Project
Manager's Corner: Scheduling TMT II
Building the project's schedule really is building your plan. There are generally many ways to carry out a complex project. Building the schedule is a selection of one way to accomplish the project's goals. And it is your way. Build it well, build it simply, and build it with resilience, and it will serve you well. Last month I described the basic starting points and requirements for a good project schedule. A schedule must be designed by experienced experts who will be responsible for delivering the results of their parts of the schedule. This is schedule ownership. A schedule must include every element of the work in the project organized around the project deliverables into a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Finally, a project schedule starts with a definition of external milestones to be heeded (when funding is available, when the project must be completed, etc.) and an architecture for the working plan and schedule. This architecture flows down to the designers from the Project Manager. Science
Nugget—Exosolar Planetesimals
The impressive progress in discovering exoplanets, now numbering over 200, has resulted quite remarkably in our beginning to view these as complex "systems" with many interacting components. The several stars that have multiple planets clearly fall into this category, with enough information in some cases (e.g., GJ876; Fischer et al. 2003) to indicate, for example, resonant interactions among them. But a planetary system consists of more than the star and its planetary entourage. Gas, dust, asteroids, and comets percolate around and among the planets, and they have a fascinating story to tell. The evolving configuration of planetesimals so intimate to the formation of the planets determines, in non-trivial ways that are apparently heavily stochastic (Gomes et al. 2007), key planetary properties such as water content (and therefore life) in the habitable zone and the occurrence of global catastrophic events like the Solar System's Late Heavy Bombardment. Determining the nature and distribution of planetesimals in a young system is therefore a key constraint guiding our assessment of the multiple possible outcomes of the planet formation process. Technology
Nugget—Mirror Coatings Q & A with David Goodman
Download David Goodman Interview Partner News—Our Name Has Changed We are now the TMT Observatory Corporation. Our name has changed. While that, in itself, is significant, what is more significant is that our prior identity was really a corporation of cooperation and best efforts, and now it is becoming a real and legal entity. We are getting ready for the future and all that lies ahead. ESO
NEWS—New
Adaptive Optics Technique Demonstrated On the evening of 25 March 2007, the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) achieved First Light at the Visitor Focus of Melipal, the third Unit Telescope of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). MAD allowed the scientists to obtain images corrected for the blurring effect of atmospheric turbulence over the full 2x2 arcminute field of view. This world premiere shows the promises of a crucial technology for Extremely Large Telescopes. Project News For more information on the TMT science workshop (July 23-25, 2007, Beckman Center, Irvine, CA) announced in the January Newscast, please consult the workshop website at: http://www.physics.uci.edu/TMT-Workshop Previous Issues View the TMT Newscast Archive. |
David
Goodman is our TMT Business Manager. David joined the project
in September 2004 after an industry career in which he managed
the business of large projects and complex international organizations.
He is a former CFO and has extensive knowledge and experience
in contracts, estimating, scheduling, accounting, finance, property
management and budgeting.He was recently interviewed by Jeff
Oram, the TMT Senior Cost Estimator.