May 6, 2008 Vol. 1, Issue 4
Do you ever wish for a one-stop NASA shop where you can find guidance documents, ask questions, connect with colleagues across the agency, and track down an expert when you need one? If your answer is yes to any of the above, it is time to check out the NASA Engineering Network.
The NASA Engineering Network (NEN), sponsored by the Office of the Chief Engineer, is a central portal where NASA engineers and project team members The NASA Engineering Network (NEN), sponsored by the Office of the Chief Engineer, is a central portal where NASA engineers and project team members can get just about any kind of information that might be relevant to their work. Looking for a list of experts in thermodynamics? The NEN offers the People, Organizations, Projects, Skills (POPS) expertise locator. Need to find the latest version of NPR 7120.5 or the lessons learned database in a hurry? The NEN serves as a search tool for multiple engineering databases and repositories, including NODIS, Lessons Learned, NESC Reports, Goddard GOLD Rules, STI, and Tech Docs, to name just a few. Think of it as NASA’s meta-search engine.
Beyond documents and data, however, the NEN connects people through communities of practice. Communities of practice are nothing new at NASA — some technical disciplines have had their own for years, with regularly scheduled teleconferences and meetings. The NEN offers resources and tools for communities of practice that enable the easy creation of new communities and expanded capabilities for existing ones. The NEN currently hosts seven open communities of practice, each of which is led by a NASA Technical Fellow from the NASA Engineering Safety Center (NESC) and facilitated by a NEN representative. These facilitators join teleconferences and meetings and post materials to their group’s NEN page.
Participants in communities have used the NEN’s online facilitation capabilities to find experts at other centers and to solve problems within their discipline. The Systems Engineering community, for example, used NEN’s community, in particular its wiki and online document repository, to draft and review the Systems Engineering Handbook. Once they completed work on the handbook, they had it indexed in the NEN search.
The NEN is also hosting a new community of practice for program/project managers. Led by Mike Blythe, Director of the Engineering and Program Management Division of the Office of the Chief Engineer, the project management community of practice will enable practitioners to ask questions about NPR 7120.5D, find out about training opportunities through the Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership (APPEL), and exchange best practices with peers at other field centers through a discussion board.
Anyone on the NASA network can access the NEN without a special login or password. Simply visit http://nen.nasa.gov.
