Knowledge Management at NASA and JPL

1
Knowledge Management at NASA and JPL

• National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA)
• Case Study
• Knowledge Creation and Knowledge Retention
• Combining Multiple Approaches to KM

Arjan Raven Kennesaw State University BISM
8460 Spring 2006
2
NASA

• Responsible for all space flight in USA Kennedy
  Space Center Mission Control in Houston
  Training Facilities is Huntsville, Alabama JPL
  in Pasadena, California
• Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) part of NASA.
  Responsible for development and management of
  most NASA projects
• Private or government contractors also provide
  goods and services

3
NASA Successes and Failures

• Successes
• Moon landings
• Space Shuttle Program
• International Space Station
• Mars Landings (three rovers so far)
• Failures
• Two space shuttles crashed
• Space station far over budget
• Number of failed unmanned projects

4
NASA Challenges

• Reduced Budget Faster, Better, Cheaper (FBC)
• Experts are retiring 40 50 eligible to retire
• Need to share knowledge with many outside
  contractors and agencies
• Need to get the right experts in the right
  projects, but there are not enough of them

5
Faster, Better, Cheaper?

• JPL Budget of US 1.3 billion
• 5,500 employees
• Between 1992 2000, 16 FBC missions
• 6 Projects failed
• Too many cuts in personnel and knowledge
• Too many projects per employee
• Too much focus on individual missions, instead of
  on the long-term program of missions too much
  focus on getting something working now, instead
  of on learning for future projects

6
KM at NASA

• Knowledge management is getting the right
  information to the right people at the right
  time, and helping people create knowledge and
  share and act upon information in ways that will
  measurably improve the performance