The NASA Organization Design Team (ODT) team, consisting of twenty seasoned program managers and systems engineers from a broad spectrum of the aerospace industry, academia, and government, was formed to support the Next Generation Launch Technology Program and the Constellation Systems Program. The purpose of the ODT was to investigate organizational factors that can lead to success or failure of complex government programs, and to identify tools and methods for the design, modeling and analysis of new and more efficient program and project organizations. The ODT conducted a series of workshops featuring invited lectures from seasoned program managers representing 25 different large technical programs spanning 50 years of experience. The result was the identification of seven key principles of program success that can be used to help design and operate future program organizations. This paper presents the success principles and examples of best practices that can significantly improve the design of program, project and line organizations, the assessment of workforce needs and organization performance, and the execution of programs and projects. The presentations from the workshops from which the seven key principles were synthesized are included in the appendices.
