Designing and managing large technologies

What is involved in designing, implementing, coordinating, and managing the deployment of a large new technology system in a real social, political, and organizational environment? Here I am thinking of projects like the development of the SAGE early warning system, the Affordable Care Act, or the introduction of nuclear power into the civilian power industry.

Tom Hughes described several such projects in Rescuing Prometheus: Four Monumental Projects That Changed the Modern World. Here is how he describes his focus in that book:

Telling the story of this ongoing creation since 1945 carries us into a human-built world far more complex than that populated earlier by heroic inventors such as Thomas Edison and by firms such as the Ford Motor Company. Post-World War II cultural history of technology and science introduces us to system builders and the military-industrial-university complex. Our focus will be on massive research and development projects rather than on the invention and development of individual machines, devices, and processes. In short, we shall be dealing with collective creative endeavors that have produced the communications, information, transportation, and defense systems that structure our world and shape the way we live our lives. (3)

The emphasis here is on size, complexity, and multi-dimensionality. The projects that Hughes describes include the SAGE air defense system, the Atlas ICBM, Boston's Central Artery/Tunnel project, and the development of ARPANET. Here is an encapsulated description of the SAGE process:

The history of the SAGE Project contains a number of features that became commonplace in the development of large-scale technologies. Transdisciplinary committees, summer study groups, mission-oriented laboratories, government agencies, private corporations, and systems-engineering organizations were involved in the creation of SAGE. More than providing an example of system building from heterogeneous technical and organizational components, the project showed the world how a digital computer could function as a real-time information-processing center for a complex command and control system. SAGE demonstrated that computers could be more than arithmetic calculators, that they could function as automated control centers for industrial as well as military processes. (16)

Mega-projects like these require coordinated efforts in multiple areas -- technical and engineering challenges, business and financial issues, regulatory issues, and numerous other areas where innovation, discovery, and implementation are required. In order to be successful, the organization needs to make realistic judgments about questions for which there can be no certainty -- the future development of technology, the needs and preferences of future businesses and consumers, and the pricing structure that will exist for the goods and services of the industry in the future. And because circumstances change over time, the process needs to be able to adapt to important new elements in the planning environment.

There are multiple dimensions of projects like these. There is the problem of establishing the fundamental specifications of the project -- capacity, quality, functionality. There is the problem of coordinating the efforts of a very large team of geographically dispersed scientists and engineers, whose work is deployed across various parts of the problem. There is the problem of fitting the cost and scope of the project into the budgetary envelope that exists for it. And there is the problem of adapting to changing circumstances during the period of development and implementation -- new technology choices, new economic circumstances, significant changes in demand or social need for the product, large shifts in the costs of inputs into the technology. Obstacles in any of these diverse areas can lead to impairment or failure of the project.

Most of the cases mentioned here involve engineering projects sponsored by the government or the military. And the complexities of these cases are instructive. But there are equally complex cases that are implemented in a private corporate environment -- for example, the development of next-generation space vehicles by SpaceX. And the same issues of planning, coordination, and oversight arise in the private sector as well.

The most obvious thing to note in projects like these -- and many other contemporary projects of similar scope -- is that they require large teams of people with widely different areas of expertise and an ability to collaborate across disciplines. So a key part of leadership and management is to solve the problem of securing coordination around an overall plan across the numerous groups; updating plans in face of changing circumstances; and ensuring that the work products of the several groups are compatible with each other. Moreover, there is the perennial challenge of creating arrangements and incentives in the work environment -- laboratory, design office, budget division, logistics planning -- that stimulate the participants to high-level creativity and achievement.

This topic is of interest for practical reasons -- as a society we need to be confident in the effectiveness and responsiveness of the planning and development that goes into large projects like these. But it is also of interest for a deeper reason: the challenge of attributing rational planning and action to a very large and distributed organization at all. When an individual scientist or engineer leads a laboratory focused on a particular set of research problems, it is possible for that individual (with assistance from the program and lab managers hired for the effort) to keep the important scientific and logistical details in mind. It is an individual effort. But the projects described here are sufficiently complex that there is no individual leader who has the whole plan in mind. Instead, the "organizational intentionality" is embodied in the working committees, communications processes, and assessment mechanisms that have been established.

It is interesting to consider how students, both undergraduate and graduate, can come to have a better appreciation of the organizational challenges raised by large projects like these. Almost by definition, study of these problem areas in a traditional university curriculum proceeds from the point of view of a specialized discipline -- accounting, electrical engineering, environmental policy. But the view provided from a discipline is insufficient to give the student a rich understanding of the complexity of the real-world problems associated with projects like these. It is tempting to think that advanced courses for engineering and management students could be devised making extensive use of detailed case studies as well as simulation tools that would allow students to gain a more adequate understanding of what is needed to organize and implement a large new system. And interestingly enough, this is a place where the skills of humanists and social scientists are perhaps even more essential than the expertise of technology and management specialists. Historians and sociologists have a great deal to add to a student's understanding of these complex, messy processes.

(Martin Filler's review in the News York Review of Books of three recent books on the massive project in lower Manhattan to rebuild the World Trade Center illustrates some of the political and organizational challenges that stand in the way of large, complex projects; link.)