Managing schedule and financial risk: lessons learned on X2000

Abstract

The X2000 Program is a technology development program that will provide next generation avionics for missions to deep space. The goal of the X2000 Program is to develop revolutionary flight and ground systems which can be replicated by missions at a low cost, affording timely new science and mission opportunities to investigators and institutions. With the implementation of shorter development phases for projects, the need for better metrics to track a project's status became necessary. This paper describes different methods for tracking such performance. Schedule performance is discussed using event-driven performance assessment metrics, receivables/deliverables, slack tables, etc. Financial performance is addressed by discussion of earned value (cost variance/schedule variance), cash flow, reserves management, risk reduction funds, etc. Although X2000 IFDP is not a flight project, it is delivering hardware to other projects and is being managed as if it were a flight project.