In other words, had Commander Lewis, Johanssen, Beck, or Vogel been left behind, none of them would have survived. He couldn’t have solved his own problems unless he was exactly who he was. Watney is incredibly lucky that he’s a botanist… and has the know-how to boot up a long-abandoned Pathfinder, figure out a hexadecimal alphabet, and enough chemistry to make water out of hydrazine fuel.
How can project managers know that their team is competent and giving reasonable estimates without a technical background? Without going through a grueling research process to verify his or her team’s numbers, they can’t. With that said, the idea that project managers don’t need technical skills gets a lot of pushback. If project manager has the best technical skills in the team why is she managing the project and not building the project? Technical skills is always nice-to-have trait for project manager but in vast majority of cases they aren’t crucial. Project managers with specialized skills tend to outperform those without.Ī few years ago, Pawel Brodzinski reminded IT professionals that project managers don’t need technical skills. Had Watney remained panicked, he would have likely been overcome by the immensity of the project before him and died far before help could get to him. He breaks down his must-dos in Gantt-chart fashion: For example, Watney needs to make 1480 sols worth of food out of his initial 400-sol supply. Like any good project manager, Watney starts off his projects with the end in mind. Like any other human being who just found out they were stranded on a lifeless planet, he panics.īut unlike those who just keep panicking, Watney allows himself his two days of freak out and then gets to work. He has a damaged suit, little food, no way of contacting NASA (or any humans for that matter), and no guarantee of rescue. When Mark Watney first sits down to record that he’s alive on Mars, he has a moment of panic. Break your project up into little pieces. With that said, let’s bring five lessons from The Martian down to Earth. Mark Watney was only able to survive because of phenomenal project management knowhow.
I count 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon, and now The Martian in this vertical.įor project managers, The Martian’s depiction of Mark Watney, NASA, the CNSA, and Commander Lewis’s crew provides plenty of lessons on how to survive when times are desperate.
Then there’s the other kind of science fiction, the kind where science and technology has its limits and humans still have to figure out their own problems. Think Star Wars, Star Trek, and Avatar. In these films, technology acts more as a magical prop than an actual possible human development. There are two kinds of science fiction movies.