4.3.2 Can NASA's Integrated Product Teams become “Hot Groups“?

Abstract

AbstractOver the past few years, new Systems Engineering approaches to team management have been developed and employed at NASA. The latest team approach is utilizing Integrated Product Teams (IPTs). An IPT is a team of stakeholders created for a particular project to be the focal point of a specialized area or task. The team is responsible for all activities within that specialized area that might include engineering design, project schedule or budget.This paper examines NASA's current IPT management and how it evolved and whether it can obtain the status of “Hot Group“. A Hot Group is a group of hand picked employees that is obsessively single‐minded about a task. A Hot Group is much more innovative and creative and performs at a higher intensity than an IPT.What does it take for a NASA IPT to evolve into a Hot Group? Through examination of the obstacles confronting IPTs (and high performance teams in general) and researching the expert's recommendations to overcome these obstacles, a forward action plan can be adopted for creating these high performance innovative Hot Groups at NASA.