National Aeronautics and Space Administration Academy Sharing Knowledge The NASA Source for Project Management and Engineering Excellence | APPEL SUMMER | 2013 Inside THE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT JOURNEY KSC SWAMP WORKS PREDICTABLE PROJECT SURPRISES gnarta SuhsoJn amrir AoineS, ecroFr i. AS.: Utidero CtohP Utidero AS.: i. ecroFr AoineS, amrir SuhsoJn gnarta ON THE COVER Above Bear Lake, Alaska, the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, are created by solar radiation entering the atmosphere at the magnetic poles. The appearance of these lights is just one way solar radiation affects us; it can also interfere with NASA missions in low-Earth orbit. To achieve long-duration human spaceflight missions in deeper space, several NASA centers are working to find better safety measures and solutions to protect humans from space radiation. ASK MAGAZINE | 1 Contents 21 5 9 DEPARTMENTS INSIGHTS STORIES 3 9 5 In This Issue Predictable Surprises: Back to the Future: BY DON COHEN Bridging Risk-Perception Gaps KSC Swamp Works BY PEDRO C. RIBEIRO Concerns about BY KERRY ELLIS Kennedy’s new Swamp project-threatening risks are often ignored Works encourages innovation through 4 or unspoken. experimentation and knowledge sharing. From the NASA CKO Our Knowledge Legacy BY ED HOFFMAN 21 13 The Knowledge Management Journey University Capstone Projects: BY EDWARD W. ROGERS Goddard’s CKO Small Investments, Big Rewards 42 reflects on what ten years on the job have BY LAURIE STAUBER Glenn’s partnership The Knowledge Notebook taught him. with universities generates first-rate Big Data—The Latest Organizational space-medicine research. Idea-Movement BY LAURENCE PRUSAK 25 Creating NASA’s Knowledge Map 17 BY MATTHEW KOHUT AND HALEY STEPHENSON One Person’s Mentoring Experience 44 A new online tool helps show who knows BY NATALIE HENRICH The author explains ASK Interactive what at NASA. how she found and worked with her mentor. 29 33 Lessons on Leadership: The Evolution The Road to New Flight Software of the Radiation Protection Project BY CHRISTOPHER KRUPIARZ To develop new BY KEITH L. WOODMAN AND DEBI TOMEK software, an Applied Physics Lab team Thanks to wise leadership and open collaborates with several NASA centers. communication, an important project survives multiple challenges. 37 Tales from a Five-Sided Building BY STEPHEN GARBER Six months at the Pentagon gave Garber an opportunity to compare NASA and the Department of Defense. Issue No. 51 Staff ACADEMY DIRECTOR AND PUBLISHER Dr. Edward Hoffman [email protected] EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Laurence Prusak [email protected] MANAGING EDITOR Don Cohen [email protected] The Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL) and ASK EDITOR Magazine help NASA managers and project teams accomplish today’s missions Kerry Ellis and meet tomorrow’s challenges by sponsoring knowledge-sharing events and [email protected] publications, providing performance enhancement services and tools, supporting CONTRIBUTING EDITORS career development programs, and creating opportunities for project management and engineering collaboration with universities, professional associations, industry Matt Kohut partners, and other government agencies. [email protected] Haley Stephenson ASK Magazine grew out of the Academy and its Knowledge Sharing Initiative, [email protected] designed for program/project managers and engineers to share expertise and lessons learned with fellow practitioners across the Agency. Reflecting the Academy’s SENIOR KNOWLEDGE SHARING responsibility for project management and engineering development and the CONSULTANT challenges of NASA’s new mission, ASK includes articles about meeting the technical Jon Boyle and managerial demands of complex projects, as well as insights into organizational [email protected] knowledge, learning, collaboration, performance measurement and evaluation, and scheduling. We at APPEL Knowledge Sharing believe that stories recounting the real- KNOWLEDGE SHARING ANALYSTS life experiences of practitioners communicate important practical wisdom and best Ben Bruneau practices that readers can apply to their own projects and environments. By telling [email protected] their stories, NASA managers, scientists, and engineers share valuable experience-based Ramien Pierre knowledge and foster a community of reflective practitioners. The stories that appear [email protected] in ASK are written by the “best of the best” project managers and engineers, primarily from NASA, but also from other government agencies, academia, and industry. Who ACADEMY PROGRAM MANAGER better than a project manager or engineer to help a colleague address a critical issue on Yvonne Massaquoi a project? Big projects, small projects—they’re all here in ASK. [email protected] You can help ASK provide the stories you need and want by letting our editors know DESIGN what you think about what you read here and by sharing your own stories. To Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group, Inc. submit stories or ask questions about editorial policy, contact Don Cohen, Managing www.hzdg.com Editor, [email protected], 781-860-5270. PRINTING SPECIALIST For inquiries about Academy Knowledge Sharing programs and products, please contact Tun Hla Yvonne Massaquoi, InuTeq LLC, 6303 Ivy Lane, Suite 130, Greenbelt, MD 20770; [email protected] [email protected]; 301-837-9127. ASK MAGAZINE | 3 In This Issue In “Our Knowledge Legacy,” NASA Chief Knowledge Officer Ellis describes labs at Kennedy Space Center designed to (CKO) Ed Hoffman describes his visit with elementary- create knowledge by bringing together people with diverse school children in Brooklyn, some of whom may become backgrounds and by hands-on experimentation, building NASA engineers, scientists, or managers decades from now. prototypes that teach the experimenters things they could Talking to those smart, enthusiastic students, he realized never have learned from abstract planning or design. Aware how important it is to preserve and transmit the agency’s rich of the importance of making what they discover available store of knowledge so that future employees can build on it to others, the Swamp Works teams are also careful to to advance aeronautics and space science and exploration. document their work as they go along. No NASA mission starts absolutely from scratch. They all Laurie Stauber’s “University Capstone Projects: Small depend on knowledge gained from the experience of earlier Investments, Big Rewards” describes another way to work. As several articles in this issue of ASK make clear, acquire new knowledge. Glenn Research Center partners effectively fostering and sharing that knowledge demands with several universities on student projects that explore thoughtfulness, skill, and creativity. space-medicine issues, providing valuable experience for Edward Rogers, who has been Goddard’s CKO for the students and valuable learning to NASA. more than a decade, shares lessons from “The Knowledge The right knowledge is essential to project success Management Journey,” including the importance of fitting but not sufficient to make it happen. A couple of articles knowledge activities to people’s specific needs and ways of in this issue demonstrate the importance of leadership working, rather than trying to impose pre-existing knowledge and good communication. In “The Road to New Flight management techniques on them. Rogers has helped make Software,” Christopher Krupiarz shows how the Applied “pause and learn” reflection and case-study discussion an Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins worked with several integral part of work at Goddard. NASA centers to build complex new software. And Keith In “Creating NASA’s Knowledge Map,” Matthew Kohut Woodman and Debi Tomek’s “Lessons on Leadership: The and Haley Stephenson discuss a new tool that shows Evolution of the Radiation Protection Project” describes the the richness and diversity of knowledge work at NASA’s skilled leadership that kept a project alive and well in spite of centers. As it continues to be enriched and refined, the numerous changes that could have killed it. map is likely to be a valuable way to locate essential knowledge anywhere in the agency. That matters because the knowledge required to solve a problem or avoid disaster Don Cohen almost always exists somewhere in the organization. But it Managing Editor is not always available to the people who need it to make sound decisions. Sometimes that knowledge is discounted or ignored, a point Pedro Ribeiro makes in “Predictable Surprises: Bridging Risk-Perception Gaps.” He outlines a technique for addressing that danger. Of course NASA is also in the business of developing new expertise. In “Back to the Future: KSC Swamp Works,” Kerry 4 | ASK MAGAZINE From the NASA CKO Our Knowledge Legacy BY ED HOFFMAN When we’re young, we are excited by our dreams. that has enabled us to complete the construction Our future possibilities seem endless and alluring. of the space station while manning it continuously This spring, I had the opportunity to step back for over a decade and to land a car-sized rover in a into that childhood world of possibilities when I crater on Mars. That knowledge will only live on returned to my elementary school in Brooklyn. Going and be available to them in the people who worked back to P.S. 199 (Frederick Wachtel school) after on these programs and the systems we design to forty years was a profoundly moving experience. I’d preserve and share it. been invited to talk with