Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories

Executive Summary

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) recently experienced success with the launch and landing of two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, on the planet Mars. Although the exploration mission is considered successful, development of the rovers was costly and somewhat unorganized. Of course this is expected with projects that involve so many people and departments to achieve a common goal. One example of the project’s organizational conflicts was the misplacement of pyrotechnic bolts that had been haphazardly strewed about after use. When project managers determined they needed the bolts for further testing, the bolts could not be found easily and almost cost the rover to miss the launch deadline. In order to avoid common miscommunication between departments in the future, Team One of the Systems Analysis Department has proposed a synergistic approach to journal storage that can be accessed by all departments of JPL. Journal Storage Facility (JSF) is a software program developed by SoftwareProz that enables users to scan and/or save any information related to specific parts of projects. In order to accommodate such a program, JPL will need to acquire additional hardware, allow time for testing the software, and training the employees.

Business Requirements

JPL is expecting to begin implementation of its electronic JSF in the first quarter of 2007. The program will be installed and functional by the end of second quarter (June 30) 2007. The board has approved $107,600 to be invested in the project and to be disbursed equally through the 6-month process ($17,933 per month). The budget categories are:

Budget Cost Justification

Hardware $16,670 Purchase new computer equipment

$1, 330 Additional computer accessories

Software $50,000 Custom software development (actual quote pending)

Training $7, 000 Vendor to hold 3-day training course for JPL managers

$1,000 Printed training materials

$6,600 75 JPL managers in 4 hr training

IS Payroll $25,000 Two member IS staff to prepare and implement program

Hardware and Software Requirements ($68,000)

The customized software will be personal computer (PC) based. SoftwareProz will be loaded onto 3000 stations. This customized software will capture, prompt, number sequentially, track, and cross-reference approximately 15 different types of Microsoft Word forms and 15 different types of Microsoft Excel forms. Six departments will have access to the forms. One of these departments (Document Control) will have read, write, approval, and archive permissions. One of these departments (Review Board) will have read, write, and approval permissions. Four other departments will have read, write, and archived read-only permissions. Each form will require an employee identification (ID) and that person to take electronic ownership (E-ownership). That form will have time activated prompts that will notify the owner if that form has been dormant for too long without being promoted to its next level or process. Each form will be able to reference another form serial number if required for parallel processing. Lastly each form will have electronic signature (E-signature) capability. SoftwareProz has provided an estimated cost for the software at $50,000.

The choice of hardware must be of sufficient advanced design that it will not become out dated in too short of a period and yet not so advanced that the hardware becomes cost prohibitive. The hardware must also possess a memory capacity and processing speed to a magnitude that will easily and quickly perform the tasks required by the advanced software used by our scientists and engineers. The hardware proposed for this is the Gateway Laptop NX850XL, with the Intel Pentium M Processor 770 at 2.13GHz, 533MHz FSB, 2MB L2 cache. Seven of these will be needed for this computer information system (CIS) program adoption. All seven of these will have loaded on to them the SoftwareProz organizational software, the existing JPL CAD system (Pro-E), and the existing JPL analysis software (Patran/Nastran). The total hardware costs are $16,670.

The laptops will give the research teams the mobility needed to conduct field operations while using the new SoftwareProz organizational software. Two laptops will be used at each field location to conduct scientific analysis and documentation simultaneously. Typically the field research teams conduct no more than two field operations at the same time. This will leave three backups on campus to be used for