The Lifecycle of a Knowledge Management System for Organizational Learning: A Case Study

Abstract

This chapter describes the development and operation of a knowledge system to support learning of organizational knowledge at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a US national research laboratory whose mission is planetary exploration and to do what no one has done before. JPL 101 is a Web-accessible database of general organizational knowledge captured in a series of quizzes. The heart of JPL 101 is the content that is encoded as questions and annotated answers with connections to related information and resources. This chapter describes the requirements generation process, implementation, and rollout of the JPL 101 system. Data collected over 19 weeks of operation were used to assess system performance with respect to design considerations, participation, effectiveness of communication mechanisms, and individual-based learning. Analysis of content three years after primary operations assessed the degree of knowledge obsolescence in the system. These results are discussed in the context of organizational learning research and implications for practice.