NASA faced challenges of retaining knowledge as experienced scientists and engineers retired. Downsizing led to an imbalance in skills as junior employees took on senior roles. There was no formal process for transferring knowledge from departing employees. Two options considered were increasing IT infrastructure to capture and share knowledge, or reforming the culture to encourage knowledge sharing through mentoring and incentives. NASA initiated several knowledge management programs, including improving documentation, an academy for leadership development, and a web portal to capture design knowledge. However, changing culture to overcome resistance to sharing negative lessons proved difficult.

1. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AT NASA
Puneet Bhalla
Jyoti Jain
P S Karthik

2. NASA

3. CASE STUDY
• Oct 2002, HBR
• Dorothy Leonard & David Kiron
• Managing Knowledge & Learning at NASA (National
Aeronautics and Space Administration) & JPL (Jet Propulsion
Laboratory)
• Downsizing & Retirement of Experienced Scientists & Engineers
• Civilian space program as well as aeronautics
and aerospace research
• President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958

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TEN CENTRES OF NASA HQ, WASHINGTON, D.C.
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 Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
 Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards, California
 Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
 John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida
 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, near Pasadena, California
 John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, Cleveland
 George Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
 Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia
 Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
 John C. Stennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

5. SPUTNIK
Oct 5, 1957
Conceived During crisis

6. FIRST MAN IN SPACE
Russians, USSR winning the space race

7. RACE TO THE MOON
•$500 Mill to $5.2 Bill in 1965
•5.3% of the Federal Budget
•$179 Bill – 2001
•One in 50 Americans on the Apollo program
•Manhattan & Panama Canal

8. PANAMA; MANHATTAN & APOLLO
77 km waterway in Panama that connects
the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean
Employ more than 130,000 people and cost
nearly US $2 billion (about $27 billion in 2017

9. BEFORE APOLLO
Technical
Depth
NO Project
Management
Culture
•Small Scale Projects
•Centralizing Authority for
•Design
•Engineering
•Testing
•Construction
•Manufacturing
•Logistics
•Training
•Operations

10. MANNED FLIGHT

11. IRON TRIANGLE
Performance Time Costs
Pre Apollo
Costs Performance Time
Post Apollo after 1970s

12. CHANGES POST APOLLO
•Resisted Advancing Technology
•Adopted Commercial Practices
Integration &
Contractor
Oversight
Design &
Development
Risk Aversion

13. SUCCESS - COLUMBIA
Space Shuttle Columbia was the first space-
rated orbiter in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet. It launched
for the first time on April 12, 1981, the first flight of
the Space Shuttle program.
Over 22 years of service it completed 27 missions
before disintegrating during re-entry near the end of its
28th mission, on February 1, 2003, resulting in the
deaths of all seven crew members including
Kalpana Chawla.

14. FAILURE - CHALLENGER
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on
January 28, 1986, when the NASA Space Shuttle broke
apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of
its seven crew members.

16. WE HAVE A PROBLEM
•Insufficient Risk Assessment & Planning
•Inadequate Review Process
•Inadequate System Engineering
•Resistance to expertise
•Pockets of Information
•High Knowledge & Low Experience

17. AFTER CHALLENGER
•O Ring or Managerial Decision Making
•Confidence & Pride
•Re-Centralization
•Budgets + Technical Specifications Review
•Endeavor Success
•Hubble Failure

18. STEPS INITIATED
•FBC
•Workforce reduction
•Decentralized
•Decade vs Faster timetable
•Unleash Dormant Creativity
•Reduce Aversion to risk
•Breaking up of large projects

19. UNKNOWN UN-KNOWNS

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KEY CHALLENGES AT NASA (contd..)
KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER OF
LONGER DURATION PROJECTS.
- HISTORY OF DESIGN DECISIONS
AMALGAMATION OF DIVERSIFIED &
GEOGRAPHICALLY DISTRIBUTED
COMMUNITIES.
RISK MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
MENTORING PRACTICES

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SYMPTOMS
 Struggled to find the right balance between mission
performance and cutting edge space exploration in the
range of radically reduced budget.
 People were retiring and experienced personnel were
leaving but it has few programs to bring their wisdom into
our institutional memory
 The most experienced personnel become overburden so
junior folks put in relatively senior positions.
 Broke down lines of communication and prevented
people from internalizing and applying previous lessons.

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CAUSES
 Downsizing at NASA over the last decade has resulted in
an imbalance in NASA’s skill mix.
 Pursuit cut costs and maximizes mission performance.
 They have no formal process for transferring knowledge
from people who are leaving high level management
positions.
 JPL’s prevailed belief is only focus on creation new
knowledge and overlooking old knowledge.

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RISK
 Should we need more IT investment or stick to change culture?
However, to begin the cross-agency cultural changes necessary to
make this work, they will need a larger budget. And if it fails, they
will lose credibility .
 NASA’s already rich, explicit information.
STRENGTH

28. OBSTACLE
 Management decentralizes,
some centers returned to their
pre-Apollo technical culture.
 It also sustains a culture of
privatizing knowledge.
Scientists and engineers
sometimes don’t include
material in their reports that
might compromise their
competitive advantage.
 The project team sometimes
resisted experienced
personnel’s feedback.

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KNOWLDEGE MANAGEMENT AT NASA
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 JANUARY 2000 – IMPLEMENTING KM INITIATIVES
IN ALL ITS 10 CENTRES.
 PRIVATIZING KNOWLEDGE COMPROMISES
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.
 IDENTIFY, CAPTURE & RECOGNIZE – REWARD
KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND MENTORING.
 SUCCESSION PLANNING.

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PERFORMANCE ORIENTED KM
 RIGHT INFORMATION / RIGHT PEOPLE / RIGHT TIME
 ENGINEER - WITH HISTORY OF DESIGN DECISIONS
ON PREVIOUS PROJECTS.
 PROJECT MANAGER – BETTER RISK ASSESSMENT
AND MANAGEMENT TOOLS.
 SENIOR SCIENTIST – PROVIDING TIME TO NURTURE
YOUNG STAR SCIENTIST

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OPTION – 1
INVEST IN IT INFRASTRUCTURE
 IT systems provide a platform and standards for
scientists and engineers to discuss, document and
share information.
 Introduce collaboration tool and communication tool
such as video conference
Pros Cons
 Enable to capture employee’s
valuable knowledge and
experiences.
 Improving NASA and its
partner’s performance.
 Share information instantly.
 IT system alone
cannot satisfy
experienced people.

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OPTION – II
REFORM KNOWLEDGE SHARING CULTURE CHANGE
 Change its culture to encourage and motivate employees
sharing experiences and knowledge they learned.
Develop Self-Retirement Program - Maintain knowledge
Incentive Senior Mentoring - Efficient coaching
Develop the systematic and written process to allow
organization-wide employees follow the process.
Pros Cons
 A higher success rate in future
missions
 Resolving the problems of
time allocation of the employees
who has complained about
mentoring workload.
 Changing culture is
riskier than building up
IT system

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THREE INITIATIVES BY KM TEAM AT NASA
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2001- IMPROVING DOCUMENTATION –
LLIS ($150,000)
MANAGERS RELUCTANT TO SHARE NEGATIVE LESSONS
FUNDAMENTAL WEAKNESS IN COLLECTION AND SHARING (KSI)
Expert’s Directory
2002 - ACADEMY OF PROGRAM AND
PROJECT LEADERSHIP.
INDIVIDUAL CAREER DEVELOPMENT OPPURTUNITIES
ONLINE MANAGEMENT TOOLS (REMOTE COLLABORATION)
($800,000)
2003 - DEVELOPING WEB BASED PORTAL.
INSIDE JPL & INSIDE NASA / CAPTURE DESIGN KNOWLEDGE & DECISIONS
WEB BASED COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENTS (DOC MGR, DISCUSSION
TOOL & ACTIVITY LOG)/ PROJECT LIBRARIES / DECISION TREES

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