A key characteristic that will distinguish successful enterprises
of the next millennium will be the ability to respond quickly, proactively,
and aggressively to unpredictable change. Robust methods and tools to facilitate
change management are therefore an essential requirement for the modern
enterprise. This project targets key technology gaps and challenges associated
with strategic change management:
- Lack of scientific
methods for strategic change management.
- Lack of information-integrated
software tools to support the change management process.
- Lack of knowledge
management mechanisms that capture, store, and leverage corporate knowledge
for strategic planning and control.
We have developed and demonstrated a Portfolio Analysis Tool, a Web-based
software tool that facilitates strategic change management. Key functional
requirements addressed by PAT include the following.
- Provide technology
investment decision information: PAT provides decisionmaking information
to facilitate strategic planning.
- Facilitate identification
of technology gaps: A direct result of the portfolio analysis is to assist
the precise identification of technology
gaps.
- Promote technology roadmap development: The portfolio gap analysis results
provide information to construct a time-phased technology development
approach/roadmap.
- Facilitate decisionmaking
over distributed teams: PAT facilitates the collaborative/distributed
decisionmaking processes associated
with strategic
planning and change
management.
Intended PAT end users are strategic planners and project/technology
portfolio managers. The PAT architecture includes a database
server that provides
persistent storage of the information managed by PAT. PAT also
provides a Web-based user interface that facilitates distributed
capture of
key information required to perform portfolio analysis. A central
function of PAT is to facilitate sound project/technology investment
decisionmaking
as part of strategic change management. Different types of outputs
and
visualizations are generated by PAT to accomplish this function,
including: (1) Risk-Return Portfolio Analysis, (2) Gap Analysis,
(3) Sensitivity
Analysis, (4) Roadmap Generation, and (5) On-Demand Reports.
Key innovations include
novel adaptation and application of portfolio theory for strategic
decision support and structured, knowledge-based method for strategic
planning
and change management. PAT is expected to significantly improve
NASA’s
change management capability in the near term.
Key
accomplishments:
- 2000: Selection
for Phase II research and development. Definition of PAT requirements.
Design of PAT architecture.
- 2001: Development
of prototype Web-based portfolio analysis tool.
Completion of change management method. Completion of initial test data
collection and tool testing
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Portfolio Analysis Tool Functional Architecture
Example Risk Return Analysis Output
Key
milestones:
- 2002: Completion
of Phase II Final Report. Completion of PAT testing and validation.
Completion of PAT deployment at KSC and end-user training. Development
of PAT Commercialization and Phase III planning.
Contact: T.S. Barth (Timothy.Barth-1@ksc.nasa.gov),
YA-C, (321) 867-6230
Participating Organization: Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. (Dr. P.C. Benjamin)
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