At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, career development is not just an aspiration—it’s a mission-critical objective. Recognizing the vital link between employee fulfillment and organizational success, Goddard has long championed the need for transparent and navigable career pathways. This commitment culminated in the creation of the Goddard Career-Path Tool, a user-friendly resource designed to empower employees to map their professional journeys within the esteemed institution.
The genesis of the Goddard Career-Path Tool can be traced back approximately four years prior to its launch, originating within Goddard’s Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate (AETD). The core concept was elegantly simple: to develop a career “map,” akin to the easily understood layouts of metropolitan transit systems. This “metro map” metaphor envisioned career progression as a series of clear “ladders,” guiding employees through the steps necessary for advancement and skill development. While initial progress was temporarily paused due to pressing priorities, the vision of an accessible career-path tool never faded, particularly for Goddard leader Maria So.
Goddard Career-Path Tool Interface Illustration
Years later, So, in her elevated role as deputy director of the Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate (SMA), revitalized the career-path initiative. Her motivation was twofold: to bolster the SMA Directorate’s organizational strength and to enhance employee morale, retention, and recruitment across engineering, science, and administrative support roles. Drawing upon her engineering background and experience in building complex systems, So understood that the key to success lay in collaboration. She sought a strong partnership with Verron “Ron” Brade, director of Goddard’s Office of Human Capital Management (OHCM). With the support of Judy Bruner, director of the SMA Directorate, So and Brade forged a collaborative alliance to develop a tailored career path for the SMA Directorate, aligning perfectly with Brade’s strategy to transform OHCM into a proactive and valuable partner. This partnership assembled a dedicated team including Nichole Pinkney, chief of OHCM’s Talent Cultivation Office; Nancy Lindsey, mission systems senior reliability manager; and David Wilhelm, senior human resources consultant, each bringing unique expertise to the project.
So’s initial vision for the Goddard Career-Path Tool centered on clearly defined career ladders for each discipline within SMA. Crucially, she envisioned a web-accessible platform, enabling employees to easily explore career information and visualize potential pathways relevant to their positions. Like many large organizations within Goddard, the SMA Directorate encompasses diverse disciplines. A common challenge was the lack of clarity among employees regarding the specific training and experience required for promotions, lateral moves, or transitions to different disciplines. This tool aimed to demystify these processes, providing transparency and direction.
Nichole Pinkney recognized the broader potential of this initiative. She championed the expansion of the career-path system beyond SMA, advocating for a center-wide implementation. Pinkney envisioned a comprehensive system that would not only outline growth and development opportunities within individual directorates but also highlight interdisciplinary transitions across Goddard. Furthermore, she recognized its strategic value in identifying core competencies and skill sets that naturally feed into leadership development pipelines.
Embracing this expanded vision, Pinkney secured a focused budget to engage a small business contractor to rapidly prototype a system for SMA. Recognizing the critical importance of data accuracy, she ensured the deep involvement of David Wilhelm, whose human resources expertise was invaluable for data capture. Wilhelm meticulously crafted insightful questions for SMA managers to ensure comprehensive training data for all disciplines was gathered. He spearheaded interviews with the SMA implementation team, guiding the data-capture process. Following initial validation by SMA management, Wilhelm extended the review and validation process to other OHCM disciplines, ensuring center-wide relevance and accuracy.
Nancy Lindsey, leveraging her extensive background in program management, requirements development, and software development, took on the crucial role of implementation manager. She assembled a diverse and skilled team, integrating Wilhelm’s HR insights, the technical expertise of B-Line Express (a small business contractor specializing in web application development since 1995), and the practical career data and validation provided by SMA managers. This collaborative team structure was pivotal to the project’s success.
Throughout the design and development phases, project sponsors provided valuable guidance and suggestions, empowering the team to innovate and create a truly effective career-path tool. When faced with complex design challenges, the team adopted a collaborative problem-solving approach, often documenting potential solutions to collectively evaluate and refine ideas.
One significant challenge was visually representing transitions between ten distinct SMA technical positions across seven grade levels without creating an overwhelming and confusing interface. Through human-capital interviews and storyboarding techniques, the team discovered that promotional transitions within disciplines were generally consistent and well-defined. Therefore, the focus shifted to clearly illustrating interdisciplinary transitions. Through iterative storyboarding and whiteboarding sessions, involving detailed walkthroughs of user interactions, they arrived at a solution: a textual list within each discipline description window coupled with a graphical representation of transition options by grade and discipline. This approach effectively conveyed crucial transition data without visual clutter.
A similar process was employed to address the challenge of illustrating transitions from technical roles to supervisory positions. The team’s inherent strength lay in its blend of engineering and human-capital expertise, enabling efficient and well-rounded design decisions.
B-Line Express, under the project management of Nancy Rackley, was tasked with developing an application that embodied the project’s ambitious goals. B-Line collaborated closely with Lindsey and Wilhelm, engaging in frequent communication to refine web-based design concepts and strategies for delivering effective career-path guidance and workforce planning. Storyboarding became a central tool, translating discussions into tangible web application designs. This iterative and agile development process ensured the application remained true to the initial vision formulated by So and the team.
The B-Line development team, including a graphic designer, web application developer, and database engineer, brought essential skills and cutting-edge web technologies to the project. Their experience with similar applications allowed for rapid development of a robust and user-friendly interface at a cost-effective price point. Leveraging collaboration tools, the geographically distributed team maximized autonomy and innovation, streamlining software configuration management and team communication.
The culmination of this collaborative effort was a fully functional Goddard Career-Path Tool, designed, developed, and populated with comprehensive data in just six months by a team of individuals with diverse skills and backgrounds. The tool delivered tangible benefits for Goddard employees, including enhanced career planning, targeted training and development, and a significant boost to morale. Initial feedback from Goddard employees who utilized the tool was overwhelmingly positive, echoing the development team’s aspirations.
Employee testimonials highlighted the tool’s ease of use and practical helpfulness. One SMA employee noted, “The career path is so easy to use and so helpful.” Another commented on the improved clarity of organizational structure, stating, “For the first time I can actually see in front of me how the SMA Directorate is structured by position, and more importantly, by the ‘paths.'” An OHCM employee emphasized the tool’s direct application to individual development, stating, “I can see how the career path will help me build my IDP [individual development plan] and prepare me for my performance and development discussions with my supervisor.”
Industry data reinforces the importance of career path clarity. According to Diversity News and Views, a survey revealed that approximately 54 percent of workers consider knowing their career path as crucial to job satisfaction, rivaling even compensation in importance. The Goddard Career-Path Tool also provides significant benefits for management, serving as a valuable resource for succession planning and leadership development, facilitating productive employee career-development discussions, positively impacting retention and recruitment efforts, strengthening cross-organizational integration, and reinforcing critical connections between various center functions.
The Goddard Career-Path Tool project stands as a testament to the power of collaborative partnerships in achieving shared objectives. So, Pinkney, Lindsey, and Wilhelm exemplified collaborative leadership, each embracing ad hoc responsibilities to create an innovative and cost-effective system. Together, they realized the shared goal of providing employees with accessible career-building data, empowering them to proactively manage their professional trajectories at Goddard. In doing so, they established a positive and collaborative framework between the SMA and OHCM organizations, setting a precedent for future cross-functional initiatives at Goddard Space Flight Center.
About the Authors
| David Wilhelm brings over two decades of experience in training and development, encompassing the full spectrum of instructional systems design for all employment levels. He currently serves as a senior human resources development specialist within the Office of Human Capital Management (OHCM) at Goddard Space Flight Center. | |
| Nancy Lindsey has dedicated over twenty-seven years to aviation and aerospace engineering, contributing to diverse engineering tasks across space-vehicle lifecycles and program types. She currently holds the position of senior systems reliability manager at Goddard. | |
| Nichole Pinkney has been a leader in training development for more than fifteen years. She is currently the Chief of the Talent Cultivation Office within OHCM at Goddard. In this role, she leads a team of HR development experts specializing in career development and learning, and has spearheaded numerous impactful HR development initiatives. | |
| Nancy Rackley has been with B-Line Express for over a decade, contributing to the development of multiple applications for NASA centers. As B-Line’s NASA program manager, she oversees a range of website and application design, development, and maintenance projects at Goddard. | |
| Maria So currently serves as the Deputy Director for Planning and Business Management of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate at Goddard. Her prior roles include Deputy Director of the Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate, Associate Chief of the Mission Engineering and Systems Analysis Division in the Engineering Directorate, and Branch Chief of the Mission Systems Engineering branch. |
