By Ed Hoffman We talk a lot about “excellence” at NASA. That’s no surprise. Our mission calls on us to create and manage complex, innovative technologies with little margin for error.
Ed Hoffman’s Director’s column (“Thinking About Excellence”) and Laurence Prusak’s Knowledge Notebook piece (“How Does a Learning Organization Learn?”) make related points that define key themes of this issue of ASK.
By Stephen Denning When the minority report of the group monitoring NASA’s progress in making the space shuttle fleet safer after the loss of the Columbia said in August 2005 that NASA “must break [the] cycle of smugness substituting for knowledge,” it put its finger on a challenge that afflicts all successful organizations: how to […]
By Paul Adler and Charles Heckscher Work is increasingly a matter of knowledgeable experts cooperating on projects in rapidly changing environments. Our research has attempted to identify the form of organization best equipped to support such work.
By David Oberhettinger The engineering and operation of extremely complex and technically advanced systems pose significant risks, and we must accept the likelihood of design errors throughout the life cycle.
By Ben Bruneau and Kerry Ellis NASA’s first “blue marble” pictures of our Earth, brought back from a new frontier of exploration, opened a new frontier of imagination and understanding.
By Don Cohen Former astronaut Michael Coats joined NASA in 1984 and flew three shuttle missions before leaving the Agency for Lockheed Martin in 1991. He was appointed Center Director of Johnson Space Center in November 2005. He talked with Don Cohen in February 2006.
By Vern Weyers The varied responsibilities of NASA project managers include technical, cost, schedule, and team management aspects of their projects. The PM must deal with people and problems continuously and must evaluate the risk involved with each decision.
By Mike Zambruski and Don Cohen In 2005, I was asked to assume project management responsibilities for an Internet portal project designed to improve relationships between a large company and its customers by giving customers convenient electronic access to company services.
