Managing Knowledge and Learning Essay

Managing friendship and study at NASA and the Jet Propulsion lab Summary National Aeronautics and dummy Administration (NASA) was established by sexual congress on October 1, 1958, in order for the joined States to keep up with the technological advancements achieved from causality Soviet Unions undefeated launch of the Sputnik (1957). The Apollo Era-Mission had risen from the animation of rump F. Kennedys goal, which was set down a part on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. Prioritization at NASA evolved into the centers dictum of Faster, Better, Cheaper (FBC), which was mandated in the G out of datein Era beginning in 1992.NASA shifted priorities from 1) performance, 2) schedule and 3) cost to 1) increase representationary station performance, 2) cut cost and 3) work issue reduction. However, this reform was non as favored as contrivened. From 1992 and 2000, six of 16 FBC thrills failed. To delivery concern of the repair of failed representations and impending retirements of many a(prenominal) of the most insured NASA employees, Congress en magnate that the agency search for the solution to Knowledge Management (KM) and promoting erudition initiatives at NASA-JPL.NASAs KM tools were mainly IT systems of Internet-based databases and portals for ease of lessons. The NASA KM crisis was attri besidesed to the organizations inability to archive experiences of misfortunes and masteryes of bursting charges or bedevils ultimately incapable of capturing the experiential intimacy from expert engineers and scientists. In addition, this overleap in KM was due to privatizing friendship and promoting creativity, that stemmed from NASAs husbandry where arguing among centers for meets and p arntageing was the norm.Several KM Initiatives were demonstrable including communicate libraries for document and data counseling, ontogeny standards, establishing databases to find experts, ask technical questions, and to set out hi story and legacy reviews. 1) What were the pros and cons of the Faster, Better, Cheaper model? How top executive outcomes (both positive and negative) of projects executed with this model jolt NASAs stakeholders, i. e. Congress and the normal common? The Faster, Better, and Cheaper (FBC) objectives were to cut cost and maximize mission performance. There were several advantages of the FBC reform.FBC take into accounted compressed culture and launch schedules that lead to an increase in the act of missions. Mission beat could be reduced from decades to a few familys. The number of NASA projects increased from four to 40 at a lower place the FBC model. An increase in mission projects was thinking to lead to additional discoveries so that NASA could throw further wisdom and musculus quadriceps femoris experience. FBC missions were changed from iodin big project to multiple littler projects. Dividing the political platform into smaller projects boostered to minimize th e pull and stress on the squad if a mission failed.Furtherto a greater extent, one(a) mission unsuccessful person did not consequently lead to the failure of the entire programme. FBC practice allowed cured carriages more freedom to implement FBC the way they prove fit which promoted creativity and autonomy among senior managers. FBC also reduced the cost of severally mission and NASAs overall budget. For example, the mar program budget was reduced from one billion dollars to $260 million. There are many disadvantages of the FBC reform. Applying the FBC model could lead to more mission failures.During the FBC era, thither were 6 failed missions out of 16 FBC missions. Cost and schedule constraints, insufficient attempt assessment, preparedness, and quizing, underestimation of compl lapsey and technology maturity, indifference of quality and safety, inadequate review processes, engineering, under-trained staff, suffering squad communication, and design errors all attr i unlessed to NASAs mission failures. watchs conducted faster does not allow for adequate documentation, time for redlining the project, and recording lessons acquire from one mission to the next.This could result in repeated mistakes that could be avoided by coming(prenominal) missions. Missions carried out faster do not allow time for mentorship and sharing of familiarity. Also, the condition ameliorate was not properly delineate and was open to interpretation, which may negatively come to maintaining standard procedures and processes. The results of the FBC vision could impact NASAs stakeholders in several ways. The increase in smaller successful missions would alleviate the risk of one large failure, although any failures impart slang a negative impact on stakeholders.Congress could be discouraged to provide support and funding for major space programs if they fail but major power be more likely to fund smaller missions. The public could either lag or gain confid ence, support, and belief in the space program depending on the order of magnitude of success or failure. FBC mission are less expensive which would decrease NASAs budget and help satisfy both Congress and the general public by reducing the need for extra revenue enhancement by Congress and collection of taxes from the general public. 2) Why was the impair templet project so successful? pardon how Anthony Spears instruction style impacted time to come missions. Project solicitude was the report to success of the damage lookout man project. It began as an experiment to test the validity of the FBC reform mandated in 1992 when Daniel Goldin was assign as the modernistic administrator of NASA. A clear and specific plan for the Pathfinder mission was laid out in the beginning and followed through until the end. Analogous to the success of Ciscos ERP instruction execution, Anthony Spears, an excellent manager and thought leader with years of experience at NASA, gained the supp ort of top management and the JPL institution (Spears, 1999).Spears developed a anomalous balance of an advisory committee of experts to support and guide the difficult project, while he recruited talented, yet naive, energetic youngsters to do what some more see people thought impossible. As Spears writes in his lessons learned report it was a conflate of bright, ambitious youth and scarred old timers, from each one challenged and empowered, all working each issue together (1999). Together, they created a team that bonded and worked together successfully.Spears goal was not altogether the success of the Pathfinder project, but of the FBC program success, unlike the vision of future project managers. The success of Pathfinder did not empathise well in future FBC missions. risk management and testing were important to the spoil Pathfinder success. While the Mars Pathfinder team worked together successfully, the younger players went on to think they were great project manager s themselves, but still hadnt learned exuberant to manage their next missions successfully.In future FBC projects, some reasons for failure were poor team communication, inadequate or under-trained staff or insufficient testing in 70% of missions and insufficient risk assessment and planning on 86% of missions (exhibit 4). 3) One of the major issues in this case is the retirements of experts. Why is this a problem for NASA? Would it be less of a problem in a diverse type of organization? Suggest speedy steps that NASA could take to mitigate the problem. explicate your choices.By 2006 half of NASAs custody was qualified for retirement which could lead to a major loss of familiarity, especially soundless information, diminishing the collective wisdom of the organization. A senior manager at NASA states, we have no formal process for designatering knowledge from thought leaders to naked managers and IT systems had not yet been sufficient in transferring experiential knowledge to the younger generation. Unfortunately, this would be dead on target in many organizations unless they had sufficient knowledge management systems in place and a culture where sharing knowledge was cute and encouraged.In order to mitigate the problem of losing their knowledge base, NASA not only inevitably to continue to implement their KM strategy, but really change the culture. Experienced project leaders and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), such(prenominal) as design engineers, should openly packet their knowledge and not just when asked for it. I support several of the planned KM initiatives such as the capture of information by improving documentation, development of an effort web-based portal, and the Knowledge Sharing Initiative (KSI) haveed at changing the companies culture.In addition to these activities, an publication strategy could be developed for unassuming employees where they must follow standard procedures for employing case-based abstract thought in an online database employing a searchable classification system. redundant knowledge could be disseminated by those eligible through training sessions. A honor system should be twin to these take out requirements and could be increased if the employee decides to be ready(prenominal) in the Expert Connections directory of SMEs that could be contacted for support after they leave.New impersonates faculty need to be created for dedicated knowledge managers such as Chief knowledge officers. Its also possible that NASA could find out some replacement of lost experts by collaborating with space programs in other countries. lay in the information from experts must be coupled with management support of a embodied wide schema to store the data, methods of dissemination, and implement the information to ultimately make better decisions on projects that involve risking peoples lives. 4) Jean Holm had two options she could choose from 1) call forth the IT systems or, 2) change the cultu re.Which would you choose and why? Is there a third option? Explain your answer. In order for Holms to truly have a successful knowledge management system in place, implementation of a hybrid system should be in place enforcing both mounting to IT systems occurring simultaneously with changing the private culture into a shared one. Integration of both, changing the culture and IT upgrades will be a lengthy process so it would be critical to first strategically plan for cultivating and managing formal processes for knowledge transfers.Implementing formal processes such as required protocols, reports, standard in operation(p) procedures (SOPs) and work instruction manual for each mission or project should be implement from every high-level management as it might help with the KM transfer crisis. Once every item has been unblemished by the high-level management it would be placed into the appropriate IT systems database in conjunctive with the integration of the required knowledg e management video synopsis from experienced engineers and scientist who exit the centers.Curriculums would be in place with learning modules with specific need encapsulating these protocols, reports, SOPs, work instructions and video synopsis would then be posted on the intranet, ready for the strength novice engineers and scientists entering the NASA work force making the system more enriched and meaningful. 5) death chair Obama is implementing changes to NASAs charter, which will create new ways of funding/executing projects than NASA is utilize to. Do a little online research. Do you agree or disagree in this change of direction? Explain. Caution this is not to be addressed as a political issue) The Obama administrations new NASA charter includes a couple of key parts A) In February 2010, the Obama administration canceled the configuration Program, which was started by former President George W. scourings administration in 2004. This program aimed to put US astronauts back on the moon by 2020, for the first time since the final Apollo mission. B) In April 2010, Obama proposed increasing NASAs overall budget by some $6 billion over five dollar bill years and shifting NASAs aim for manned space program to Mars (from the moon).By the mid 2030s, I see we can send humans to sports stadium Mars and return them safely to Earth. And landing on Mars will follow, he said. C) He also challenged the commercial space industry to take up the flake tasks that NASA would abandon such as take astronauts to and from the space station. I do not agree with him on the part A and develop B of the new charter. The shape Program is already 5 year old, and has spent $9. 1 billion.It has already do significant progress and will help America maintaining its space leadership position over Russia and China. On the other hand, I think that it will set a foundation for manned space mission to Mars. Obamas vision of manned mission to Mars by mid-2030 does not await realis tic to me as he has not talked about its technology feasibility. However, I do agree with his plans Part C. I think that it will importantly reduce the cost for transporting people and onus to and from low-Earth orbit, and might induce the rise of a true space economy.