NASA and Knowledge Capture

Even in small companies knowledge capture can be a challenge. WHAT employees and managers know and have achieved, plus HOW they did it (including any ‘things we tried but they didn’t work’) tends to remain in their heads or on scraps of paper. When they leave – or even move on to other tasks in the same company – it goes with them.
I’ve seen this, plus the assorted bold attempts to ensure that such highly valuable assets are captured. But they haven’t really worked. It always seemed to involve a layer of “intrusive” software or extra manual tasks for the end-user. It was easy for them to complain that it was holding them back from performing their ‘real’ work properly. The short term view won out.
I was therefore interested to read an article in Popular Science magazine. Constance Adams spent 7 years at NASA. Now, I would have thought that NASA would have great systems for the preservation of their intellectual property. Adams has written an excellent piece on not only the big problems of knowledge capture, but also the ‘larger’ problem of lack of vision capture. Here’s a few quotes.

“But almost immediately after I arrived at NASA in 1997, I learned that trying to gather … information in the 18,000-employee, 6-facility agency was tough going. The standard response when I requested data on old projects was a quizzical stare. As I began working on the design of the TransHab, an inflatable habitat for long crew expeditions like a Mars mission, I realized I needed solid dimensions for Skylab interiors and furnishings. Those drawings always seemed archived somewhere beyond reach. Eventually I just went over to the Skylab iG Trainer at Space Center Houston’s visitor center with a tape measure and some gum-soled shoes. I’m sure it gave a few tourists a real thrill to come into the Trainer exhibit and find me dangling from the ceiling.”

“Without a conscious program of mentoring within the organization, this knowledge is only intermittently and imperfectly transmitted to new generations of engineers and scientists. The result is that young engineers constantly redesign programs without being aware that previous designs for the same item already exist. They may thereby introduce a new problem or layer of risk…”

Source: It Doesn’t Take a Rocket Scientist Constance Adams Popular Science Feb 2004 issue, p70