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NASA Risk Management

33:38 recording · AUTO · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

NASA's first agency risk management officer explains how objectives set the risk you accept.

  1. Match data-gathering effort to accepted riskScow says how hard you chase missing information should be commensurate with the risk you are willing to take for that objective.
  2. The underappreciated risks sit outside your controlSecurity, ground and communications infrastructure, supply chain and reputation are rarely owned by the program manager, yet they can sink the objective.
  3. Risk leadership is setting and reopening the postureLike moving a learner driver from the driveway to a parking lot to the highway, the accountable leader defines the acceptable risk and creates space to push back.
Executive Summary AI
  • Host Andres Almeida introduces Dr. Mary Scow, NASA's Agency Risk Management Officer and co-author of the agency's risk management handbook, on the APPLE podcast Small Steps, Giant Leaps.0:19
  • Scow says the role never existed before she started in November of 2023, and its purpose is to help the agency, programs, projects and offices make risk-informed decisions at every level.1:12
  • She argues that the effort you spend chasing missing data should be commensurate with the level of risk you are willing to take: wing it if failure is acceptable, but buy the information when something must work 90 plus percent of the time.5:22
  • She names the risks programs underappreciate — cyber and physical security, supply chain items like an FPGA a manufacturer stops building, and reputational risk — and defines NASA's approach as holistic, probabilistic and organization specific, per NPR 8000.4.7:01
  • Scow defines risk leadership through teaching a nephew to drive — driveway, then parking lot, then highway — and closes with her own turning point, seeing astronaut Pam Melroy in a blue suit in fifth grade, and her advice to know your values and stick to them.21:43
Key Quote
“is to help the agency make risk informed decisions at the highest of levels.”
— Dr. Mary Scow1:59
Key Quote
“figure out if you're missing information, which by the way, we all are most of the time.”
— Dr. Mary Scow4:46
Key Quote
“the potential for shortfalls with respect to achieving explicitly established and stated objectives.”
— Dr. Mary Scow13:55