Yesterday was NASA’s very first Agile Technical Interchange Meeting! NASA is becoming agile 🚀🏃‍♂️💨

I learned how Agile is applied outside of my discipline, web software, to improve how we build hardware and integrated systems, particularly in the systems engineering discipline.

Here are some ✨highlights✨ of NASA’s agile journey:

💙 Agile = respect. Tears were shed during a cybersecurity team’s transition to SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework). Years of pent-up frustration and pain came out as the team realized how unseen they felt due to working in a very reactive manner, with requests coming in all over the place and no visibility into what they were accomplishing. Now their capacity is clearly understood by their customers and their leadership, and they are delivering more and happier than ever before.

✈ Architecture affects agility. A team rearchitected their software to leverage microservices for coordinating drone traffic in lower-atmosphere urban air space. The architecture change has allowed them to be much more agile in how they deploy software.

🌐 NASA does open-source!? I heard from the OpenMDAO team about how they are building open-source software from NASA, and how adapting an agile mindset has allowed them to respond and work with the open-source community.

🔬 An agile mindset helps deliver valuable research. Much research happens at NASA, and adopting an agile mindset/approach is helping researchers think about how they deliver value with their research. This approach is not taught in doctorate programs, so it was fascinating to see the melding of these concepts and how important it is that NASA is thoughtful about what value our research products can deliver!

We have a ways to go, but we’re on our way! I’m looking forward to staying connected with this community and seeing what else can be done with an agile mindset at NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration!

Photo credit: Jackelynne Silva-Martinez, PhD

Jake sitting with other nasa agile practitioners in a conference room