NASA’s Hopes and Fears of Digital Engineering

Missions and research objectives at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) continue to increase in scope and complexity while under austere schedule and budget constraints. Digital transformation is a key enabler for NASA to do more with less. But as many large and storied organizations are experiencing, the rate of digital transformation is as much a social problem as a technical one. Contributing social factors include the distribution of the inherent willingness of individuals to adopt new technologies and the natural tendencies of like-minded individuals to succumb to groupthink within their communities of practice. A team of NASA systems engineers recently attempted to identify and expose those tendencies and kick-start more productive dialog in the area of digital engineering by leading a group model building session using community-based system dynamics approaches at the 2024 NASA Systems Engineering Workshop, which included over 400 participants. This paper captures the approach, results, and findings of this ambitious experiment.