Learning from Simple Systems: The Case of JPL 101 5Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without writtenBeta testing of content provided insight into the types of questions that had the
potential to be controversial — primarily those that asked about absolutes such as
“firsts,” “only,” or “bests.” This led to standards for structuring a “good” question and
guidelines for a reasonable amount of material to include in the answer.
Following the internal beta test, organizations within JPL that were perceived as
potential stakeholders of the eventual system — Internal Communications, Human
Resources, and the Ethics Office — were contacted. Additionally, a shortened, improved
set of questions was tested as a demonstration model on actual work groups from the
team’s home organizations. The response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. People were
anxious to share the information with their colleagues, contribute questions and
answers, and considered it both valuable and fun. Everyone, including people who had
been with the organization for a number of decades, indicated that they learned
something either through the questions or the supporting information given in the
answers. In addition to encouraging proceeding with development, people also began
suggesting questions that they thought would be good to include.
The beta test phase ended in a surprising way with the serendipitous opportunity
to show one of the Laboratory’s highest-ranking executives the paper prototype. He was
instantly interested in the concept, brought his staff members in to have them take the
quiz, and formulated the idea of using the JPL 101 concept as a Laboratory-wide contest
as part of the 40th anniversary of planetary exploration being celebrated that year. Given
this level of advocacy, the go-ahead from the KM project was quickly granted and
immediately began our second phase of development, the feasibility analysis of using
JPL 101 for a contest.
By the end of the beta test phase, the following was achieved:
- Confirmation that the basic concept was sound and likely to be positively received
by the Laboratory population - A cadre of stakeholders interested in seeing the system implemented
- A clear understanding of what constituted a well-formulated question: clear,
concise, and simple structure; cautious use of absolutes; and humorous wording - A practical approach to ensure correctness of the question by either triangulating
an answer (two-sources to confirm) or verification through an unimpeachable
source - A requirement from the Knowledge Management project that the system encour-
age employees to explore the JPL intranet
Feasibility Assessment
The direction to evaluate if and how JPL 101 could be used to support a Laboratory-
wide contest led to a detailed requirements analysis and resulting design decisions
described in the following. At the same time, the team was also involved in a separate
effort investigating how to capture decision rationale. It was decided to test some of ideas
from that effort internally using informal decision-mapping techniques to capture the
requirements generation process. These decision maps form the basis for the following
discussion.
Answering the question “Is a contest feasible?” first required answering a set of
key questions, as shown in Figure 1. An assessment was conducted by methodically
working through each of these questions, identifying additional constraints, and