EROM Chapter 4, Part 1: JWST Templates, Objectives Hierarchies, and Risk Scenarios

Book: Enterprise Risk and Opportunity Management: Concepts and Step-by-Step Examples for Pioneering Scientific and Technical Organizations
Author: Allan S. Benjamin
ISBN: 9781119288428

Chapter 3 explained the process. Chapter 4 is the workbook. Benjamin walks through comprehensive EROM analysis using templates, with a demonstration built around NASA’s next-generation space telescope as of late 2014. The example tracks James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) realities closely, but the point is the template structure, not a program audit.

What the templates produce

Benjamin splits outputs into two tiers.

High-level (for management synopses):

• Hierarchical objectives with organizational interfaces
• Substantiated risk and opportunity rankings per objective
• Risk and opportunity drivers with suggested mitigations and controls

Low-level (for analysts and reviewers):

• Interface rationale between objectives
• Individual scenario lists with significance reasoning
• Leading indicators with trigger rationale
• Bottom-up roll-ups with documented choices
• Sensitivity results and driver time-criticality charts
• Likelihood and impact assessments per scenario

The templates are how you make the Chapter 3 pipeline repeatable across executive, programmatic, and center levels, then integrate at enterprise scale.

The JWST demonstration setup

The case uses publicly available sources, mainly GAO-15-100 (December 2014) and contemporaneous reporting. Benjamin is explicit: the data illustrates template mechanics, not a management critique.

By end of 2014, JWST was an agency priority goal with an October 2018 launch target. GAO flagged serious concerns:

• Among the most complex integration and test efforts in NASA history
• Cryocooler subsystem especially challenging (distance, heat paths, subcontractor delays)
• Cryocooler schedule reserve dropped from 5 months to zero in 2014
• Other subsystem reserves also shrinking
• Roughly 40% of cost reserves already committed entering FY2015
• Congressional debate about canceling operating missions (SOFIA, Spitzer) to fund JWST

On the technical side: JWST needs an extraordinarily stable cold, low-vibration environment. The cryocooler subcontractor could bolt test units to spec but not yet braze them to spec (brazing is a design requirement). The cold head assembly had not been vacuum-tested in flight configuration. The telescope sits at L2, a million miles out, nominally unserviceable, though a grapple arm leaves the door cracked for future servicing.

Hubble history provides the contrast. Servicing missions fixed the mirror error, replaced jittering solar panels, swapped failed gyros, and upgraded instruments (including the Advanced Camera for Surveys used in dark energy work). JWST cannot count on that playbook.

Objectives hierarchies in the example

Benjamin builds objectives at three NASA levels: executive (E), programmatic (P), and center (C).

Executive (>10 years): two strategic objectives from the NASA Strategic Plan: (1) discover how the universe works and search for life on exoplanets, and (2) attract and advance a skilled workforce with the facilities and tools to execute missions.

Programmatic (1 to 10 years): four objectives including designing/building/deploying/operating the next-generation telescope, launching it, and continuing existing telescopes.

Center level: program/project support objectives (cryocooler technical support, integrated telescope support) and institutional objectives (5-year hiring plan, 5-year facilities plan, analyst cadre, state-of-the-art facilities).

Figure 4.4 integrates these into one hierarchy with primary interfaces. A center objective like “maintain a sufficient cadre of highly capable analysts” supports both the telescope program objective and the workforce strategic objective directly. That dual linkage is typical in TRIO orgs and easy to miss if you only look at program charts.

Individual risks, opportunities, and indicators

The demonstration postulates eight known risks and one opportunity, each with leading indicators:

Cross-cutting is everywhere. The same risk scenario can sit under multiple objectives. “Complexity of design” touches both strategic science objectives and program launch objectives. Leading indicators like cost reserve appear under several scenarios. EROM allows (and expects) duplicate listings as long as treatment stays consistent. Taxonomies from Chapter 3 help spot these overlaps during identification.

UU risk in the JWST context

Several indicators double as UU risk signals: design complexity, integration/test complexity, unresolved cryocooler technical issues (new technology application), and historical management/oversight concerns with distributed suppliers. Schedule and budget pressure plus management quality round out the UU factor set from section 3.4.5.

The demonstration will roll known risks, known opportunities, and UU concern levels separately, then combine them in driver and response templates (covered in later posts).

Why this chapter matters

Most ERM books stop at frameworks. Chapter 4 says: here are the spreadsheets (conceptually) and here is what you put in each cell, using a real program everyone has heard of. The cryocooler example in particular shows how a single subsystem’s depleted schedule reserve can stay yellow at the objective level when cost reserves, technical issue severity, and compensating plans are weighed together. That kind of judgment is exactly what templates with rationale columns are meant to preserve.

Next posts walk through filling the identification templates, evaluating indicators, rolling up to cumulative risk, and identifying drivers and responses.

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