Commercial Space Business Manager Operating Playbook

Purpose and scope

Use this SOP from the first qualified trigger through a recorded decision, handoff and closure check. Its practical output is one current view of the customer or mission need, assumptions, requirements, interfaces, cost and capacity, milestones, obligations, risks and decision owners. Select only the parts relevant to the assigned role and product.

The model covers commercial and programme coordination. It does not authorize the manager to sign a contract, interpret legal terms, classify an export, grant data rights, accept engineering or quality work, license a mission, direct flight operations or make a safety decision. A named specialist or authorized decision maker takes those actions under the employer's process.

The employer must set these local fields before operational use:

Roles and inputs

The manager coordinates the work package, resolves record conflicts, prepares options and asks the authorized owner for a decision. An account or product owner confirms the customer need and controls external promises. Engineering and quality owners assess feasibility, data or hardware performance, interfaces and acceptance evidence. Finance checks commercial assumptions; procurement and supplier-quality owners check supply and qualification; contracts and legal owners review obligations and terms. Mission, flight-safety, export, licensing and data-rights specialists join whenever their domain is implicated. Leadership or another delegated approver accepts the business tradeoff within written authority.

Start with the trigger and its source: a customer request, bid invitation, internal milestone, supplier change, quality finding, service issue or approved change request. Gather the current customer need; product or mission baseline; technical and quality evidence; schedule and capacity; price/cost assumptions; existing obligations; supplier status; and prior decisions. Mark missing evidence as open with an owner and due date. Do not fill a gap with an assumed approval.

Trigger-to-close workflow

1. Open and classify. Record the trigger, source, date, affected product or service, customer or mission, requested outcome, urgency and coordinator. Assign one work-package ID in [Approved system: work register]. Check whether an immediate specialist or incident route is required.
2. Frame the need. Confirm the use case, scope boundary, desired date, success measure and acceptance evidence with the customer-facing owner. Separate a request from an approved commitment. Record the current version and unresolved interpretations.
3. Map interfaces and evidence. Ask accountable owners to assess technical feasibility, quality, supplier or partner capacity, schedule, cost, data rights, contract obligations and applicable approvals. Record each answer, source date, confidence, dependency and missing decision. Do not self-certify another function's evidence.
4. Compare options. Prepare a feasible baseline and at least one meaningful alternative or recovery path when a tradeoff exists. Show customer effect, cost/capacity, timing, quality, dependencies, uncertainty and the consequence of waiting. Identify any option that requires specialist clearance before it can be offered.
5. Route the decision. Send a concise decision brief to the person named in [Local employer policy: authority map]. Include the recommendation, alternatives, assumptions, open risks, requested decision, deadline and specialist signoffs. Record approval, rejection, request for more evidence or deferral in [Approved system: decision log]. Silence is not approval.
6. Handoff the approved action. Give each action owner the accepted scope, version, due date, acceptance evidence and affected interfaces. The customer-facing owner approves any external message. Update the plan, obligations, supplier and risk/change records in their approved systems. Obtain receipt or acknowledgment from each owner.
7. Verify and close. Check completion against the recorded acceptance evidence, confirm that a specialist has closed any specialist decision, reconcile customer and internal records, and document residual risk and the next review date. The authorized owner accepts closure. Reopen the work package if evidence fails or a material assumption changes.

At every step, preserve the source and date of a claim. A forecast, supplier estimate, unreviewed term or proposed rule stays labelled as such until its designated owner verifies its status.

Working cadence

The employer chooses intervals that match the active service or programme. A vacancy with no stated cadence does not establish a required routine for the field.

Decisions, authority, handoffs and escalation

The manager may clarify a request, maintain the plan, compare options, identify a risk and recommend a course of action. The manager may prioritize or spend only within [Local employer policy: written delegation]. A job title, meeting attendance or access to a system does not establish authority.

Escalate promptly when a safety or mission concern appears, a customer commitment may be missed, evidence contradicts an approved baseline, a supplier or data source becomes unavailable, an obligation is unclear, or a threshold in [Local employer policy: severity and delegation limits] is met. Use [Local employer policy: primary and backup escalation route]. If the named owner is unavailable, record the attempted contact and follow that backup route; do not substitute a novice operational judgment. Capture who received the issue, when, what they accepted and the next update time.

Records and quality checks

Use the employer's approved systems as the source of record. A linkable work package should contain the trigger and current version; requirement and interface owners; dated evidence and assumptions; option comparison; milestone and dependency plan; cost/capacity assumptions; obligation references; risk, issue and change entries; decision owner and outcome; handoff acknowledgments; external-message approval; and closure evidence. Limit access and retention according to [Local employer policy: information classification and retention].

Before a decision brief or customer handoff, check that:

• the customer need, unit, time period and acceptance test are clear;
• each material claim has a source, date and confidence or an explicit open status;
• technical, quality, supplier, rights and contract questions have named owners;
• costs, dates and capacity are estimates or approved commitments as appropriate;
• the recommendation shows a feasible alternative and residual risk;
• the requested decision matches the recipient's written authority; and
• the current record versions agree across affected teams.

The employer sets targets in [Local employer policy: performance scorecard]. Useful measures include the share of material decisions with a named approver and evidence, overdue risks without an accepted escalation, missed customer commitments, handoffs acknowledged by the receiving owner, changes reflected across affected records, forecast versus actual delivery or cost, and repeat exceptions after corrective action. Review both the measure and its definition; a fast closure with unresolved quality or customer impact is not a success.

Exception handling

For incomplete or conflicting evidence, pause the affected recommendation, mark the disputed assumption, assign an evidence owner and decision deadline, and present only the options supported by current facts. For a missed milestone or degraded service, use the employer's event route, preserve the timeline, quantify the customer effect with the service owner, and seek approval for the recovery and customer message. For a supplier or data-source failure, ask technical, quality and procurement owners to assess qualified alternatives before changing the baseline. For an ambiguous term, data right, export condition or regulatory requirement, stop the affected commitment or transfer and hand the question to the designated specialist. For a decision owner who cannot be reached, use the documented backup; record the interim state and next check.

After any material exception, update the work package, affected plan and obligation records, owner acknowledgments and customer communication status. Close only when the authorized owner accepts the outcome and residual exposure.

Reusable SOP model

Copy and complete this model for one bounded opportunity or delivery issue. Bracketed fields are deliberate local decisions or approved-system references.

Operating sequence: Open and classify the trigger; frame the need; collect accountable evidence; compare options; request a decision from the authorized owner; hand off the approved action; verify acceptance and close. Use the same work-package ID and version throughout. The employer may add a gate, but should keep the decision and evidence trail intact.