HBR Case Study: A Rush to Failure?

There is absolutely no reason why the contractors shouldn’t be able to give us rapid product development and flawless products—speed and quality both,” David MacDonagle said as he tried to light a cigarette. The warm wind, portending rain, kept blowing out his matches. Finally he gave up and slipped the cigarette back in his pocket.

MacDonagle, the head of the Canadian Aeronautics Administration, was nervous. Everyone at CAA headquarters was nervous. Very shortly, the project that many of them had devoted the past four years to would have its first real-world test, 350 kilometers above the earth. Feeling cooped up in the executive offices and oppressed by the presence of the media, MacDonagle had gone outside to breathe some air—actually, some tobacco smoke—and had invited the sharp young program manager Samantha Van Sant to join him.

Van Sant, a former Canadian army major, had a lot of skin in the project too. Since 2006 she’d been managing the two contractors the CAA had commissioned to build the $1.2 billion set of giant robotic arms known as Retractable Extended-Arms Compatible Holder, or REACH, for the International Space Station.

“So how do you deal with nerves?” MacDonagle asked.

“I usually go out for a run,” Van Sant said, looking down the road that led from CAA headquarters through the cornfields, on which she’d logged many miles.

They turned to look back at the agency’s buildings, which despite their grandeur looked small in the empty Quebec landscape. The sight reminded Van Sant of one of MacDonagle’s catchphrases: “We are a small spacefaring nation....”

Canada was indeed a small player in space compared with the U.S., Russia, Europe, and Japan. Always at risk of being marginalized, the CAA had done everything possible to get the REACH contractors, Hollenbeck Aircraft and Eskina Software Systems, to complete the first phase of the project in time to get it to the space station this year, when the orbiting lab would officially be complete. And, amazingly, they had made the deadline—and come in on budget. REACH was now attached to the station, though there was still much more to come, including an even more sophisticated set of “hands” that would fit on the ends of the robotic arms for extremely delicate work. The additions were to continue for two more years.

The contractors had been great about speed; the problem was quality. Glitches with the software, motors, and circuits had kept turning up. The fact was, not a single test in four years had gone flawlessly. “Yeah, yeah, we can fix that,” the contractors’ reps always said, dismissing the CAA’s concerns. “Hey, this is life in the fast lane,” a rep told Van Sant after one of REACH’s arms had failed to retract on command. “Remember, we told you that the compressed schedule would increase the risk.”