william.w.schoening@boeing (314) 234-9651

1. How Planning for Success Can Open the Door to Failure Bill Schoening william.w.schoening@boeing.com (314) 234-9651 Aug 31, 2005 – St. Louis, MO

2. Massive cost overruns Huge schedule delays Products that customers do not like Show-cause letters Cancellation Failure Comes in Many Forms Every failure is an embarrassment for Boeing – and for us as employees How does this happen?

3. What do we do that leads to failure? How can we recognize potential failures? What can we do to avoid failure? Today’s Topics

4. Excitement of the Win

5. Then We Plan for Success

6. Doubters Not Welcome Doom & Gloom • Risk Management: • Address what we can handle • Ignore the rest

7. Ignoring High Risk = Accepting High Risk

8. P. I. R. How We React without a Plan • Overwhelmed • Panic • Press on with what we know – even if it is wrong • Hope with untried approaches • Failure

9. Underlying causes Long lag between decision and effect Months, maybe even weeks, are too long for humans to perceive “Solved” Problems Reoccur • Solutions • Charge someone with stepping back and looking for recurring problems on a regular basis

10. Impossible Objectives • Underlying causes • Requirements viewed as untouchable • Solution is “just around the corner” • Rarely teach • Learning to suspect something is impossible • Learning to show something is impossible • Solutions • Teach how to demonstrate that something is impossible

11. length beam ≈ constant Ship Weight Max Turret Diameter Demonstrating Why Not beam length

12. Underlying causes Focus on written requirements rather than users Important user needs discovered late in development Unknown User Needs • Solutions • Validate early and often • Primary objective is discovery, not showing • Requires real users, not surrogates

13. Verification and Validation Verification – process for demonstrating that a product satisfies written specifications. Validation – process for discovering unmet needs ? ? So this doesn’t happen

14. Reality Is Funnier Than Fiction

16. Underlying causes Managing things rather than intellectual content Questions imply unknowns Questions that go unanswered too long represent significant risks Plans focus on deliverables and not on answering questions Frequent Surprises • Solutions • Keep a running list of significant unanswered questions with due dates • Making answering questions part of the plan

17. Insufficient Time & Resources • Underlying causes • Do not understand tasks • Staff before inputs are ready • Defer difficult tasks too often • Solutions • Understand the necessary steps leading to SRR and SFR • Match staffing to plan • Hold NAR on feasibility of plan execution before starting Defer Defer Done Done

18. Underlying causes Denial of risk Lack of mitigation plans Or even contingency plans Quick, easy fix looks good, but has unknown consequences “Quick Fixes” Fail • Solutions • Preplan courses of action • Pre-examine consequences of actions

19. Underlying causes Loss of self esteem when asking for help Non-advocate reviews come too late Failure to consider possibility of catastrophic failure Not Asking for Help • Solutions • Gate reviews address plans for when things go very wrong • Pay attention to symptoms of potential failure

20. Programs will fail if we are not prepared for really bad occurrences Risk Management is not enough Must teach and institutionalize How to look Not to be afraid to look Looking frequently Do we need a new process? “Discover Potential Catastrophes!” In Conclusion