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Features

Reflections on the PMI North American Congress

The Project Management Institute (PMI) North American Congress, held in Denver in mid-October, reflected the growth of project management as a profession, writes Academy Director Dr. Ed Hoffman.

Having witnessed the evolution of project management as a profession over the last twenty-five years, it’s clear that interest in project management is exploding around the globe. Years ago there was just one annual PMI conference, whereas today they take place around the world. The North American congress hosted close to 4000 attendees, making it PMI’s largest gathering ever, another indicator of the hunger for knowledge about project management.

In his remarks to the congress, PMI Chief Executive Greg Balestrero offered some insights about the current landscape of project management. He noted that while cost is clearly paramount today, it is important not to lose sight of the need for quality and leadership; a one-dimensional focus on tracking cost will not result in better outcomes for our projects or for society.

General Colin L. Powell (Ret.), former U.S. Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered an incredibly inspiring keynote address to the conference. Looking back on his life in the military and at the Department of State, he noted that everything he had done could be looked at as a series of projects. Getting things done required focusing on people, being smart about resources. and dealing with uncertainty and complexity. He also spoke about the formative experiences of his early life, which instilled in him the importance of treating people with respect. He later came to view this as the key to successful leadership. It is a timeless lesson.

- Ed Hoffman

October 30th, 2008 – VOL. 1 Issue 10

This Month in NASA History

Thirtieth Anniversary of Nimbus 7

Nimbus 7, the last in a series of R&D weather satellites operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, launched on October 25, 1978.

Nimbus 7, also known as Nimbus-G, was launched on a Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The satellite was placed in a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 955 km, enabling it to provide global coverage every six days.

The satellite supported eight instruments (Coastal Zone Color Scanner, Earth Radiation Budget, Limb Infrared Monitor of the Stratosphere, Stratosheric Aerosol Measurement II, Stratospheric and Mesospheric Sounder, Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet/Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer, and Temperature Humidity Infrared Radiometer) in support of seven experiments. It collected data on ozone, the stratosphere, ocean conditions, and global weather. The Stratospheric and Mesopheric Sounder experiment included a research team from the United Kingdom.

Nimbus 7 remained in operation until 1994.

October 30th, 2008 – VOL. 1 Issue 10

View from the Outside

South Korea Prepares KSLV-1

As it readies the first Korea Space Launch Vehicle (KSLV-1) for flight, South Korea aims to become the ninth country to launch its own satellite within its borders.

To develop the vehicle, Korea Aeronautics Research Institute (KARI) has partnered with Russia’s Khrunichev Center, which has produced the first stage of the KSLV-1. South Korea and Russia signed a space exploration partnership in 2004

KSLV-1 is slated for launch in 2009. An earlier launch date of December 2008 has been postponed.

October 30th, 2008 – VOL. 1 Issue 10

Inventor’s Bookshelf

Designing Interactions

If a system is both digital and interactive, it falls under design guru Bill Moggridge’s broad definition of interaction design.

In Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge, designer of the 1981 GRiD laptop computer and a founder of the design firm IDEO, explains how digital designers have come to focus on designing a user’s interaction with a product. Rather than basing designs on strictly aesthetic or utilitarian concerns, the user interaction itself has become the central feature of the design. Moggridge calls this “interaction design,” and cites decades worth of examples, ranging from the computer mouse to the use of windows (small “w”) on desktop computers to the evolution of handheld computers. He interviews the designers of many of these innovations, and examines why they won out over other possibilities. The last chapter, which is currently available as a free download, offers a summary of Moggridge’s theory of interaction design as well as his thoughts on prototyping, learning about human behavior, and the design process.

October 30th, 2008 – VOL. 1 Issue 10

Features

Innovative Partnership Resources

Learn more about NASA’s publications that deal with innovation and public-private partnerships.

NASA has three regular publications dedicated to innovation and partnerships with industry.

Techbriefs, a monthly magazine, features exclusive reports of innovations developed by NASA and its industry partners/contractors that can be applied to develop new/improved products and solve engineering or manufacturing problems. Authored by the engineers or scientists who did the work, the briefs span a wide array of fields, including electronics, physical sciences, materials, computer software, mechanics, machinery/automation, manufacturing/fabrication, mathematics/information sciences, and life sciences.

Spinoff, an annual magazine, highlights the transfer of NASA technology to the private sector. The agency distributes copies to politicians, economic decision makers, company CEOs, academics, professionals in technology transfer, the news media, and the general public.

Technology Innovation provides information about NASA’s technology needs and opportunities, as well as interesting facts and feature articles about our successes. It is published by the Innovative Partnerships Program. NASA seeks to create partnerships and cooperative activities with U.S. enterprises to develop technology that is applicable to NASA’s mission technology needs and contributes to commercial competitiveness in global markets.

October 30th, 2008 – VOL. 1 Issue 10

Features

Can the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving Help You?

What’s the contradiction in the problem you’re trying to solve? The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) may help you find the answer.

Every invention is a proposed solution to a contradiction. A coffee mug needs to keep liquids hot on the inside while remaining cool enough to touch on the outside.¹Contradictions like these are the essence of engineering tradeoffs, and they are familiar to anyone who devises solutions to problems, from a rocket scientist to a cosmetics package designer. The best answer, of course, is one that requires no compromise to solve the contradiction. That is an invention.

Genrich Altshuller, a Soviet engineer, noted that there are common problems that inventors face in all fields. While working as a patent examiner in the Soviet Union in the mid-1940s, Altshuller reviewed more than 200,000 patents. He found that about 80% of them described incremental improvements, not inventions. The remaining 40,000, however, were inventive solutions to problems.

Altshuller then set about developing a rigorous taxonomy of those inventions, focusing on how the inventors solved problems. He found that there were 40 inventive principles that were used time and again, regardless of the industry or technical discipline, to solve common technical contradictions. This led Altshuller to a Theory of Inventing Problem Solving, which became known worldwide by its Russian acronym TRIZ.

Altshuller’s method focuses on straightforward problem-solving skills: identify the problem; find the contradictions within the problem; apply the relevant inventive principles, and formulate an ideal solution. TRIZ is in no way simplistic—it calls for detailed study of the contradictions and the inventive principles that can address them—but its basic steps are grounded in a common-sense process that can be applied across a range of disciplines.

¹This metaphor is borrowed from a recent feature in TRIZ Journal.

Read a basic overview of TRIZ.
Learn more about the Altshuller Institute.
Learn more about the Academy’s IDEAS course.

October 30th, 2008 – VOL. 1 Issue 10

Features

Tool Innovation: The Distributed Observer Network (DON)

Video game technology is providing the basis for robust visualization and collaboration capabilities at NASA.

How will the Ares I vehicle roll out of the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad? During flight, how will the separation of the different stages of the rocket vary depending on minor adjustments to the trajectory?

Modeling and simulation tools have been essential in NASA’s efforts to design, build, and execute the complex systems that its missions demand. In the case of the Constellation program, these tools are vital for ensuring mission safety and success. In a business where "test as you fly and fly as you test" is the maxim, 3-D simulations can offer the next best thing to actual flight hardware tests—which are not always possible—at a fraction of the cost.

Given the importance of modeling and simulation, the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) has developed a comprehensive strategy for it over the life cycle of the Constellation program that will incorporate a number of different tools capable of using common data. While simulation is often associated with training (think of flight simulators), the ESMD strategy employs modeling and simulation in all phases from planning and requirements definition all the way through operations.

The challenge of making simulations that can be shared among team members is compounded by the fact that projects are spread across NASA’s ten field centers. "If you’re developing a simulation for a large group of geographically distributed stakeholders, it becomes very difficult and very expensive to get them all in the same place at the same time to show them the results of a simulation," says Bill Little of Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

Little knows this from first-hand experience. He is a technical lead on a team at KSC that runs the Distributed Observer Network (DON), an innovative solution to this problem. The DON enables teams of engineers to view and collaborate on 3-D representations of the environmental, design, and operational data from models and telemetry. Its modular client-server architecture allows for the rapid deployment and visualization of data previously visible only through proprietary simulation software. Each user can view and move within the simulation environment independently. (To use the example of a launch simulation, one user might choose to zoom in on the launch stand while at the same time another might focus on the upper stage of the vehicle.) The collaboration tools also facilitate real-time communication through voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP) and text chat, as well as long-term communication through saved notes.

The software allows multiple users to connect securely using their desktop or laptop computers and view the simulation results from anywhere on the NASA network. "By using a client server architecture, we can distribute this data more easily than other formats like video. Those files are often large, and good central server space to host them on has not been easy to come by," explains Rebecca Mazzone, Software Architect for Data Presentation & Visualization (DPV).

DPV is an element of the Constellation Program tasked with providing tools to efficiently and effectively communicate simulation data. DON has been a key piece of its efforts. Doug Craig, ESMD Directorate Integration Office (DIO) Strategic Analysis Manger, has also identified DON as a key component of the Lunar Surface Operations Simulation that is supporting NASA’s Lunar Architecture strategic studies. These studies will help determine the feasibility of potential partnerships and share them across an international team.

The DON is based upon a gaming engine called Torque that was adapted for NASA by Valador, Inc. The engine is a product of GarageGames, the maker of several commercial video games. Valador chose Torque for DON after a NASA-directed study comparing the cost, lifecycle, licensing, performance and handling of large data sets for multiple engines. It first developed the technology as an internal research and development project before partnering with KSC to create the DON.

The DON has been used to visualize a simulation of an Ares I liftoff, ascent, and rendezvous with International Space Station as well as the lunar surface, and it has begun to attract notice: NASA’s Innovations and Contribution Board (ICB) recognized the members of its civil servant-contractor team with a software invention and Tech Brief Award.

Learn more about the DON.
Read a short white paper about the DON.
Watch a short video about the DON.

October 30th, 2008 – VOL. 1 Issue 10

Features

Academy Holds Masters Forum 17

NASA’s 50th anniversary was the theme of the Academy’s seventeenth Masters Forum, which took place at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) from October 28-30, 2008.

The forum brought together a high-powered group of NASA veterans with current expert practitioners to share “Reflections, Projections and Insights” about NASA’s first fifty years. Invited speakers included former NASA Associate Administrator Charles Kennel, former Dryden Center Director Ken Szalei, former Goddard Space Flight Center Director Noel Hinners, former Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate Al Diaz, former Marshall Space Flight Deputy Director Carolyn Griner, and former Ames Research Center Deputy Director Gus Guastaferro.

In keeping with focus on learning from NASA’s historic achievements, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and film director Duncan Copp attended an evening screening of Copp’s film In the Shadow of the Moon and participated in a question-and-answer session.

Learn more about the Masters Forum.

October 30th, 2008 – VOL. 1 Issue 10

Features

Academy Brief: Performance Enhancement Support for Project Teams

No matter where your project team is in its life cycle, the Academy offers direct support that can help.

The Academy’s direct team support services increase a project’s probability of success by delivering the right support at the right time. Through one-on-one assistance, focused workshops, or large-group sessions, we help projects achieve immediate project goals while enhancing long-term team capabilities.

Project performance enhancement begins with assessments and consultations to evaluate needs. Based on the assessments, Academy experts propose relevant developmental activities. These services are provided through either field center or agency funding.

Assessment and Development

Team managers improve project and executive team dynamics most effectively when they assess team and individual behavior. The assessment tools we use can measure behavioral effectiveness for teams and leaders, as well as team knowledge. Following assessment, interventions can include workshops, coaching, and consultation with experienced practitioners, many of them retired NASA and aerospace industry project managers.

Project Life Cycle Support

The Academy meets the needs of NASA project teams by providing expertise to support any project competency. Services range from consultations on team building, planning and scheduling, program control analysis, systems integration support, risk management, and software management. NASA teams can benefit from consultation with expert practitioners and subject matter experts during every project phase from formulation through implementation and evaluation.

Learn more about requesting support for your project team.

October 30th, 2008 – VOL. 1 Issue 10

Message from the Academy Director

Can We Learn to Innovate?

Innovation is critical to our continuing progress in space. Can it be learned?

At NASA we know that innovation goes hand in hand with our ability to succeed at increasingly complex missions. The success of Messenger’s recent Mercury fly-by is a dramatic reminder of how much we gain from seemingly incremental advances in knowledge and technology. The images we’ve seen thus far are evidence of the incredible progress since the Mariner 10 mission of the 1970s. These are the fruits of innovations large and small.

Technological innovation has become an expectation. Gordon Moore, a founder of Intel, famously predicted in 1965 that the capacity of integrated circuits would double about every two years (Moore’s Law), and to date the semiconductor industry has not reached the physical limits that would end the streak.

A recent article by Babson College professors Tom Davenport and Bala Iyer in Harvard Business Review ("Reverse Engineering Google’s Innovation Machine," April 2008) looked at how Google facilitates innovation and what kinds of organizations can benefit from emulating its approach. Through their study of Google, Davenport and Iyer identified six key attributes:

strategic patience
infrastructure built to support innovation
an ecosystem that enables architectural control
innovation built into job descriptions
a cultivated taste for failure and chaos
using data to vet inspiration

As a government organization, NASA is obviously very different than a publicly traded for-profit company, but some of the attributes of Google’s innovation engine are clearly relevant for us. Developing a manned mission to the moon requires strategic patience almost by definition. Through initiatives such as the Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP), we are building an infrastructure that supports innovation. And as an engineering organization that operates in the harsh environs of space, we have no choice but to rely on data to vet our inspirations.

Given the complexity of our missions, our projects constantly balance the need to maintain order with the need to adapt and innovate. Innovation typically thrives in organizations where there is openness of discussion, where adequate resources are available to pursue new pathways, and where knowledge moves easily. These preconditions of innovation represent a combination of formal decisions and processes (e.g., dedicated resources) and cultural norms and values (e.g., open communication). They also don’t fit neatly within the traditional project management "three-legged stool" of cost, schedule, and technical performance, which emphasizes controls. As a result, our project leaders need both the "hard" skills of project control as well as the adaptive skills that enable them to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape.

The Academy seeks to enable innovation at NASA at the individual, team, and organization levels. Through our training curriculum, which includes courses such as Innovative Design Engineering Applications (IDEAs) and Seven Axioms of Good Engineering (SAGE), we ensure that individuals have the opportunity to build their personal skills and capabilities. We support project teams in the field by providing expert practitioners, coaches, and mentors. And through our forums and publications, we facilitate knowledge sharing across the agency, which helps creates a community of reflective practitioners who know what’s going on outside their own projects and where to find expertise when they need it.

Innovation is a critical ingredient of project success. It cannot be forced, but it can be cultivated. By fostering an environment in which continuous learning is the norm, we lay the groundwork for continuous discovery.