Healthcare.gov was a "moonshot", but the Moon mission was not

Various folks have referred to the recent project to build and launch the healthcare.gov web site as a "moonshot". They are using the term to describe a project that:

• is ambitious in scope
• has a large number of participants
• occurs in a short and fixed time frame
• consists of a single attempt that will either succeed or fail

We in IT seem to thrive on "moonshot" type projects.

But I will observe that the NASA Moon project (the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions) was not a "moonshot". NASA ran the project more like an agile project than the typical waterfall project.

Let's compare.

The NASA Moon project was ambitious. One could even call it audacious.

The NASA Moon project involved a (relatively) large number of participants, including rocket scientists, metallurgists, electrical engineers, chemists, psychologists, biologists, and radio specialists. (And many more.)

The NASA Moon project had a fixed schedule of "by the end of the decade" assigned by President Kennedy in 1961.

The NASA Moon project consisted of a number of phases, each with specific goals and each with subprojects. The Mercury flights established the technology and skills to orbit the Earth. The Gemini missions built on Mercury to dock two vehicles in space. The Apollo missions used that experience to reach the Moon.

It's this last aspect that is very different from the healthcare.gov web site project (and also very different from many IT projects). The NASA Moon program was a series of projects, each feeding into the next. NASA started with a high-level goal and worked its way to that goal. They did not start with a "master project plan" that defined every task and intermediate deliverable. They learned as they went and made plans -- sensible plans, based on their newly-won experience -- for later flights.

The healthcare.gov web site is an ambitious project. It's launch has been difficult, and shows many defects. Could it have been built in an agile manner? Would an agile approach given us a better result?

The web site must perform several major tasks: authenticate users, verify income against government databases, and display valid plans offered by insurance companies. An agile approach would have built the web site in phases. Perhaps the first phase could be allowing people to register and create their profile, the second verifying income, and the third matching users with insurance plans. But such a "phased" release might have been received poorly ("what good is a web site that lets you register but do nothing else?") and perhaps not completed in time.

I don't know that agile methods would have made for better results at healthcare.gov.

But I do know that the Moon project was not a "moonshot".