Each NASA Center hosts a unique mix of knowledge management (KM) activities that are determined by the Center's perceived needs and their available resources. Some Centers focus on Pause & Learn and case studies; other Centers specialize in retiree outbriefing or lessons learned capture. JPL plans to optimize its KM program based on a detailed analysis of priorities for knowledge capture and sharing. In the interim, JPL has deployed the following activities to make good use of key JPL knowledge that cannot easily be found beyond the JPL campus:
Capture of Institutional Knowledge
The JPL Knowledge Map differentiates "institutional knowledge" in the JPL line organization from "project knowledge" held mostly in electronic libraries, and from each individuals' technical knowledge. JPL has a matrix organization, with each employee and onsite contractor assigned to a group/section in the line organization, and assigned to work on one or more projects in the project organization. Since projects go away when their mission is completed, it is the line organization that is responsible for employee development, critical skills retention, and preparing for the next project to come. Because of the variability of knowledge retention efforts between groups/sections, tools that facilitate these local efforts may be quite helpful.
Lessons Learned
A characteristic of a learning-oriented organization is that it is as open about its mistakes and failures as it is about its successes. For an organization specializing in high-risk engineering projects, a formal lessons learned capture process is a hallmark of engineering process maturity, and it can be an effective countermeasure against avoidable risk. But it requires a culture of open discourse in which an engineer is motivated to reveal discomfiting events for the betterment of the greater mission.
JPL has a mature lessons learned process that represents JPL's signature KM activity. It features:
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A Lessons Learned Committee that includes representatives from the major technical divisions and has met weekly since 1984.
Careful validation of candidates, thorough verification of the source information, and extensive "wordsmithing" of high quality lessons learned.
Infusion of lesson learned recommendations into JPL procedures and training (so that a project need not depend on the appropriate subject matter expert reading the lesson learned at the proper time in the project life cycle).
The JPL lessons learned process was adopted by NASA as the model for the Agency-wide process mandated by NPR 7120.6.
Search/Taxonomy Tools
JPL has rolled out an Entry, Descent, and Landing Repository (EDL-R) to address Agency-wide concerns about preserving EDL capabilities between missions that involve landings. It is also anticipated that the JPL KM process will identify "EDL technology" as knowledge especially critical to JPL missions. This NASA repository managed by JPL utilizes the advanced search, metadata management, and indexing features of EPrints®, an open-source software package for building open access repositories that are compliant with the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. The EDL-R contains over 2200 documents on EDL technology, and it checks whether a user should have access to export-controlled material in the repository.
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JPL Tube is a revolutionary JPL version of You Tube®. Like the famous public site, this internal site allows users to upload knowledge content in video format. However, JPL Tube also:
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Allows the user to enter metadata that will increase the power of searches.
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Performs highly accurate transcription of the audio track, and displays the results in closed captioning that accompanies the video. The transcribed text permits full text searching of the JPL Tube content.
How is this revolutionary? Video potentially offers relatively effortless capture of critical technical decision making (e.g., design change/review meetings) and training, but its use has been hampered by our inability to search hundreds of filmed hours to find a single knowledge nugget. Advanced video search technology permits JPL to host critical knowledge like Bill Layman's 2-day video training session on How to Be a Chief Mechanical Engineer.
Video transcription to text allows the JPL user to search Bill Layman's videotaped remarks and find, for example, the discussion of design principles specifically related to spacecraft "springs." As the user hears the words being spoken, the "interactive transcript" technology highlights the matching words in the transcript displayed alongside the video. This facilitates user extraction of documentation from spoken content; or if the video is being used for training, it greatly enhances the users retention of the material. Although the Bill Layman material is an excellent example of capturing knowledge that resides in the line organization, the KM program plans to explore opportunities to exploit JPL Tube to capture technical discussions within a spaceflight project.
The Peer Review & Technical Questions Database was developed in 1998 to provide a "mind tickler" of items that engineers should consider in preparing for a peer review. The database contains questions, and background information on why these questions are important, in 75 disciplines. It does not provide answers, since they will vary with the project and mission characteristics, the technology in use, etc. With problems occurring on missions that should have been caught in the peer review process, this knowledge resource mitigates the risk that the top discipline experts will not be available to support a peer review.
Wikipedia
JPL Wired is a Wikipedia-style, online resource customized for JPL employees and containing over 1100 articles posted by them. It is not intended to be a repository for official JPL rules or procedures, but rather:
A place to document concise explanations for common JPL engineering, scientific and general subjects of interest from a JPL point of view. Articles also may include links to standards, useful websites, book references and good JPL points of contact if further clarification is needed (e.g., drop testing)
For those behind the JPL firewall, an openly accessible site to give access to all the great information that currently exists isolated in file cabinets and on hard drives across the lab.
An excellent way to transfer technical discipline-specific lessons learned and to pass on subject matter knowledge. It's allows the JPL engineer to more efficiently leverage off the research and experience of his/her peers.
"The first place you go" when needing to find out more about a subject as a JPL engineer.
Open for editing by almost all, with a Web 2.0 mentality for encouraging collaboration.
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Division 31 is making extensive use of wikis as a colaboration tool. For example, the Mars 2020 Wiki is a portal for a variety of project information, such as contacts, schedules, and forms; the M2020 Risks & Lessons Learned Database; the M2020 Science Library; and ERD, ECR, and CCB status. Section 312 finds it easier to share flight system design documentation in the wiki than in DocuShare.
The JPL Flight Anomaly Wiki documents JPL spaceflight experience in a case study format intended to inform engineers of significant pre-launch and in-flight anomalies of institutional concern. Information on saves and near misses is also sought, and tags may be added to anomaly descriptions to facilitate searches. Contributions by individuals to this wiki are welcome, and engineers are also invited to edit previously submitted material.
Knowledge Networks
Knowledge networks, such as communities of practice, annual professional conferences, and social network discussion groups, offer opportunities for mass collaboration and intensive knowledge sharing between individuals that share a common area of technical expertise.
The NASA Office of the Chief Engineer funds JPL to develop and maintain the NASA Engineering Network (NEN), a cross-Agency system dedicated to improving knowledge sharing across all the NASA Centers. Engineers use the site to access and share lessons learned, find and interact with peers and experts in discipline-focused communities of practice, view engineering organization charts for all the Centers, and search 3 million engineering documents in dozens of databases across NASA. The JPL team includes experts in communities of practice, search, and collaborative technology.
Capture of Project Knowledge
Each JPL project utilizes a digital "project library" to store project documentation—analyses, test reports, presentations, etc. The knowledge in these libraries is of great dollar value because most JPL projects inherit much of their flight system, instrument, and mission design from previous projects. In addition, the library contents may be sought to cast light on issues that arise after launch. For example, cost analysts make estimates in proposals based on detailed information from previous missions. Following launch, however, there is limited interest and funding for maintaining such libraries, and the project's engineering products may not be readily available to new projects for review or reuse. The JPL KM program seeks opportunities to preserve and share project knowledge that was captured primarily for use during the project lifecycle.
Project Armamentarium
The project library for each JPL project is closely controlled by the project manager, who employs an information management engineer to structure and administer the site, grant requests for access, and advocate its use within the project. All JPL project libraries use the DocuShare® enterprise content management software, which is searchable within DocuShare® or through the JPL Unified Search utility. This provides a team on a spaceflight project with ready access to information generated by other teams on the project. Due to the segregation of knowledge products by project, however, access to Project X content by Project Y personnel or by individuals in the line organization is purposely limited. When a project library is deactivated at the end of the project, the JPL Library archives a snapshot that is available for search, but the ability to find and data mine these repositories could be improved.
JPL technical knowledge from 50 years of spaceflight experience has been distilled into a pair of JPL primary engineering standards. The JPL Design Principles is a set of about 350 design rules that JPL almost always follows in designing systems and missions. The companion engineering bible is the JPL Flight Project Practices, which covers the mandatory JPL engineering tasks other than design (e.g., inspection, test, parts selection). Each project formally weighs its plans against this accumulated JPL wisdom, which also includes a rationale accompanying each rule. The Design Principles and Flight Project Practices are living documents that are updated to capture new project experience. NASA is urging the other NASA Centers to develop similar engineering bibles.
JPL is developing a Technology & Engineering Knowledge Repository (TEK-R) that will leverage the technology demonstrated in the EDL-R (above) to preserve JPL intellectual assets for future missions. Instead of focusing on a specific discipline like Entry, Descent, and Landing, however, the objective of the TEK-R is to improve the accessibility of engineering knowledge and enabling technology generated on previous projects. Like the EDL-R, the TEK-R accommodates both limited release and publicly releasable documents, and it can accommodate most file types. The customization of the open source EPrints® application performed for the EDL-R, such as filtering out sensitive documents from unauthorized users, virus checking, and batch processing, is being utilized for the TEK-R. The OCKO will negotiate with project managers for early access to select material in JPL project libraries. Unlike the Agency-wide EDL-R, the TEK-R will be limited to JPL-internal access only.
Face-to-Face Knowledge Transfer
JPL has instituted monthly Pause & Learn (PaL) sessions based on the practice established by Dr. Ed Rogers of GSFC. PaL assumes that project management problems are not unique to a spaceflight project, but are shared by other project managers. During the monthly JPL project manager meeting, a project manager discusses a problem or success that occurred on the project. The manager outlines the solution that was implemented and solicits comments from the other project managers in attendance. Following several such monthly sessions, in June 2013 the JPL Associate Director for Flight Projects and Mission Success requested that the PaL segment be added to future agendas of the monthly meeting of project managers.
Monthly Lunch & Learn (LaL) sessions sponsored by the JPL Office of the Chief Engineer bring together each ongoing JPL project's Project System Engineer (PSE) to discuss topics central to the PSE role. Begun in March 2013, three sessions have been held on such topics as "How to Implement Class D Missions."
Posters placed in prominent locations throughout the Lab announce one-hour noontime seminars on technical topics topics ranging from "Orbital Mechanics for Dummies" to "Why Does MBSE (Model-Based System Engineering) Need a COP (Community of Practice)?" These informal talks are given frequently by subject matter experts who volunteer to explain a topic to experts in other technical disciplines who might be interested in the topic.
Created in 1995, the Advanced Projects Design Team--Team X-- was the first concurrent engineering capability in the aerospace industry. The purpose of this JPL concurrent and collaborative process, performed in early maturity, is to get the design to converge quickly and to apply tools to capturing the design and mission concept.. The core team is co-located in the JPL Project Design Center with networked workstations, a supporting data management infrastructure, large interactive graphic displays, and computer modeling and simulation tools. However, the heart of this real-time concurrent engineering capability is the knowledge captured in historical data repositories and in the shared project model that the design team updates as it produces exploration architectures, systems, payloads, instruments, and technologies for Earth, lunar, asteroid, comet, planetary, astronomy and physics missions.
Capture of Individuals' Technical Knowledge
The knowledge held by organizations, including the JPL line and project organizations, is mainly explicit knowledge that can be articulated, coded, and stored in writing or verbally, and does not typically require interaction with a knowledge holder. But the technical knowledge possessed by individuals tends to be experience-based and difficult to communicate to others in writing or verbally. The importance of capturing the technical knowledge of individuals is heightened by the graying of the NASA workforce. With NASA employee demographics heavily weighted toward senior workers, the KM program advocates innovative methods to capture and share their technical knowledge.
Storytelling
Storytelling is transformative because the trustworthiness of the storyteller's point-of-view is established through the story, and because the knowledge gained by the audience is leavened with context and emotion.
JPL Stories is a quarterly venue for informal talks about a JPL project or series of events, usually giving a personal perspective or reminiscences about the experience. Often videotaped, they're an effective way for employees with interesting stories to tell to communicate the organizational culture and help employees develop a sense of organizational identity. These stories offer an approach different from the more formal lectures, seminars and town halls JPL sponsors. They may feature a standing storyteller encircled by an audience sitting on the floor. Past stories have included:
- "Parachutes on Mars: The Mystery of the Supersonic Jellyfish"
- "Humanlike Robots: The Ultimate Challenge to Mimicking Nature"
- "There and Back Again: A Layman's Guide to Ultra-Reliability for Interstellar Missions"
- "The Kepler Mission: Good Planets Are Hard To Find"
Mentoring
Some argue that the most effective means of conveying understanding is through direct communication of experienced-based knowledge from one person to another—and that knowledge repositories are much less useful. This "tacit" knowledge, exchanged though observation and imitation over a period of extensive interaction, can be fostered by programs for formal mentoring or apprenticeship.
The Phaeton Early Career Hire Development Program is JPL's principal venue for formal technical mentoring of Early Career Hire (ECH) engineers and scientists interested in gaining broad spaceflight systems experience. (Phaeton, the son of Helios/Apollo, suffered from his lack of adequate training prior to taking the reins to steer Apollo's fiery chariot across the sky.) For Phaeton, JPL itself funds the development and launch of small, high-risk, flight projects on which ECHs spend 50 to 100 percent of their time for up to 18 months. Phaeton allows an ECH to rapidly gain hands-on experience in multiple subsystems of a project and gain exposure to multiple phases of a project cycle. To accommodate as many ECHs as possible, the Phaeton Program has multiple projects in development at one time. Each project is offset by one year to allow the distinct project phases for separate projects to overlap. This overlap allows an ECH working on the assembly and test of a project to observe the proposal and preliminary design phases of a separate project. To accommodate this multitasking, the ECH may be assigned more than one mentor. As of May 2013, 78 ECHs have been mentored on the following JPL-funded projects:
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Mast Dynamics (complete)
MSL Mentoring Program. The training needed to perform MSL operations functions cannot be captured in users manuals. In October 2014, MSL began a 10-month mentoring program in which 17 mentors with deep project experience in surface ops mentored 58 MSL Ops Team members.
In addition to daily interactions and bi-weekly mentor/group meetings, the participants met with MSL management each quarter to provide feedback and lessons learned. Early in the program, the participants met with Dr. Elachi to discuss mentoring at JPL and his own experiences as both a mentee and mentor.
The Mars Program Office also sponsored a rover design engineering mentoring program similar to the JPL Phaeton early career hire (ECH) development program, Six ECHs were mentored by their group supervisors and other experienced personnel. They built three flight-like rovers, and they were guided through the entire design process from initial design reviews to delivery.
JPL participates in the NASA Systems Engineering Leadership Development Program (SELDP) which provides top NASA systems engineers with opportunities to be mentored and coached outside of their home NASA Centers. Participants are carefully matched with project assignments that will broaden and improve their discipline knowledge and skills, and their ability to lead complex Agency-wide projects.
Publications
Publication of technical papers and attendance at professional conferences is a primary means for professionals to maintain currency in their area of expertise, and to advance knowledge.
The annual IEEE Aerospace Conference features sessions built around sub-disciplines that are of particular interest to JPL engineers and scientists. But it also provides intensive networking opportunities for JPL employees who may never encounter one another on the JPL campus.
JPL personnel participate in standards development on 56 Standards Developing Organization (SDO) committees. Technical standards and handbooks are the primary codification of accepted knowledge and rules within a technical discipline upon which affected organizations have formally expressed agreement. Standards capture new technology and lessons learned, provide a common base for interoperability, and facilitate engineering excellence. JPL supports individuals in their participation on the following SDOs:
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AIAA Standards Executive Council
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ANSI/INCITS U.S. Technical Advisory Group PL22.3 Fortran
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ASNT Ultrasonic Committee
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CCSDS Asynchronous Message Service Working Group
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CCSDS Cross Support Services Area
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CCSDS Space Link Coding WG and Next Generation Uplink
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ISO Technical Committee 20, Subcommittee 14, Working Group 3 (Space Operations & Ground Support)
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OMG SysML Quantities, Units, Dimensions and Values
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SAE G-19 Counterfeit Electronic Parts Committee
and over 40 other SDO committees.
In addition, the JPL Engineering Standards Office participates in the formal vetting of new and updated NASA and industry standards and handbooks used by NASA programs and projects. The knowledge codified in NASA and external standards and handbooks is accessible within NASA using the Standards And Technical Assistance Resource Tool (START).
Expert Locator
An expert locator tool, which is useful when seeking a subject matter expert to answer a technical question, may be most effective when the list of experts is drawn up by the institution. However, because JPL has found such lists difficult to maintain, it does not presently host an expert locator.
Social networking sites like LinkedIn® provide an alternative to institutional expert locators in which an expert's credentials are vetted by peers who have previously been vetted by the knowledge seeker. Gateway is JPL's social networking site in which JPLers can submit a personal profile or view a profile of another. Entering the search string "force limiting vibration test" into Gateway produces a list of JPL experts in one window, and a list of linked documents on this topic written by the experts in another window. The user has the option to extend the search beyond JPL to access other NASA Centers and aerospace companies.
Case Studies
Senior JPL management has expressed an interest in the development of case studies based on JPL missions to augment the case study catalogs published by Goddard Space Flight Center and the NASA Safety Center. The JPL OCKO is preparing a set of such JPL-focused case studies, and will post them on the case study site as they are completed and cleared for unrestricted public release.
Public Engagement
Crowdsourcing. JPL and NASA are accessing the crowd to solve pressing technical problems or develop a needed product by issuing “challenges” in which useful solutions are awarded recognition and prizes. Examples of successful challenges include:
- Mars balance mass. Find a dual purpose for the balance mass that is jettisoned from Mars landers to balance the lander during EDL winning concept
- Planetary data systems: Cassini rings. Develop algorithm to find anomalies and features of interest in the rings of Saturn that are not otherwise detectable due to false positives. winning concept
- Asteroid tracker. Optimize the use of an array of radar dishes when tracking Near Earth Objects. winning concept
- Converting in situ materials. Seek systems that can convert in situ materials into interlocking structural elements for construction that can support exploration on a planet. winning concept
- Asteroid Data Hunter. Create an algorithm to detect moving objects using Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) data. winning concept
JPL maintains an Education & Public Outreach Program for sharing JPL-generated knowledge that provides a compelling benefit to the public. Each manager of a spaceflight project must prepare a plan for educating the public about the mission, inspiring and motivating U.S. students and teachers, and for advancing U.S. scientific and technological capabilities. The manager must show how each project feeds a pipeline promoting science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) careers and cultivating a science and technology workforce.
JPL also shares its accomplishments by inviting the public to an annual JPL Open House: 45,000 visitors attended the last such weekend event. The Open House is staffed by JPL volunteers—engineers and scientists who are eager to share their work in extending humanity beyond low Earth orbit.
