The Smart Mission: NASA’s Lessons for Managing Knowledge, People, and Projects by Edward J. Hoffman, Matthew Kohut, and Laurence Prusak

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) earned a reputation for excellence in science and engineering through projects such as Apollo, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Space Shuttle. Since Congress formed NASA in 1958, the civilian space agency’s vast portfolio of projects has led to the production of knowledge across many scientific and technical disciplines. What NASA is equally adept at yet less celebrated for is the management of its knowledge, people, and projects. One might assume that NASA’s project management schemes contributed to success in spaceflight by focusing on processes, superior technology, and institutional control. In The Smart Mission, however, authors Edward J. Hoffman, Matthew Kohut, and Laurence Prusak make the case that NASA’s successful project management was in fact driven primarily by human capabilities centered on skills, knowledge, and the learning process rather than by technocratic hubris.

Authors Hoffman, Kohut, and Prusak all served in different project management capacities at NASA. Hoffman and Prusak have since become lecturers in Columbia University’s Information and Knowledge Strategy program. The authors weave in vignettes from their experiences at NASA related to each of the chapters, focusing mostly on Hoffman’s time as NASA’s first chief knowledge officer (CKO). These stories set up their case studies, focusing on six aspects of what they call a “smart mission.” For them, a smart mission is one that “recognizes that few things go as planned, and that both learning and unlearning are essential” (xvi). It is also one that values people by establishing knowledgeable, inclusive teams that are conscious of their organizational culture and who are working toward projects that have shared meaning and purpose (xvi). The authors identify six aspects as constitutive of a smart mission: organizational culture, teaming, knowledge, learning, stories, and global collaboration. Each of these elements is detailed across the book’s seven chapters.

The smart mission concept challenges the conventional “iron triangle” project management model, which seeks to balance budget, scope, and schedule. Instead, it focuses on people over process. The authors make the case that a people-centered approach—predicated on understanding organizational culture, acquiring the knowledge necessary for the project, and teaming it appropriately—is a more effective approach toward successful project completion. As a project progresses, it is then necessary that teams continuously learn, share their stories to promote awareness and success, and collaborate globally to optimize mutual benefits with external partners.

At times, The Smart Mission reads somewhat biographically, given the detail of the vignettes, which focus on Hoffman’s efforts at NASA and specifically as NASA CKO. The authors take the reader into the offices of NASA’s leadership, a Marine Corps hangar, the Kennedy Space Center, and a few other locations to illustrate each of their six principles and how they tie into the smart mission. For example, the authors point out how organizational culture can vary significantly across institutions. They describe the experience of General Jack Dailey, who served in leadership with the Marine Corps and later NASA. Dailey once arrived at a Marine Corps hangar and remarked on its drab color, only to find it painted over in bright purple later in the day (65). In the Marine Corps, a remark from a leader was assumed to be an order, whereas at NASA, it simply began a discussion.

These biographical experiences and vignettes serve their chapters well to set up the principles of the smart mission; however, they only really share perspectives on project management from the standpoint of those in leadership, particularly agency executives. The Smart Mission takes us into executive decision-making scenarios and describes how project management processes would be improved by smart mission principles. However, to strengthen the authors’ case, the book would benefit from including more perspectives from middle management, individual contributors, and contractors. After all, NASA is a large organization with a budget of over $22 billion (in FY2020) and research centers, flight facilities, and a headquarters spread across eleven states and the District of Columbia. NASA has also cultivated a sprawling ecosystem of contractors and public servants on detail. Nonetheless, The Smart Mission provides an exceptionally well-situated vantage point into how a technical agency makes decisions about large-scale technical projects and strives to enhance its project management models.

In addition to the personal perspectives of the authors, The Smart Mission includes interviews, newspaper articles, and government documents as well as secondary sources in management studies and business history. These sources lend perspective to case studies such as the Challenger accident and the International Space Station. They also situate the argument about people-centered project management within the larger academic literature on project management. The Smart Mission also includes several flow charts and graphs that help to illustrate the conceptual management processes they describe.

Those in public service; students of business, public policy, and engineering; and executives of technical organizations would be well served by The Smart Mission. It presents cases of leadership facing tragedy (after the Challenger accident) as well as success (with the International Space Station) and how those leaders continuously sought to learn and improve their project management, sometimes while under duress. Overall, The Smart Mission makes a contribution to management studies, and it serves as an important reminder to organizations of all kinds that budgets, scope, and schedule do not complete projects on their own—people do.