Analysis Of The Mars Curiosity Project

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Team News The article that I came across discusses the success of the team from NASA that led the Mars Curiosity project. The project had been in development for nearly 10 years and was completed within 1 minute of the estimated finish time (King, 2012). The article outlines a few of the initial issues that the team had to overcome including the average success rate of a Mars mission and the average success of software projects. The team is an example of a virtual and cross-functional team. There were members of the team that were geographically separated for part or all of the process (Yukl, 2006). The team was also made up of representatives from different units involved in the project, making it cross-functional (Yukl, 2006). The team was able to build on existing technology to create virtual prototypes of the rover, saving valuable time. The time saved allowed the team to be ready for deployment in November 2011, when planetary alignments were ideal for the mission (King, 2012) Traits that this team exhibited include; adaptability, ambition, dependability and stress tolerance (Yukl, 2006). These translated into an excellent set of technical, conceptual, and interpersonal skills (Yukl, 2006). The most important skill in this team effort was the interpersonal abilities of the members. There were so many different groups involved and the need to have open and respectful communication was imperative to the success of the project. I think that the best skill to work on in