Destination Moon

I recently watched the classic movie "Destination Moon". In this movie, the government convinces a set of corporations to design, engineer, and build a rocket that can fly to the moon. It's an interesting movie, albeit a period piece with its male-dominated cast, suits and ties, and special effects. It is technically accurate (for 1950) and tells an enchanting tale.

What is most interesting (and possibly scary) is the approach to project management. The design team, with experience in airplanes and some with stratospheric rockets, builds a single moon rocket in a single project. That's a pretty big leap.

The actual moon missions, run by NASA in the 1960s, took smaller steps. NASA ran three different programs (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo) each with specific goals. Each program consisted of a number of missions, and each mission had a lot of work, including tests.

Yet for the movies, the better tale is of some bright, industrial engineers who build a rocket and fly it to the moon. The movie heightens the sense of suspense by avoiding the tests. Its much more exciting to launch an *untested* rocket and fly it to the moon!

For big projects, NASA has the better approach: small steps, test as you go, and learn as you go. That goes for software projects too.

Anyone involved in software development for any reasonable length of time has been involved in (or near to) a "big-bang" project. These projects are large, complex, and accompanied by enthusiasm and aggressive schedules. And often, they are run like the project in "Destination Moon": build the system all at once. The result is usually disappointing, since large complex systems are, well, large and complex. And we cannot think of everything. Something (often many things) are left out, and the designed system is slow, incomplete, and sometimes incorrect.

Agile enthusiasts call this the "Big Design Up Front" method, and consider it evil. They prefer to build small portions, test the portions, and learn from them. They would be comfortable on the NASA project: fly the Mercury missions first and learn about orbiting the earth and operating outside the ship, then build the Gemini missions and learn about docking, and finally build the Apollo missions and go to the moon. On each mission, the folks at NASA learned more about the problem and found solutions to the problems. The Apollo missions had problems, but with the knowledge from earlier missions, NASA was able to succeed.

The "Destination Moon" style of project management is nice for movies, but for real-life projects, NASA has the better approach.