is now nearing its insertion point for Mars orbit.

You, the project manager, sit in front of one of the many consoles displaying mission data as the orbiter closes the final miles.? You feel the eyes of the rest of the room on the back of your head.? The only sounds in your earpiece are the rhythmic chirp of the orbitor’s signal and the wub-wub of your pulse.?

The confirmation of successful orbit should come at any second.? And then the chirps from the vehicle stop and they do not resume.

This really happened.

The vehicle was named the Mars Climate Orbiter and I’ll share more about its fate later in the chapter.? It’s another example of many people working toward a destination that they ultimately failed to reach.? In this case, the team had a good map.? They had the coordinates for orbital insertion above Mars as well as the specifics on the speed and altitude at which they’d need to enter that orbit.? In this case, the team was lacking clarity on something else.

This is the first of four chapters in the second part of this series.? In this section, we’ll look at the need for clarity about how a team is measuring progress toward their destination.? In this chapter, we’ll cover the first facet of measurement needed by a team in order to understand that they are approaching their destination as expected.

Confirm common measurements.

It’s as simple as it sounds.? In order to have a common understanding of how close you are to your destination and that you’re taking the right, next steps to get there, you and your teammates need to be using the same measurements.

The simplicity of the concept can make this facet of clear expectations rather insidious.? It’s almost insultingly simple.? That’s why it might feel uncomfortable to ask for clarification in this area.? But what a shame it is when something this simple goes wrong because no one spoke up.? It does happen and it can be catastrophic.? Again, we’ll come back to that.

Thankfully, the framework for making sure that your team is ready to identify this risk and take the right actions to eliminate it is also simple.? It’s the same framework we used in the first part of the series.

Circumstance

Resistance

Anecdote

Progress???

Circumstance

Get your team’s collective understanding of the measurement system to be used.? As with the prior topics we’ve covered, a quick survey question can help you understand the circumstance.? As always, keep this quick and keep the responses independent.? Most of us already receive a lot of surveys and other requests for information.? This one can be the team’s favorite since it takes no more than a minute.? Put the question to as many team members as possible and communicate that they should answer based on what’s in their head at the moment.? No research.? To get as clear an understanding of the circumstance as possible, ask those you survey not to consult with one another before submitting their response.

You can use a question like this.

"I know everyone’s measurements of project success are aligned because…"

1. We have each written down our understanding of how success will be measured and made a comparison to resolve any differences
2. I have written down my expectations and shared them
3. I have a strong relationship with the others involved in the effort
4. I just know
5. I don't know

Once again, here’s how to tabulate the responses. ? Score each answer as 5 points for “a”, 3 points for “b”, 2 points for “c”, 0 points for “d”, and 1 point for “e”.? Add up the responses and divide by the number of responses you receive.? If you’re close to 5 points, you can feel comfortable that the team understands how success is being measured.? If you’re closer to 0?? You could be creating your own cautionary anecdote.? Take steps to confirm that everyone understands how things will be measured.

Resistance

Why would anyone object to making sure that members of a team are using the same measurement system?? You may hear things like, “Everyone knows that.” or, more confrontationally, “Shouldn’t you already know that?”? A subject matter expert may tell you that they could explain it, but you wouldn’t understand.? That’s unfortunate.? Asking for clear expectations can mean putting ego on the backburner.? A culture which attacks ego or self worth for asking is not getting the best from a team.

The important thing is that you identify what resistance exists.? Then you’re ready to build a desire within the team to take a small amount of time to ensure that clarity is improved for all those who are contributing to the effort.

Anecdote

The story of the Mars Climate Orbiter is going to help you underscore the wisdom of making sure that something as simple as using common measurements is understood throughout the team.??

You can also make the point with a reference to the value of synchronizing watches.

Time might be one of the most commonly understood measurements we have.? Until recently, though, its measurement varied quite a bit from person to person.? Before we had phones and other devices synchronized to a common source of time measurement, individual watches and clocks varied according to who set them and the reliability of their mechanisms.? That’s why you’ll hear “ let’s synchronize our watches” in old movies and television shows.? When an effort required perfect timing, the differences between individual timepieces were unacceptable.

It was valuable to take a minute and confirm that everyone involved had a common understanding of measurement as broadly known as time.

Ask your teammates about the measurements you’re using for the effort you’re pursuing.? Are those references as broadly understood as time?? Does everyone have a synchronized calculation of it in their pocket?

Progress

Most measurements haven’t matured into a commonly-shared understanding.? It’s worth having a short, possibly banal, discussion with the team to confirm that everyone is on the same page.? Get the team together in front of a white board and list out all of the measurements which are being used to understand if you are successfully headed for your expected destination.? Then begin spelling out the calculation for each

You can set the tone for an environment where it’s not only safe but also encouraged to ask about the simple things.? Start with something basic, like “Days”, as a measure of time.? Clarify how “Days” will be understood by the group.? When someone says it will take three days to complete something, you can clarify what everyone will understand that to mean.

You might come up with something like this.

?“Days”

• Excludes weekends and company holidays
• Ends at 4:00 PM Pacific time with respect to delivery of commitments

Then you can move on to more complex measurements like “latency”, “azimuth”, “revenue”, or whatever is relevant to your work.? If the measurements are truly simple, this won’t take long.? If there is a difference in understanding, it will take longer but the time will be incredibly well-spent.

Capture the list and publish it as a central reference for the team.? Then you can ask your survey question again and observe the progress.? The results will most likely be close to a 5.? If not, get back in front of the whiteboard until it is.? When it is, you’ve built the clarity you need for a common understanding of how things will be measured for your effort.? And you’ve also helped set the tone for the group to ask, ask, and ask again.

There is little downside to taking the time to eliminate assumptions about measurement reference points for measurement.? You risk a little time.? There may be some risk to your pride.? The cost of a misunderstanding will be magnitudes larger (and still take your pride right along with it).

This is where we can come back to the Mars Climate Orbiter anecdote you can use to make your point.? Assumptions about simple things were incorrect.? A small clarification could have prevented the misunderstanding.? It was terribly, terribly expensive.

Let’s go back to that vision of you, the mission project manager, sitting in front of a monitor and realizing that the silence on your headset is the sound of more than half a billion dollars going missing.? You know that, to safely enter Mars orbit, you needed the vehicle to enter the atmosphere at an angle of attack maintaining 93 to 87 miles above the surface.

Any angle more shallow and the probe would bounce off the atmosphere and back into space.? Any angle more steep and the craft would burn up from the friction.

All of the data readings you received were exactly as expected.? All of the adjustments you made were exactly as called for by the situation.? But now it’s been a few minutes and the Mars Climate Orbiter’s signal has not been heard.? The vehicle, like its predecessor, has been lost.

In the case of an interplanetary spacecraft, decisions are made based on information about the position and speed of the vehicle.? When it came time to set the orbit entry for the Mars Climate Orbiter, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California determined the necessary thrusts based on trajectory data.??

The problem?? The software file used to calculate thrust performance was (improperly) coded by a contracting company in English units (like yards and gallons).? The interpretation of thrust performance was expected in metric units (like meters and liters).? Metric measurements were the standard in the field of space travel.? The assumption that calculations were using metric measurements was a safe one, until someone didn’t do it.

The thrust performance data in the probe was being sent back to Earth as English pound-seconds (lbf-s).? The control room in California was interpreting the measurements as metric Newton-seconds (N-s).? A Newton-second represents a force 4.45 times stronger than a pound-second.? This meant that thrusters for the probe were providing a little more than one-fifth of the power that the software on the ground thought was being provided.

The result?? The Mars Climate Orbiter approached the planet at far too high a speed (because it was barely thrusting to slow down).? Instead of maintaining a minimum of 87 miles altitude, it’s speed and angle, calculated after the fact, would have taken it within about 35 miles of the surface.

It burned up.

As project manager, you now have the unenviable task of explaining how this expensive mission, this mission which already failed on its first attempt nearly seven years prior, has failed again.

And then the news gets a little bit worse.

You learn that there were obvious signs of thruster trouble long before the Mars Climate Orbiter neared its destination. ?Along the way from Earth to Mars, the vehicle had to make at least ten more trajectory adjustments than expected (because, you know, one-fifth the thrust).? Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab (contracted by NASA for the mission) noted the thrust discrepancies well before the critical orbit entry.? However, the lab had an ‘incident surprise and analysis procedure’ which was not properly followed in raising those concerns.? In other words, the engineers didn’t fill out the right form.

Is your team’s culture one where team members are empowered to confirm even the simplest things?? Or is it one where fear of looking silly prevents you from learning what could improve your likelihood of a successful outcome?

Calibrate the focus on synchronizing measurements to the magnitude of the risk.? When sending an atmospheric probe to Mars (and when you already lost the last one one), it would be wise to welcome requests for clarification of even the simplest things.?

Takeaways

• Synchronize on even the simplest measurements.? If they are truly simple, it takes a moment.??
• Foster an environment where playing back understanding of simple things is appreciated.
• Calibrate your effort on synchronizing measurements to the risks associated with the effort.