The unique and transient endeavors that organizations undertake often needs the application of robust processes, knowledge, methods, experiences, and skills to achieve the organization's goals and objectives. For centuries, human beings have documented some of the most significant records of wielding first project management chops ranging from Egypt's building of the great pyramids to NASA's landing on the moon (Guay, 2018) . These human endeavors which have been ongoing for years predominantly require thousands of individuals who work together to achieve a commonly desired goal. However, the possibility of achieving the organizational set goals depends on complex project management.
One of the most significant achievements by humankind involved giving Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the opportunity of setting foot on the surface of the moon. The NASA project that comprised over 400, 000 employees and 2,000 universities and companies required people with substantial project management skills and knowledge to land these individuals on the moon (Guay, 2018) . When the then United States president (Kennedy) announced the plan of taking humankind to the moon and back in 1961, many individuals thought that the project was doomed to fail. Project NASA was amongst the complex projects ever recorded in American history. The project required an incredible amount of resources, focused teamwork, effective planning and innovation which necessitated to be combined for the project to achieve its goals and objectives (NASA, 2014) . However, project NASA was divided over how much of their plans they were to do in the little time available to them. After that, it was decided to conduct the project in a series of phases by accelerating each of the phases in addition to ensuring that everyone who worked on the project effectively collaborated and timely delivered their finished work (Kranz & Covington) .
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The manager of the NASA’s Apollo project, George E Muller, therefore, took it upon himself to dived project Apollo into five phases; Program control which had the task of describing what was needed in the project, managed the budget and requirements of the project and additionally specified how each piece of the project worked (Guay, 2018) . System Engineering predominantly worked on designing new items, while Testing made sure that these items worked. Reliability and Quality, on the other hand, made sure that the items were up-to-spec and Flight operations ensured that they worked during the flight to the moon (NASA, 2014) . These five phases later named the GEM boxes was mainly designed to test the project’s outcomes. Convincing people of the project's success was the hardest part, but in the end, the management system of the Apollo project turned out to be a huge success (Guay, 2018) . As Roger D. Launius chief historian of the NASA states, “of all the difficulties facing NASA in its bid to send humans to the Moon in the Apollo program, management was perhaps the greatest challenge.”(as cited in Guay, 2018).
To complete the project of landing on the moon, the project managers and teams followed the Traditional Project Management system (TPM). This system involved breaking the project into different workflows in which each of the project’s duties were handled in a sequence, one after another in a linear order (Guay, 2018) . The TPM primarily stresses on-time delivery of projects plans within a stringent budget and involves the initiation of the project, planning, design, execution and testing, and lastly monitoring and completion.
The Apollo’s project first phase involving program control or project initiation according to TMP started with President Kennedy’s announcement of the plan to land humans on the surface of the moon. He challenged the United States to land astronauts on the moon by the end of the 1960's decade. After that, the NASA team met Kennedy's challenge with the Apollo project which resulted in some of the United States astronauts making eleven spaceflights and later landing on the Moon's surface in 1969 (NASA, 2014) . Every item that was needed for successful completion of the Apollo project including the total budget and requirements was clearly labeled and described in detail. The Apollo project which ran from 1961 to 1972 achieved its first human-crewed flight in 1968 although it had previously experienced a significant setback inn1967 when a fire that occurred in the spacecraft's cabin killed an entire crew during prelaunch testing (NASA, 2014) . Managers and the teams involved in project Apollo gathered necessary data, effectively managed and analyzed various processes that were used to predict, understand and to influence the outcome of the Apollo program constructively. Various teams working on the project predominantly relied on high-quality, reliable data and an affixed schedule that allowed them to review the project's progress and to achieve a realistic and pragmatic baseline for the completion of the project (Aramyan, 2016) .
Project control enabled the NASA team to attain a work breakdown structure which allowed them to define the entire project's scope and to accurately estimate the project's requirements in addition to attaining accurate project reporting (Aramyan, 2016) . Moreover, they were able to efficiently and effectively integrate Apollo's requirements with operations to achieve interfaced scheduling from each of the projects integrated sources. They were thus able to save costs and additionally reduce potential risks associated with the project (Aramyan, 2016) . Furthermore, the team in c harge of the Apollo project was able to adequately analyze the risks of the project, a factor which enables them to place the project's contingencies in place to secure more significant progress and to consequently balance between upward and downward reporting of the project's tasks.
The second phase of managing the Apollo project involved system engineering in which the structural, mechanical and electrical software of the Apollo in addition to systems safety and power engineers were incorporated and balanced to achieve a whole coherent program (Spring, 2014) . The NASA team in the Apollo project primarily focused on tradeoffs, compromises, and generalists rather than on specialists. The team ensured that the projects designs and technical activities of all individuals and organizations involved in the project remained well coordinated during the entire period of the program (NASA, 2014) . The Apollo shuttle which had to blast off the face of the earth with an incredible speed of 40,320 kilometers per hour to escape the earth’s gravitational pull and to easily maneuver the space in a hypersonic and subsonic speed required vital processes and materials to achieve this goal (Spring, 2014) . Furthermore, the Apollo's shuttle crew members had to be well protected from the harsh conditions in space, and the exterior of the shuttle had to be built to withstand space temperatures and to protect crew members from radiation. To accomplish these objectives, engineers involved in the program predominantly pushed every operating envelope.
Various components and full-scale testing of the shuttles requirements took place over the decade till its final launch. Several technical standards were instituted to promote the programs interloper abilities (Spring, 2014) . Engineering lessons learned in addition to proven practices was captured, and engineers were consequently made to serve as development pioneers and perpetual problem solvers. Innovation was placed as priority and engineers were required to infuse technology into solutions to lower costs without the possibility of trading away capability or even the safety of the differences that were involved in achieving the program’s goal (Spring, 2014) . The NASA team who took part in the Apollo project prioritized themselves in carefully guiding and cultivating technological processes and devices that were used in making the Apollo shuttle.
The third phase involved in completing the Apollo program and achieving NASA's goal of safely landing humankind on the Moon comprised testing the pieces of equipment and processes that were required to complete the Apollo successfully. The testing process of the Apollo started in 1966 on February which also involved the Saturn rocket (Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018) . However, in the first testing, a tragic fire accident that killed the Apollo 1 crew delayed the first flight. To avoid future occurrences of incidents such as these the NASA team in charge of the Apollo project delayed the fl ight and made changes that included not using pure atmospheric oxygen during flight launching and consequently replaced the shuttles comical command module with one that could be opened easily (Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018) . Following these changes and several successful uncrewed Earth-orbit flights, the Apollo 7 made a successful 163 orbit flight carrying three astronauts in 1968.
Furthermore, the first crewed lunar exploration was successfully carried out by the Apollo 8 and later by the Apollo 9 which carried out an Earth-orbit flight to check out the Lunar Module. Consequently, the Apollo 10 orbited to the lunar orbit and tested the lunar module to a distance of within 15.2 kilometers of the surface of the moon (Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018) . Finally, in 1969, the NASA team in charge of the Apollo project was able to accomplish their goal of landing humankind on the surface of the moon.
The fourth phase of the Apollo program constituted ensuring the reliability and quality of the Apollo shuttle. In achieving this goal, the Apollo project team employed the use of the Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) as an improvement for each of the previous phases (Cano & Moguerza, 2012) . The FMECA helped the Apollo program team to understand the risk of the project's processes. Understanding the various risks involved in launching the Apollo project accordingly helped the team to establish action plans for managing these risks while minimizing cost. The FMECA further was divided into processes, design, and systems. The processes FMECA (P-FMECA) primarily helped in identifying potential failures in the Apollo’s processes (Cano & Moguerza, 2012) . The design part of the FMECA (D-FMECA) on the other hand helped the team to detect future potential failures related to Apollo’s component functioning while the system part of the FMECA (S-FMECA) helped in evaluating failures that might occur within the shuttle’s system and in other systems interfaced with the Apollo shuttle (Cano & Moguerza, 2012) .
The fifth phase of NASA’s management project involved flight operations. To accomplish the goal of the Apollo project, NASA's flight control organization took it upon themselves to devote their time and the available resources to ensure careful planning of the flight's processes and detailed training of the flight's crew members (Kranz & Covington) . They were thus able to adequately prepare both the flight controllers and crew adequately respond to routine and contingent situations that might occur during the program. Moreover, from the conception to the execution stage of the Apollo program, operational flight personnel took part in effective planning and consequently participated in areas where their experiences of operations contributed significantly, that is during the early stages of design mission and when setting fundamental requirements for various systems of the Apollo shuttle (Kranz & Covington) . All these efforts and due diligence on the part of the flight operations personnel proved fruitful in that both the hardware and mission design of the Apollo shuttle had excellent operational qualities. More importantly, the flight operations team had one centralized team, a factor which significantly contributed to the successful result of the Apollo program. Moreover, the team neither changed their philosophies from early in the program and continuously monitored the trajectory of the Apollo space shuttle, planned changes to it, and planned the safe return to earth from the moon (Kranz & Covington) . Consequently, the flight director directed and coordinated the Apollo control team, analyzed the flight and took actions that were necessary to complete the Apollo's mission successfully.
Following the traditional project management technique and thus separating the project into five phases, the NASA team in charge of the Apollo program eventually were able to stand up to President Kennedy's challenge of landing humankind on the Moon. By strictly adhering to and following all the requirements of the five phases of the TPM, the team successfully and safely sent the Apollo 11 spacecraft from the earth to the Moon and back.
References
Aramyan, P. (2016, July 25). What is Project controls? Why are they so important in project management and how to deal with them! Retrieved from Project Management Best Practices and News: https://explore.easyprojects.net/blog/what-are-project-controls-why-are-they-so-important-in-project-management-and-how-to-deal-with-them
Cano, E. L., & Moguerza, J. M. (2012). Other Tools and Methodologies. In Six Sigma with R: Statistical Engineering for Process Improvement (pp. 241-243). Springer Science and Business Media.
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2018, August 3). Apollo Space Program. Retrieved from Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/science/Apollo-space-program
Guay, M. (2018). Project Management 101: The Complete Guide to Agile, Kanban, Scrum and Beyond. Retrieved from Zapier: https://zapier.com/learn/project-management/project-management-systems/
Kranz, E. F., & Covington, J. O. (n.d.). Flight Control in the Apollo Program. Retrieved from NASA: https://history.nasa.gov/SP-287/ch5.htm
NASA. (2014, April 21). Project Apollo: A Retrospective Analysis. Retrieved from NASA: https://history.nasa.gov/Apollomon/Apollo.html
Spring, W. (2014, December). A View from Space: NASA Systems Engineering and Test. pp. 45-48.
