Perhaps this link will work.

There's a classic book in computer science called "The Mythical Man-Month". One of the questions discussed in the book was how does a project get a year behind schedule. The answer was one day at a time. People lose days at work due to illness, jury duty, and a host of other things. People leave a project and new people have to be hired and brought up to speed. All of these seemingly little things tend to accumulate, ending up in a big delay.

One of the problems is milestones are too far apart. The author's comment was that "a mile is pretty far between stones." He was more of an "inch-pebble" man. The closer the goals, the easier it is to find out when things are falling behind.

So, how did the ISS end up with a $4 billion overrun? One dollar at a time. Only, Goldin was either unwilling or unable to do anything about it. The time-dishonored government tradition when faced with a big overrun is to go back for more money rather than address the problem. That's how a hole in the ground (Boston's Big Dig) that was supposed to cost $2.5 billion ends up costing upwards of $13 billion, and that probably won't be the final value. Seldom is there any consequences for busting a budget.

Until now. Rather than rewarding NASA for its bad management, the agency is having to live with the consequences, perhaps for the first time. Now, we need to do the same thing across government, including DoD (a chronically bad offender), highway construction, and everything else. If the current managers can't do the job, fire them and get someone who can.