First DRAFT Report on Management

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First DRAFT Report on Management

• Mission Management
• The SDT has expended a considerable effort on
  addressing various management issues relevant to
  the JDEM mission. The organization chart
  suggested in the White Paper of September 24,
  2003 has been modified and this modified version
  is shown in Figure 1.
• Note to SDT
• In the Interim Report of NASA Roadmap 8 a class
  of missions is discussed, namely the Universe
  Probes, which address focused science questions
  through moderate sized (300M-600M) missions
  that are fully competed and scientist led. JDEM
  is mentioned as a first priority item in this
  category if it fits within the cost cap. Is this
  for real, and if so, does it change our
  recommendation here about a Project Manager-led
  mission?

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• 7.1 The first issue that was extensively
  discussed was whether JDEM should be a PI
  (Principal Investigator)-led mission or a PM
  (Project Manager)-mission led by a NASA Project
  Manager. In the former case, the PI is
  responsible to DOE and NASA for both the
  development of the mission and the scientific
  investigation, whereas in the latter the PM is
  responsible to both NASA and DOE for the mission
  development, but the PI is still responsible to
  NASA and DOE for the scientific investigation.
  Some of the considerations are the following
• The scientific motivation for the JDEM is a
  highly focused, targeted investigation into the
  nature of dark energy. As a cost-capped competed
  mission the proposing team will need to
  incorporate sound scientific, technical, and
  management solutions as part of a successful
  proposal. As such, its cultural and
  implementation aspects resemble those of a PI-led
  mission in many significant ways. The SDT
  recognizes that the scope of the mission and its
  probable cost may present organizational and
  management challenges that may exceed those that
  can be reasonably expected from vesting line
  authority in a single PI. A successful approach
  will need to address this concern by employing to
  the greatest extent possible professional space
  project management.

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• A balance will need to be struck that ensures
  the successful scientific return while providing
  both to the PI and the agencies an effectively
  managed construction project. The challenge is
  to do deliver a program on cost and schedule
  while not undermining the future of an equally
  challenging scientific mission. So, while the
  size and scope of JDEM may exceed the resources
  of a typical PI institution, the proposed
  solution must ensure the close marriage of
  project and scientific management and ensure the
  success of both the project manager and the PI.
• The organization of the project into a PM-led
  mission mode solves the management problem by
  applying professional space project development
  expertise. This management mode is normally
  applied when construction and operation of a
  multi-purpose space facility needs to balance
  project resources among several simultaneous
  scientific goals (e.g., missions involving
  multiple instruments and investigations, or those
  supporting major general observer phases).
  Although this approach ensures the mission
  development will be led by a person with
  extensive space-project experience, the
  separation of responsibilities between the
  Project Manager and Principal Investigator
  creates the new risk that the PI team will be not
  as effective in optimizing the mission for the
  focused JDEM scientific goals. Given the
  scientific challenge of the mission the
  traditional PM-led structure is likely not
  adequate to ensure overall mission success.

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• 7.2 As an example of neither traditional PI nor
  PM led missions, the proposed organization chart
  for line authority in Figure 1 addresses the
  management and scientific concerns at the highest
  levels by making the PI and Project Scientist
  co-chairs of the Scientific Coordination Group.
  We expect that competed missions will propose
  variations on this potential solution in
  accordance with their capabilities and may
  propose variants on either PI or PM led
  investigations in order to accomplish the goals
  of a cost-capped scientific mission. This
  example organization emphasizes that the
  scientific goals of the Dark Energy Investigation
  and the project are one and the same.
• This culture needs to be instilled into all
  elements of the project, a task that is not
  reasonably nor effectively accomplished through a
  single Project Scientist or PI. To help ensure
  that the scientific requirements of the mission
  are understood and correctly implemented at all
  levels, the Dark Energy Investigation team shall
  provide discipline scientists who will be
  integrated with the various technical disciplines
  within the project. This would include
  mission-level disciplines such as system
  engineering, telescope/optical systems, pointing
  control systems, contamination control,
  electrical systems, software systems, integration
  and test planning and execution, scientific
  performance verification, and ground systems.
  These responsibilities shall be in addition to
  those that are normally involved in developing
  the core JDEM scientific instrument, the
  primary responsibility of the Dark Energy
  Investigation PI-led team. It would be highly
  desirable for such staff to be co-located with
  the Project, at least during critical development
  phases involving the discipline. While such
  staff would be provided by an ultimately report
  to the PI of the Dark Energy Investigation, close
  coordination with the Project Scientist and the
  Project Scientist Office will be necessary,
  especially during co-located activities. The
  proposing Dark Energy Investigation teams shall
  be evaluated on the quality and organization of
  staff available to perform these functions.

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• 7.3 There should be a Joint NASA-DOE Review Team
  that reports to the NASA-DOE Joint Oversight
  Group (box in top left of Organization Chart)
  rather than having two separate review processes,
  one reporting to NASA and the other to DOE. A
  single review process is much more efficient,
  less wear and tear on the collaboration, and
  ensures better coordination and feeling of shared
  overall responsibility by the agencies. An
  argument was advanced that a joint review team
  did not work well for GLAST. We believe that we
  should not take this as a guide. GLAST was
  primarily a NASA project with a 10-ish DOE
  contribution. The coordination was not fully
  shared by the two agencies. We hope that JDEM,
  as the name implies, will be more realistically a
  JOINT mission with shared oversight
  responsibility. In this case a Joint Review Team
  reporting to the Joint Oversight Group is not
  only appropriate but might be instrumental in the
  joint management responsibility becoming a
  reality. The Joint Oversight Group can then
  report to the individual agencies as appropriate.

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• 7.4 The Spacecraft, Launch, Mission Operations,
  Engineering, Administrative Support (budget), QA,
  and System Integration belong naturally under the
  Mission Project Manager. Eventually more boxes
  may appear, or they might be arranged
  differently. We believe that this is a detail at
  this time and in cost-capped competed missions
  different organizational solutions may be used to
  control cost.
• 7.5 The NASA/DOE White Paper of September 25,
  2003 initiating the JDEM mission has suggested
  that the Dark Energy Investigation that is the
  focus of this mission be a PI-led investigation.
  The SDT believes that this is appropriate given
  the focused scientific goals of this mission. We
  recommend that the Dark Energy Investigation PI
  have line responsibility over the Science
  Collaboration, the Science Instrument Payload,
  the Telescope, and the Science Operations.

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• The development of the science instrument for an
  astronomical space mission is usually the
  responsibility of the PI-team, in order to foster
  optimization of the instrument for the proposed
  scientific investigation. In the case of JDEM,
  particularly if as expected there is only one
  instrument, the OTA can be treated as an
  extension of the instrument. This is extremely
  important for JDEM, because very detailed
  properties of the telescope such as
  point-spread-function, scattered light and
  thermal stability will interplay with the
  properties of the science instrument. Often
  trades will have to be made during the design
  phase, and unfortunately, sometimes even in the
  fabrication and integration phases. NASA
  missions have taken several approaches to the
  procurement of the OTA and integration of the
  science instrument. For large facility-class
  missions, the mission integrator or a large NASA
  laboratory has taken responsibility for designing
  and procuring the OTA and provided the facilities
  for integrating the scientific instrument and
  OTA. Often, the science team associated with the
  mission provided scientific and technical
  oversight during the design and fabrication
  process. Chandra is an example of a successful
  collaboration, in which both government
  scientists and scientists from the science team
  worked with industry to achieve major advances in
  x-ray telescope fabrication. In the case of the
  Hubble Space Telescope, the telescope scientists
  from the science team had inadequate access, and
  the process failed. Another approach would be to
  have the PI take direct line responsibility for
  the design and procurement of the telescope.
  This is usually the approach for PI-led missions,
  where there is a single instrument. In this
  approach, NASA Centers could provide both
  extensive technical advice, oversight and, if
  needed, integration facilities. Note, that in
  this approach, it is likely that the PI-team
  would have to discuss the OTA design and
  organization of the fabrication as part of the
  proposal process. Whether one of these management
  approaches are used for the OTA or some
  combination of the two-, in order to achieve a
  successful mission, DOE and NASA must ensure that
  the PI-team plays the lead role in specifying the
  telescope and has the authority to obtain a
  thorough understanding of the actual properties
  of the telescope as the OTA is fabricated and
  tested.

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• 7.6 Mission Control and Science Support Center
  and the Dark Energy Investigation Science
  Operations Center
  
• The Mission Control and Science Support Center
  belong under the line authority of the Project
  Manager. There also needs to be a Science
  Operations Center under the Dark energy
  Investigation PI. Both of these Centers are
  necessary, and it is clear that they have to
  interact intimately and constructively for the
  mission to be successful. The issue is to
  delineate the responsibilities of each,
  minimizing duplication of effort and minimizing
  cracks into which important functions may fall.
  One possible model for these Centers is shown in
  Figure 2.

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• In this model Mission Operations performs the
  usual functions of command and control of the
  space vehicle and the instrument, and telemetry
  and control of receiving data from the
  instrument. The unscrambled data is then passed
  on to the Dark Energy Investigation (DEI) Science
  Operations Center. In this Center the Image
  Processing Pipeline is run, as well as the
  Supernova detection and trigger software. This
  Center then schedules the spectroscopic follow-up
  observations and passes these requests back to
  Mission Control. The Supernova Data Base and the
  local depository of the Proprietary Data are also
  the responsibility of the DEI Science Operations
  Center. Data for public release is passed on to
  the NASA Science Support Center where the Public
  Data Archive is kept. It should also be the
  responsibility of the Science Support Center to
  provide User Support should there be a Guest
  Observing phase of the Mission. During the Dark
  Energy Investigation phase the DEI Science
  Operations Center will be the interface to the
  DEI Science Collaboration, while during the Guest
  Observing phase the NASA Science Support Center
  will be the interface to the Guest Observer
  Community.

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Alternate Section 7.6

• 7.6 Mission Operations Center and the Dark Energy
  Investigation
  
• The Mission Operations Center, which sends
  commands to the spacecraft and receives the raw
  data, belongs under the line authority of the
  Project Manager. The Dark Energy Investigation PI
  Team will be responsible for scientific planning,
  calibration and analysis of the data. It is clear
  that the Mission Operations Center and the PI
  Team have to interact intimately and
  constructively for the mission to be successful.
  The issue is to delineate the responsibilities of
  each, minimizing duplication of effort and
  minimizing cracks into which important functions
  may fall.

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• In the model we propose, the PI team would create
  the top level observing commands, including RA
  dec pointings, exposure times, observing cadence,
  instrument configurations, etc. The Mission
  Operations Center would translate these
  observational parameters into a detailed and
  executable schedule, send commands to the space
  vehicle and the instrument, and receive the
  returned data from the observatory. The Mission
  Operations Center would perform zero-level data
  processing (descrambling and file construction)
  and pass the data on to the PI Team. The PI Team
  would then calibrate the data and produce
  higher-level data products (images, catalogs,
  etc.) If needed by the science, the PI Team would
  create observing commands for follow-up
  observations. Either immediately, or at the end
  of a proprietary period, the higher-level data
  products for public release would be returned to
  a public archive for release to the community.
• Both NASA and the astronomical community consider
  a Guest Investigator (GI) program to be positive
  outcome of the JDEM mission, provided it does not
  drive the costs of the mission too much. However,
  in order for the dark energy investigation to be
  successful, and in order to avoid duplication of
  effort, a substantial amount of the
  infrastructure required to support the GIs must
  be under the control of the PI. In particular,
  the data calibration pipeline must be produced
  and controlled by the PI, and this pipeline must
  then also be available to the GIs. Therefore, we
  recommend that the AO solicit support for a GI
  program as part of the dark energy proposal. The
  manner in which a proposal provides support for a
  GI program without driving mission cost would be
  a selection criterion.

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• 7.7 A very important Management issues that does
  not appear explicitly on the Organization Chart
  (and maybe it should) is the flow of funding from
  two different agencies and the control of
  contingency funds.
• a. One possible scheme that might lead to the
  best overall management of the mission is for
  the agencies to agree on their share of the
  overall project cost and then put the funds in a
  common pot, to be used by the Mission Project
  Manager in a way to ensure an efficient and
  timely project completion. In a similar way
  each agency could put their agreed upon share of
  contingency funds into a common contingency pot,
  to be assigned by the Mission Project Manager in
  a way most advantageous to the overall project.
  However, given the somewhat different customs,
  cultures, and chains of responsibility of the
  two agencies, we are not optimistic that such a
  simple scheme will be accepted by the two
  agencies.

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• b. A more realistic arrangement might be for the
  two agencies to agree before construction start
  on which specific subsystems to be the funding
  responsibility of each agency. As a for
  instance, NASA could agree to be responsible for
  the funding of the Spacecraft, Launch, Mission
  Operations and Support Center, the Mission
  Project Managers Office and Engineering, etc.,
  support boxes, while DOE could agree to fund the
  Science Payload/Instruments, Telescope, Science
  Operations, and the Dark Energy Investigations
  coordinating office (with possible non U.S.
  commitments like France funding the
  spectrometer), or some other variation of this.
  In this case funds would flow from NASA to the
  Mission Project Managers office, and DOE funds
  would flow directly to the Dark Energy
  Investigation office. In a similar fashion each
  agency would set the standard for the level of
  contingency to include in the base budgets,
  supply the contingency for their subsystems, and
  presumably assume the responsibility for
  covering unavailable overruns beyond the
  contingency budgeted for their subsystems.
• If the former of the above, (a), is adopted, an
  organization chart like the one we have been
  discussing seems sufficient. If the latter, (b),
  is closer to the actual funding model, the
  organization chart might have to reflect this
  more complicated scheme.

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JDEM Example Mission Operations,
Science Operations, and Science Support Centers