I've been involved in spacecraft and space systems design and development for my entire career, including teaching the senior-level capstone spacecraft design course, for ten years at MIT and now at the University of Maryland for more than three decades. These are some bits of wisdom that I have gleaned during that time, some by picking up on the experience of others, but mostly by screwing up myself. I originally wrote these up and handed them out to my senior design class, as a strong hint on how best to survive my design experience… —
Excellent collection of laws/wisdom. Several of these are my experience with large software implementation projects
A few other things that I found:
1. If you find the bugs/issues sooner in the implementation, the cost of remediation is low and it exponentially increases the later you find the big/issues.
2. No project meets the cost, timeline and business objectives set at the beginning of the project.
3.starting with the minimal viable product and then learning from the implementation of it and enchancing it is the best way to implement a successful large project.
and all the above wonderfully add to the below book:
Excellent collection of laws/wisdom. Several of these are my experience with large software implementation projects
A few other things that I found:
1. If you find the bugs/issues sooner in the implementation, the cost of remediation is low and it exponentially increases the later you find the big/issues.
2. No project meets the cost, timeline and business objectives set at the beginning of the project.
3.starting with the minimal viable product and then learning from the implementation of it and enchancing it is the best way to implement a successful large project.
and all the above wonderfully add to the below book:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-big-things-get-done-review-ray-bamford
Fantastic collection of wisdom.
37. (Henshaw's Law) One key to success in a mission is establishing clear lines of blame.
-very hard to do, but giving people "ownership" over particular aspects has been really helpful in my businesses
33. (Patton's Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.
-sometimes. The real trick is knowing when this is true, and when it's not. You'll be wrong about this a lot of the time.
20. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately.
-I wish I had known this 20 years ago!
46. If the choice is 2 or 13, pick 2.
Lovely post. I’m in for more!