A management approach for allocating instrument development resources

The Cassini Science Management Plan was developed for NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn to assist the Science Instrument Manager in guiding the development of the spacecraft's science payload, This plan, unlike previous development approaches, allocated the entire mass, power, data rate and budget resources for the science instruments to the Principal Investigators, The result removed the Cassini Project from adjudicating and reallocating resources for instrument development problems. Instrument development problems that did occur were resolved by the Principal Investigators themselves through the use of a 'resource exchange', The exchange allowed Principal Investigators to submit 'bids' (i.e. a request for resources) to a database. Principal Investigators were allowed to barter their own resources with other investigators, The resulting exchange or multilateral trade allowed the investigators to reallocate their resource to 'better' their current position. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.