As soon as the Los Alamos Laboratory opened its doors, committees were formed to plan the research program and cope with practicalities. Robert Serber offered an indoctrination course early in April 1943 to acquaint scientists with the current state of research on the atomic bomb. Conferences that month laid out specific research objectives. Even though many fission constants were poorly determined and the accuracy of approximations was generally low, Los Alamos physicists were confident that a reasonably efficient gun bomb could be built. Acceptance of the gun as a workable assembly lent optimism to the entire project. As a fallback, Oppenheimer established a small research effort under Seth Neddermeyer to explore implosion assembly.

The Planning Board

Committees helped Oppenheimer make major decisions, with Groves's approval. The first informal committee – Robert Wilson, Edwin McMillan, Oppenheimer, Edward Condon (the associate director), John Manley, and Serber – met on 6 March 1943 and considered practicalities, such as when people and equipment would arrive and who would handle services rendered by the machine and electronics shops.

This initial planning group gave way several weeks later to a larger committee called the Planning Board, which coordinated the technical program over the next month. Oppenheimer, Condon, Dana Mitchell, and Julian Mack provided administrative guidance, while Wilson, Serber, John Williams, McMillan, and Donald Mastick planned the scientific program.