Team Culture and Communication among Scientists, Engineers, and Managers as NASA’S JPL

• How do team members with diverse backgrounds, training, experience, and in different positions on work teams perceive and enact their roles and communication with others?
  In order for JPL to become the laboratory of the future, how would team members with diverse backgrounds, training, experience, and in different positions on work teams like for team members to perform their roles and communicate with others?

Phase Two:

• How do team members with diverse backgrounds, training, experience, and in different positions on work teams perceive and enact their roles and communication with others?
• How has communication been impacted by COVID-19?
• How does communication need to adjust in response to COVID-19 and the all for JPL to become the laboratory of the future?

Phase One:

There are three stages to the research and four methods that will be employed.

• Stage 1: “Developing a Baseline Picture of Teaming”. During this stage, the research team will document information about the nature of teams at JPL through archival research. We will also conduct key informant interviews with select managers, facilitators of team development at JPL’s “A-Team/X-Team” (the center’s project incubator), and the leaders of JPL’s junior engineer support group in order to develop insights for structuring team observations.
• Stage 2: “Observing Teams at Work”. During this stage, we will conduct semi-structured observations of work teams (e.g., Clipper, Psyche or other work teams) as they interact in teleconferenced review meetings. The team will focus on patterns in discourse and the flow of conversation.
• Stage 3: “Team Members’ Perceptions of Teaming”. During this stage, the research team will undertake semi-structured interviews with team managers, lead engineers, and the variety of other engineers (e.g., systems, flight, and payload engineers) who comprise the work teams. We will seek to interview approximately eleven (11) members in each team (e.g. one manager, one lead engineer, three payload engineers, three flight engineers, and three systems engineers). The goal of these interviews is to understand team members’ perceptions and experiences of teaming at JPL.

Phase Two:

• Stage 1: Reanalyze Team I’s data and develop recommendations based on Team I’s research
• Stage 2: Develop interview and survey instruments to analyze new questions related team work in the Post-COVID 19 context.
• Stage 3: Analyze new outcomes

Anticipated deliverables

• A literature review on relevant social science and anthropological literature on teaming and NASA
• An applied publication on teaming

Anticipated Publications
We anticipate submitting a publication about our research to Human Organization or another applied journal in anthropology. We will also consider submitting manuscripts to other journals that address managing human resources for STEM-related industries.

Conference Presentations
We submitted a paper to the ASCEND conference, however, our submission was rejected. We will aim to submit a presentation for the Applied Anthropology meetings.

Phase One:

Start Date: October 2019
End Date: February 2022

Phase Two:

Start Date: December 2020
End Date: January 2022