I was impressed with the report, it seemed comprehensive. I think all of the answers are in there if you read carefully and read a little into what is said.

The depletion and lack of availability of experienced technical personnel is repeatedly cited as the leading cause of the failure to develop quality software on schedule. The paper's authors don't explicitly discuss the possibility that the issues might not just be administrative problems, but that there could also be technical and system design issues with the project. On a superficial level, the report's recommendations are evaluating and solving problems in administrative ways: hire more people, improve communication, reduce remote work, improve retention (hard to do those last two at the same time).

If the overall lack of experienced technical personnel were such an issue, why are the project failures on the software side, with zero issues reported on the mechanical side?

From a system design perspective, a key issue is running into a problem and deciding to "deal with it with the software". This is done without thinking through the issue, effectively kicking the can down the road. Problem solving is postponed. Once the software is being written, it's too late to solve the problem at a system design level.

Another way to see it is that deep structural system design flaws, or any other reason to suspect that the project would fail, could have prompted an exodus of experienced personnel that saw project failure coming early on in the project. The report doesn't explicitly evaluate the system design, but has a good overview of the project fundamentals. One hint is the slide talking about how they shouldn't be trying to integrate a third-party commercial orbiter designed for Earth operations for their deep-space operation. That would be an example of a top-down system design flaw, where it would be (and probably was for many) easier to just get another job or transfer to a different department than to try to fix the holes.

One of the most telling comments is calling for a more rigorous annual review of the JPL Director's performance, right there in the report. I cannot believe they did that, talk about speaking truth to power. Good for them! Then the JPL director's signature is on the document, right at the top. It's an unfortunate situation, I'm sure they all know exactly what convening a 15-person council and releasing a public report will do to project and organizational morale.

Here are my suggestions: 1. Project leaders (and organization leaders) should able to convince everyone around them that success will be achieved, see "Reality Distortion Field" 2. Complex and dynamic functionality needs to be replaced where possible with simple and static functionality. 3. It sounds like there are cultural issues coming from the top (and unfortunately, probably from above the top). 4. Technicians and leaders should be competent first and experienced or senior second. 5. If no one competent and experienced with a Reality Distortion Field wants to touch a project, then probably better to just cancel it. 6. On any project aspect, individual contributors would work best with clearly defined requirements and without distractions. Writing the requirements properly is probably most of the work.