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bjbj{P{P ----------------- Audience Question: As you both seemed to indicate that you had
the previous experience to work on a really good team. I d be curious, in your experience,
what contributes to some project teams failing? Dennis McCarthy: Well, I can t tell you where
I was. I was on a I got involved in a program that a third of this group had to go. They
were the wrong people it was the wrong mix of people and as I pointed out to Ed, I was
the project manager somewhere on a program and it was all dysfunctional. It was a completely
dysfunctional group and one by one, people had to leave until we brought in the people
that were functional and could work together. I think you can have a program, as I mentioned
before, you bring people in, you put them on a program and you realize they re not playing
well together. Then somebody has to go. One by one. And I didn t mind because my job was
to find the right people to do each job. Ed Hoffman: John, any thoughts on why do projects
fail? John Mather: I don t have any independent thoughts on the subject because I don t have
many projects to draw from, but I would say that Charlie Pellerin s book on how NASA builds
teams is a good text book on how can what can work well doesn t work well and what will
work well and what you might do about it. He was at headquarters when we launched the
COBE, and he wanted to make sure that we did it well. There were times I think when he
was very urgent to us and would have wanted us to do it differently, but he also wanted
to make sure that we did it right. So that s, I don t know. I can t really explain, but
there is a certain magic of doing it well and you can tell when it s not happening.
Dennis McCarthy: I think the key is that you ve got to be able to tell when it s not happening
and you ve got to act to change it. Just don t let it go on like that. Certain people,
and it ll become obvious, who s dysfunctional, who doesn t match, it s the wrong mix of people.
When you find that out, you need to act and change it. --------------------------- -----------------
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