Progress and status reviews allow teams to provide updates and targeted information designed to inform the customer of progress and to help the customer understand current risks and challenges. Both presenters and the customer should have well-calibrated expectations for the level of content and information. However, what needs to be covered in systems-level management reviews can too often be poorly defined. These unclear expectations can lead teams to overpreparing or attempting to guess what information the customer considers as most critical. This aspect of the review process is stressful, disruptive, and bad for morale – and time spent overpreparing reports is time spent not focusing on the technical work necessary to stay on schedule. To define and address these issues, this report was designed to observe various aspects of development program coordination and review activities for NNSA and Navy customers, and then to conduct unbiased, independent Human Factors observation and analysis from an outside perspective. The report concludes with suggestions and recommendations for improving the efficiency of information flow related to reviews, with the goals of increasing productivity and benefitting both Sandia and the customer.
University partnerships play an essential role in sustaining Sandia’s vitality as a national laboratory. The SAA is an element of Sandia’s broader University Partnerships program, which facilitates recruiting and research collaborations with dozens of universities annually. The SAA program has two three-year goals. SAA aims to realize a step increase in hiring results, by growing the total annual inexperienced hires from each out-of-state SAA university. SAA also strives to establish and sustain strategic research partnerships by establishing several federally sponsored collaborations and multi-institutional consortiums in science & technology (S&T) priorities such as autonomy, advanced computing, hypersonics, quantum information science, and data science. The SAA program facilitates access to talent, ideas, and Research & Development facilities through strong university partnerships. Earlier this year, the SAA program and campus executives hosted John Myers, Sandia’s former Senior Director of Human Resources (HR) and Communications, and senior-level staff at Georgia Tech, U of Illinois, Purdue, UNM, and UT Austin. These campus visits provided an opportunity to share the history of the partnerships from the university leadership, tours of research facilities, and discussions of ongoing technical work and potential recruiting opportunities. These visits also provided valuable feedback to HR management that will help Sandia realize a step increase in hiring from SAA schools. The 2020-2021 Collaboration Report is a compilation of accomplishments in 2020 and 2021 from SAA and Sandia’s valued SAA university partners.