Withheld said:

>I've heard a NASA project manager admit that his greatest
>fear in life was facing a "failure review board".

Who can blame em? These failure review boards are like witch hunts and usually pointless.

>I can attest from recent personal experience: Management by
>PowperPoint is alive and well at NASA.

I hate slick PowerPoint presentations. It's a disease. People spend more time on the presentation than doing the actual technical work. I have more respect for an honest technical presentation done on a chalk board than some slick computer generated 3-D color animation that looks like it came from Pixar. The root of the problem is the decision makers with the money tend to be nontechnical people who are easily conned by eye candy. Decision makers during NASA's glory days (1959-1979) tended to be technical guys of recognized excellence who rose up from the ranks.

Gary