Lessons Learned and Earned Value Management System Assessment Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope GLAST Large Area Telescope: Lowell A. Klaisner Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Project Manager Klaisner@slac.stanford.edu 650-926-2726 Lessons Learned and Earned Value Management System Assessment

Background Pathfinder project First flight instrument integrated at SLAC Most of the staff at SLAC were unfamiliar with the effort required to meet space instrumentation requirements Challenging project Largest silicon detector, 800K channels Limited bandwidth to ground Event processing on board Space qualifying state of the art instrumentation Rigorous requirements of space instrumentation Low power Withstand launch loads Vacuum Challenging thermal environment Reliability

EVMS Assessment The EVMS system could not anticipate problems that arose from insufficient engineering in critical areas early in the project and showed up in environmental testing as the project moved into the flight hardware fabrication phase The EVMS system did not track earned value for work being done by foreign partners on independent budgets (eg the work in Italy supported by INFN and ASI) The GLAST mission office exercised rigorous control of the requirements while the Office of Science exercised rigorous control of the funding which limited ability to respond to cost growth and schedule stretch out

Tracker example of anomaly response Technical Issue Tracker (Past Year) Root Cause Incurred Delay (months) Bias circuit design error and coupon plating problems. Design Problem MCM and cable termination resistors. MCM-sidewall clearance issues. 1 Pitch-adapter flex circuit trace cracking. Process Problem Cable-closeout short circuit. Encapsulation of wire bonds on heavy trays. Bonding of Kapton bias circuits to tungsten. 3 Tracker-Grid interface fastener failure and alignment issues. Design and Process Problem 9 MCM encapsulation delamination. PWB short circuits. ASI funding problems. Funding Problem Conformal coating workmanship. Flex-circuit cable via problems. Flex-circuit cable workmanship problems.

Lessons Learned The Joint Oversight Group is too removed to resolve schedule and funding issues for the project When a DOE laboratory takes on a project in a new discipline such as GLAST, extra effort is required at the beginning to assure that the scope of the project is well understood. Also, the new infrastructure that is required needs to be identified and adequately planned Facilities Staffing – particularly special expertise required Management staffing, systems and procedures The DOE does not have the technical staff, QA support, management support, and funding flexibility that are available from the GLAST Mission Office In particular, lack of funding flexibility limited the DOE’s ability to assist in identifying the issues and provide adequate response The DOE TEC was defined before the project was adequately engineered GLAST predates PED funds

Path Forward SLAC now has the facilities in place to integrate a space instrument Key staff are in place to execute future space-based instrumentation projects In particular, a strong data acquisition system staff is in place with experience with space hardware and software The Kavli institute is attracting renown astro-physicists Executing key science with GLAST Planning and executing future astro-physics projects.