Managing Space Program Analytical Studies with a Web-Accessible Database
- Paper number
IAC-08.D3.4.-E5.4.5
- Author
Mr. Daniel O'Neil, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Large scale space programs analyze thousands of requirements while mitigating safety, performance, schedule, and cost risks. These efforts involve a variety of roles with interdependent use cases and goals. For example, study managers and facilitators identify ground-rules and assumptions for a collection of studies required for a program or project milestone. Task leaders derive product requirements from the ground rules and assumptions and describe activities to produce needed analytical products. Disciplined specialists produce the specified products and load results into a file management system. Organizational and project managers provide the personnel and funds to conduct the tasks. Each role has responsibilities to establish information linkages and provide status reports to management. Projects sponsored by a program conduct design and analysis cycles to refine designs to meet the requirements and implement risk mitigation plans. At the program level, integrated design and analysis cycles conduct studies to eliminate every “to-be-determined” and develop plans to mitigate every risk. At the agency level, strategic studies analyze different approaches to exploration architectures and campaigns. This paper describes a web-accessible database developed by NASA to coordinate and manage tasks at three organizational levels and generate status and traceability reports. The Constellation Analysis Integration Tool (CAIT) database provides a capability to create records of organizations, teams, study collections, Task Description Sheets (TDS), points-of-contact, data, and disciplines. Information on TDS includes completion status, covered requirements, identified risks and issues, model and simulation used, data providing organizations, data needs of organizations, associated ground rules and technical baselines. Establishing linkages among tasks, requirements, and risks is a primary purpose of the database. Other databases serve as the authoritative source for requirements and risk data. Computer code within CAIT imports this data to enable linking and report generation. Managers use the reports monitor and manage design and analysis cycles within the projects or program. Usage of the CAIT database improved the task review process and provides Headquarters with a capability to generate task status reports with a handful of mouse button clicks. Current development effort focuses on the integration of the CAIT database with other enterprise applications and implementing functions that address design verification; so, as the program progresses, the analysis performed will evolve from validating requirements to validating designs and to verifying systems.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-08.D3.4.-E5.4.5.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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