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AMBA 640 Orion Shield Project

Prof Peggy Lee

Patrick Simon

1/17/2009

Orion Shield Project

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary.............................................................................................................3
 Introduction..........................................................................................................................4
 Communication....................................................................................................................4
 Technical Issues...................................................................................................................6
 Ethical Issues .......................................................................................................................7
 Legal Issues .........................................................................................................................8
 Contractual Issues ................................................................................................................8
 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................9
 References..........................................................................................................................11


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Executive
Summary

 Gary Allison was an experienced technical engineer who was given an opportunity to run

a project for his company SEC. Questioning his manager’s unethical approach to

falsifying data but accepting the position anyway, Gary experiences overwhelming

pressure from his contracting partner SIT. Throughout the project, Gary has trouble

balancing his administrative and technical responsibilities and mishandles managing his

team. With Henry Larsen continually undermining the role of his project manager, he

demands information from technical lead Paula Arnold and goes behind Gary’s back to

work on his own initiatives with the projects budget. Gary is misled throughout the

project, but does not have the experience to know how to correct the issues or address the

problems. With a lack of communication and support, Gary tries to take on most tasks

himself and falls short of the duties he is needed for. While opportunities to advance a

career are special and infrequent, it is important to be able to balance and control a

project with realistic goals and budgets. Without a solid grasp of the project charter,

work plan, and project plan, it is near impossible to know where you are going or how

you are getting there.

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Introduction


There are several key components to successfully completing a project. The most

important aspect of project management is the ability to communicate and communicate

often. In the case “The Orion Shield Project”, the inability to communicate with all

shareholders led to an unsuccessful and poorly managed project. Project Manager Gary

Allison accepted his position to maintain a project without addressing issues from the

beginning. By succumbing to his manager Henry Larsen’s requests of falsifying data, and

not controlling his team Gary contributed to the numerous technical, ethical, legal and

contractual issues. Gary not only stressed his relationships with the production team,

management, SIT, and his engineering team, he also worked long hours, and almost lost

his job due to his ignorance of project management. It is glaringly apparent that Gary

ignored the significant responsibilities and accountability of the position he accepted, and

should have rejected the request from Henry Larsen to head the Orion Shield Project.

Communication


One of the primary responsibilities of a project manager is to ensure that all the

stakeholders of a project are adequately informed of what state the project is in, and

immediately notify the appropriate parties of issues that need to be addressed. Issues that

need to be addressed with upper management arise when decisions need to be made

because it will impact the scope, time or cost of the project. Gary’s inexperience was

made apparent from the start of the project. Important milestones were noted, and target

dates were specified however a project management tool was never mentioned or

implied. Without the use of such an important tool such as Microsoft Project, Gary

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demonstrates the inability to plan out schedules, and portray them to the teams around

him.

Gary has been working on the project for several weeks, and has left the

administrative tasks to the other project office personnel. His dedication has been focused

on understanding the technical data and less on the administrative tasks and he has

continually fought to find a balance between them. With the extended focus on his

technical testing, Gary has not contacted his partner Sarah Wilson from SIT. There were

several occasions that Sarah had requested Gary to notify her promptly, and when he

turned his attention to satisfying meeting minutes, and reports to STI he lost touch with

his own department and the less than positive results their technical team was

experiencing. Gary was proactive in his expenditure reports to management, but without

sharing them with Elliot Grey before publicizing them he has created problems with

funding. Gary Allison’s lack of planning caused last minute requests to production

scheduling, confused STI with late changes to ingredients, and ultimately led to his

intentional intent to keep information of the products age life, from all of the parties.

Gary was not the only member of the project at fault for poor communication.

Henry Larsen gave misguided information to Gary by asking him to forge test results,

and to lie to STI when explaining that new material was tested with SEC’s money.

Henry Larsen was discreet and appeared to look for a scapegoat, someone who was

willing to report everything to him, but in turn never put his own position on the line.

Henry requested technical team leader Paula Arnold to update him every morning before

updating Gary. He also used two weeks of Paula’s time to test a new material in which

Gary new nothing about. When asked why he chose Gary, he defined the position of a

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technical lead and cared only about securing the project and being able to run it himself.

Gary failed to receive any paper trails or recordings and should have requested Henry to

cease his involvement with using his dedicated resources on new experiments. Henry also

represented the contract agreements incorrectly. It was believed at the start of the project,

the contract was a FPIF when in fact it was an FFP, which put more strain on Gary to

finish the project within the defined budget.

Sarah Wilson was entitled to have better communication with Gary and should

not have needed to request minutes, extra meetings, and an on-site employee to monitor

SEC’s work. Sarah does posses a strong responsibility to SIT, and while the information

needed from her company, she demonstrates a over controlling and very aggressive form

of communication. She says “We have a lot more at stake than you people do”, and

“don’t forget that you people have a contractual requirement” and finally “All you have

to do is give up taking the material vendors to lunch” (Orion Shield). These statements

separate the unity of team and cooperation and focus on demeaning the individual to try

and enforce positive action from a negative response. With her understanding of

motivation in project management she would have been better off trying to help Gary in

guiding him instead of demanding more time documenting his every step.

Technical
Issues
 Before the RFP for SIT was ever accepted, SEC knew that the conditions required

to win the proposal stated that the material needed to withstand conditions of 145

degrees. Gary Allison at the request of his boss Henry Larsen, stated the materials used

in their labs could withstand up to 150 degrees. Once the replacement JXB3 was mixed

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in, the requirements were met. Even though it was relatively new and not extensively

tested, SIT had no choice but to accept the new material and present it to NASA. The

problem later discovered with the new material, was it had a less than five years life

expectancy which was not shared with SIT or NASA

Ethical
Issues
 There is one major key ingredient to every ethical case in the Orion Shield

Project, and his name is Henry Larsen. Before SIT listed the project RFP, Henry put

Gary in an ethical dilemma by giving him instructions to falsify data on the proposal.

When Gary questioned the integrity of doing as requested, Henry responded “Look,

Gary, the truth doesn’t win proposals… I could’ve just as easily selected an ‘ethical’

project manager”. While Gary wants to excel and gain approval to advance in his career,

he now has to entertain the idea of doing as his superior has requested, or turn down the

position and risk losing the opportunity of the promotion. Henry continues to create

issues when he announces the new ingredient JXB3, and explains that Gary must inform

SIT that a new material will be used and it was discovered under SEC’s R&D

department.

Gary complies with another unethical request because the truth could cost his

company the continuation of the project and his job. Another ethical issue unfolds at the

end of the project when Gary is presented with new testing that portrays the new material

of having a much less than expected age life. Gary believes it’s in the best interest to not

publicize these findings with SIT or his own company until after the production contract

was signed. While Gary may have been able to justify that the accelerated tests could not

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be accepted as a true indication of how the product would perform, he chose to mislead

his partners and managers by not sharing the findings with them.

Legal
Issues
 Gary Allison is the primary person to face legal actions in the Orion Shield

Project. While he was following company demands, he was the person responsible for

filling out a falsified proposal and submitting that to SIT. As the project manager, it was

Gary’s responsibility to justify and explain costs associated to the project. He was

dishonest with Sarah Wilson when asked about associated costs to JXB3. Gary’s conduct

could be charged on the counts of perjury, where the individual intentionally represents

material as true, when they believe the information is false (Title 18).

Contractual
Issues
 The contract issued to Gary Allison and SEC was believed to be a Fixed Price

Incentive Fee which would have given the project a base fee which would be mostly

reasonable for SIT. If the project delivered was beyond the initial requirements, SEC

could have received an performance increase for profit. It was stated by Paula Arnold

and Sarah Wilson that the contract was actually a firm fixed price (FFP) contract that

does not award any extra incentives, and puts the liability of extra costs on the contractor

in this case SEC. Gary should have reviewed the contract and made aware of the terms to

which the project was binded. The contract was beneficial from SIT’s perspective since

their investment would not require additional funding downstream. The contract

however, was not in the best interest of SEC, because it did not have a working model,

and were now under time constraints to deliver a model without additional funding. For

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Gary a Cost Plus a Fixed Fee (CPFF) would make more sense to secure the additional

incurred costs he would absorb from not having a working model. This would not allow

the profit to increase, but would assure the company that the profit would not decrease or

incur unknown costs downstream.

Conclusion
 The Orion Shield Project provides valuable lessons to every prospective project

manager. The project started with deception and ended with deception and failure. Henry

Larsen used his authority to lure his top engineer Gary Allison to submit falsified data, so

that he could acquire a lucrative deal with SIT. Henry is the type of manager who knows

how to cover his tracks by not leaving paper trails, and also deceive people along the way

to better posture himself to management. Henry seems to know how to acquire winning

bids of proposals by promising contractors of deliverables, and putting someone else’s

name. As long as he continually wins bids for the organization, and never allowing the

fallback of illegal professional conduct to fall upon himself, he will get the recognition

from his peers. It is also worthy to note, another project was underway with another

inexperienced project manager leading the team. This could be a pattern Henry uses to

place people in positions of failure, but are blinded by the opportunity to climb the

corporate ladder.

Gary Allison is the main reason for this projects demise. He underestimated the

responsibilities of a project manager and didn’t pay attention to the small details. When

the proposition of him writing the proposal was requested, Gary had the opportunity to

decline and look for opportunities elsewhere. Instead, Gary accepted his manager’s

request and set the standard of following unethical requests from Henry. He did not show

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the necessary leadership during production meetings when requesting help on weekends,

and more importantly never controlled Henry Larsen from interfering in the project.

Gary never demonstrated proficient project management skills because he lacked

documentation from all parties especially from Henry Larsen, and never organized his

priorities in a professional format.

Gary should have refused the new job. He questioned the integrity of his superior

from the start and did not have the skill set to know how effectively manage a team.

Overall his lack of written and oral communications, were his biggest obstacles he

couldn’t overcome. The lessons he learned were extremely valuable but at a very high

cost.

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References
 TITLE 18. CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE; PART I. CRIMES; CHAPTER

79. PERJURY Source:United States Code Service, 1621, PART I. CRIMES, TITLE 18. CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

UMUC MBA Program and the Office of Distance Education and Lifelong Learning,

Center for the Virtual University (2003). The Orion Shield Project. Retrieved on Jan 16, 2010 from http://tychousa3.umuc.edu/AMBA640/1002/9047/class.nsf/ Menu?OpenFrameSet&Login