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Managing Knowledge and Learning at NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
BACKGROUND
NASA came into existence one year after USSR launched its first man-made satellite, Sputnik, to orbit the earth. NASA was assembled from several federal agencies and organizations existed that time.
NASA was formed to provide revolutionary advancements in science and technology that sustain global U. ...
NASA is an organization that generates, gathers, and analyzes enormous amounts of data each day associated, not only with its space programs but also its aeronautics programs. So knowledge management should be a key for NASA, but whether it is, or not, we will find out in our discussion.
Since NASA was a combination of small federal agencies it experienced problems in managing large projects and operations like Apollo. Releasing this weakness of theirs NASA established its Apollo program office at its headquarters and hired an Air force management group to supervise the project. ... NASA sent a lavish budget proposal to, then president, Nixon that included funding for Mars mission, a lunar space station, and an earth orbiting station. But Nixon, in the midst of Vietnam War with the approval of congress, cut the NASA’s budget short, but funded the shuttle project that failed in 1986 with the explosion of shuttle challenger. ...
In 1990’s Goldin introduced the FBC (Faster-Better-Cheaper) approach to increase mission performance, cut costs, and reduce NASA’s size. ...
By 2002, NASA was composed of nine field centers and the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL).
JPL, being the most significant lab of NASA, handles the most important projects of the organization. ... The success of JPL was always the high point for NASA, but the recent failures at JPL has lowered the public confidence in NASA’s capabilities.
ISSUES CONFRONTING THE FIRM AND ANALYSIS
Knowledge Management:
It seems that NASA in general and JPL in particular has a big drain of knowledge. It looks that people are leaving NASA in quest of better jobs and the people following them either don’t have knowledge or they don’t know what to do. There is no formal method of knowledge transfer in place at NASA, because there are overworked and less motivated employees. Knowledgeable individuals, at NASA, want to keep their knowledge to themselves and do not want to share. ...
By its nature, NASA has specialized knowledge that can only be learned by working at NASA and through individuals who work at NASA. The most critical factor in the implementation of Knowledge Management, which is lacking at NASA, is the acceptance of sharing culture. ...
Most of NASA’s knowledge management issues are related to IT capability. ...
Faster, Better and Cheaper
NASA has simply gone too far with its speedy, economical method of development, which results in overlooking standard techniques and management principles in an effort to rush projects to the launch pad. A former NASA manager, Tony Spear, has criticized the “faster, better, cheaper" theory by saying that “the approach has pushed the agencys engineers and scientists to crank out more frequent, low-cost and stripped-down missions since the early 1990s.
Approximate Word count = 2401
Approximate Pages = 9.6
(250 words per page double spaced)
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