Succeed
Advance science and exploration by delivering on our commitments
CGI: JPL engineer verifies electrical grounding of avionics systems on the Coronagraph Instrument.
Strategic Imperative 1: World Class Workforce
Create and enable the best workforce to deliver JPL's and NASA's mission
The Opportunity:
JPLers are critical to our success as a Laboratory, and supporting our world-class workforce is our number one strategic imperative.
Making Connections: JPL’s Welcome Table events bring JPL employees together to share ideas and enjoy conversation.
We have both an opportunity and a responsibility to enable our people to thrive and succeed, and in doing so we will drive success of our missions and JPL as an organization. During the next three years, we will focus on ensuring that every manager is enabling our employees and teams; on enhancing our onboarding program, mentoring activities, and career-success pathways; and on creating a more compelling work environment in the new era of hybrid work. Together our actions are designed to help enable all JPLers to thrive at work.
We Envision a World in Which:
New team members are valued for their own prior experience and are welcomed into the JPL community with a rich understanding of the history and value of our work, how we are organized, how our work is accomplished and how they contribute to our mission.
Team members receive support, opportunities, and tools throughout their career that will allow them to pursue their aspirations and maximize their potential. These include new insights about career pathways and resources for their advancement, as well as an accessible and modern workplace equipped to enable their success.
Great leaders are developed and attracted to JPL to guide the
institution and our teams in the work they do to advance JPL’s mission. The workforce views managers as advocates supportive of their development and enabling them to contribute to our success.
By 2026, We Will:
Enable Great Managers
Value and enable great managers by deploying development programs that provide the resources, feedback, and support they need to focus on leadership and strategy, inspire the workforce, and empower all team members to contribute at their highest potential.
World-class Onboarding Program
Develop a world-class onboarding program for new employees with orientation, training, and mentor/apprenticeship opportunities to enable new JPLers to quickly become productive, engaged, and invested members of the JPL community.
Career-long Professional Development
Develop a robust network of career-long professional development resources, including sustained career mentoring programs and a set of job families, levels, and progression opportunities that are aligned with the future of work.
Modernize Our Workspaces
Modernize our workspaces to be more accessible and collaborative, leveraging more updated physical and digital capabilities aligned with the work of today.
The Near-Earth Object Surveyor: NEO Surveyor is designed to help advance NASA’s planetary defense efforts to discover and characterize most of the potentially hazardous asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit (illustration).
Strategic Imperative 2: Position for Performance
Sharpen processes to drive excellence and accountability in delivering our flight missions
The Opportunity:
Developing and executing complex first-of-a-kind missions with new technologies, innovative measurement techniques, and breakthrough capabilities is fundamental to JPL and a foundation of NASA’s success. Delivering technically complex missions with acceptable risk while meeting our commitments to cost and schedule is a challenge that requires continuous attention to and improvement in how we execute our mission work.
EMIT: Methane plume 2 miles (3 kilometers) long southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, as measured by EMIT from the International Space Station.
From formulation to requirements definition to verification to procurements to manufacturing approaches, we must work to simplify our processes and increase the velocity of smart decision-making. We must equip project teams, decision-makers, and sponsors with better information with which to understand the scope and risk of their commitments. This imperative is focused on how to improve our performance and ensure JPL
We Envision a World in Which:
We are a trusted implementer, accountable for delivering on our mission commitments.
We quickly, accurately, and frequently forecast and assess cost, schedule, and technical status for projects that are underway.
We implement projects within an efficient process framework so that effort can be applied to areas of true innovation.
By 2026 We Will:
Program Analysis & Evaluation
Establish a Program Analysis & Evaluation function to track technical and programmatic baselines with metrics that look ahead to predict cost and schedule performance.
Assigned Mission Formulation Practices
Modify assigned mission formulation practices to make use of established, appropriate best practices from our competed mission formulation process.
Flight Implementation End-game Processes
Reform flight implementation end-game processes, specifically risk assessment/management, Verification & Validation (V&V), and Problem/Failure Reporting (PFR) to better balance efficiency with mission success.
Technical Logistics Organization
Set up a Technical Logistics Organization to support prototyping and manufacturing resource planning. Identify and streamline key processes and optimize supply chain capacity through intelligent inventory stocking, infrastructure investments, and supplier development.
Introduction | Succeed | Seed | Lead