(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-09)
Dubos, Gregory F.; Saleh, Joseph H.; Braun, Robert D.
Schedule slippage plagues the space industry, and is antinomic with the recent emphasis on space
responsiveness. The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly noted the difficulties
encountered by the Department of Defense in keeping its acquisition of space systems on schedule,
and identified the low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the system/payload under development
as a principal culprit driving schedule risk and slippage.
In this paper, we analyze based on data from past space programs the relationship between
technology uncertainty and schedule risk in the acquisition of space systems, and propose an
analytical framework to identify appropriate schedule margins for mitigating the risk of schedule
slippage. We also introduce the TRL-schedule-risk curves to help program managers make riskinformed
decisions regarding the appropriate schedule margins for a given program, or the
appropriate TRL to consider should the program’s schedule be exogenously and rigidly constrained.
We recommend based on our findings, that the industry adopts and develops schedule risk curves
(instead of single schedule point estimates), 2) that these schedule risk curves be made available to
policy- and decision-makers in acquisition programs; and 3) that adequate schedule margins be
defined according to an agreed upon and acceptable schedule risk level.