Bridging the Communication Gap at NASA - A Case Study in Communities of Practice

Following the loss of NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, it was determined that problems in the agency's organization created an environment that led to the accident. One component of the proposed solution resulted in the formation of the NASA Engineering Network (NEN), a suite of information retrieval and knowledge-sharing tools. This paper describes the implementation of communities of practice, which are formed along engineering disciplines. Communities of practice enable engineers to leverage their knowledge and best practices to collaborate and take information learning back to their jobs and embed it into the procedures of the agency. This case study offers insight into using traditional engineering disciplines for virtual collaboration, including lessons learned during the creation and establishment of NASA-s communities.

Authors:

• Daria Topousis
• Keri Murphy
• Jeanne Holm

Keywords:

• Collaboration
• communities of practice
• knowledge management
• virtual teams.

References:

[1] Bresnen, Mike, Linda Edelman, Sue Newell, Harry Scarbrough, and
Jacky Swan. Social Practices and the Management of Knowledge in
Project Environments. International Journal of Project Management 21
(2003), 157-166.
[2] Garrety, Karin, Paul L. Robertson, and Richard Badham. Integrating
Communities of Practice in Technology Development Projects,
International Journal of Project Management 22 (2004), 351-358.
[3] Gehman, Harold W. (Chairman). Columbia Accident Investigation
Board Report, Volume 1. NASA and GAO, August 2003.
[4] Greenes, Kent. Communities of Practice Facilitation. Presentation to
the NASA Engineering Team, 2006.
[5] Hoadley, Christopher M., and Kilner, Peter G. Using Technology to
Transform Communities of Practice into Knowledge-Building
Communities. SIGGROUP Bulletin, 25(1), 31-40.
[6] Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolution.
University of Chicago Press.
[7] Nahapiet, J and Ghoshal, S, 'Social Capital, Intellectual Capital and the
Organizational Advantage', Academy of Management Review, 23(2),
(1998).
[8] Nielsen, Jakob, and Molich, R. (1990).Heuristic evaluation of user
interfaces, Proc. ACM CHI'90 Conf. (Seattle, WA, 1-5 April), 249-256.
[9] Nielsen, Jakob. (1994). Heuristic evaluation. In Nielsen, J., and Mack,
R.L. (Eds.), Usability Inspection Methods. John Wiley & Sons, New
York, NY
[10] Orr, Julian E. Sharing Knowledge, Celebrating Identity: Community
memory in a service culture. in Middleton, D. and Edwards, D. eds.
Collective remembering, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, 1990,
169-189.
[11] Shenhar, Aaron J. Strategic Project Management: The New Framework.
Proceedings of PICMET, Portland International Conference on the
Management of Engineering and Technology, 1999.
[12] Wenger, E., and W. Snyder. 2000. "Communities of Practice: The
Organizational Frontier." Harvard Business Review. 78(1): 139-145.
[13] Wenger, Etienne, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder.
Cultivating Communities of Practice. Harvard Business School Press,
2002.
[14] Wierba, Elizabeth E., Thomas A. Finholt, and Michelle P. Steves.
Challenges to Collaborative Tool Adoption in a Manufacturing
Engineering Setting: A Case Study, Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35-02).