Quantified KM value story 110 – cutting development cycle time by 2-3 years at NASA

As the 110th entry in our ever-growing list of examples of Quanitified Benefit from Knowledge Management, here is an example from NASA

Image from wikimedia commons

The example is given by Jim Rostohar; the CKO of NASA’s Johnson Space Centre.

In the Space Centre, KM is used mainly to support programs and projects, and the Engineering Directorate. One of the tools used in this support is a new contextual search engine.  Jim describes the benefit as follows:

If this tool wasn’t available, the Orion team would have had to decide what level of program resources should be applied to develop and certify contingency measures for the Orion capsule. According to the Engineer, development of a test article would take two to three years and add an additional cost of several million dollars.