European Space Agency (ESA)

The development of a more strategic and streamlined innovative program management system.

The Client

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe's gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the people of Europe. ESA has some 4,000 highly skilled people around Europe directly involved in achieving this mission.

The Challenge

Public Sector program goals are often some of the most daunting and nowhere is this more apparent than in the ESA. The International Space Station Exploitation Program is one of ESA's greatest challenges; it is an inspirational endeavor of enormous complexity. It is the responsibility of the Operations Department of the Manned Spaceflight and Microgravity Directorate (MSM-E).

As an additional dimension of this formidable task, a European Council directive was to industrialize the Program initiating proposed corporate partnerships in areas previously undertaken solely by ESA. This was envisioned in the form of a single Industrial Operator that would manage and run the Program at an operational level, directed by an MSM-E management structure.

Other key challenges included:

The set-up of an Industrial Operator was difficult to achieve due to the pioneering aspect of the Program and the associated substantial inherent risks, of which the industrial partners had no experience. This resulted in a situation in which MSM-E were required to serve two masters, to both direct and manage the Program. The outcome of this was a program environment of increasing complexity with an overburdened management system.

The Pcubed Solution

The aim of MSM-E is to implement Europe's participation in the development of space infrastructure, such as the International Space Station, which makes it possible to perform experiments in an environment where weightlessness is the major characteristic, a very different environment and challenges from that we have on Earth. The research and technological developments achieved from the Program will benefit people on Earth and prepare Europe for the new challenges of human space exploration.

To ensure its success and continued global participation MSM-E engaged Pcubed to provide strategic solutions that addressed the issues that were problematic to both its engineering and management systems. These included:

• A collaborative process between Pcubed and MSM-E to define the optimal program support system, comprising processes and tools compliant with evolving requirements
• The establishment and implementation of a supplementary management effort required to run them
• The development of a Program Support System focused on re-engineering the existing system to deliver a tailored solution designed to maximize the effectiveness of scarce ESA resources
• The reduction of bottlenecks, and the development of tailored processes, that were both strategically goal- and results-oriented

Key elements of the solution included:

• The successful partnership between MSM-E and Pcubed to re-think and re-engineer a comprehensive program management system
• The creation of an Industrial Operator Partnership to collaborate with and solve any engineering or technological challenges
• The restructuring of a complex program environment to create shared responsibilities taking the pressure off an overburdened management system
• To connect ESA's lofty vision for the future with the Agency's business values of today