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The intention was:

The Mars Climate Orbiter Spacecraft was due to do research on Mars.

The course of action was:

Two different teams worked on the project simultaneously from different locations.

The result was:

The Mars Climate Orbiter Spacecraft was lost because one Nasa team used imperial units while another used metric units for a key spacecraft operation.

The lesson was:

The confusion over units was identified in preliminary findings by JPL´s internal peer review. The transfer of information took place between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California.

Further:

Reading this article made me come up with the idea of FlexMind: asking ´laymen´s Feedback´ on projects ideas processes etc. Now I call it "dross over feedback´! Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/462264.stm