The design philosophy of JumpStart has been to develop a powerful program management information system while providing a simple and intuitive user interaction through standardized business documents in all stages of the program management lifecycle. JumpStart supports all essential program management activities and corresponding documents such as creation and monitoring of annual task plans; monthly reporting of technical, schedule, management, and budget status; tracking budget phasing plans; analyzing program risks and mitigation strategies; reporting and evaluating project life cycle costs; accessing convenient aggregated views; and automatically creating Quad-Charts and other reports. It is a comprehensive, web enabled tool which provides an intuitive and enhanced web interface for all user activities from setting up the basic program configuration, to creating reports and charts. Alternatively, data input can be easily done off-line by downloading annual task plans, monthly reports and other documents to a local desktop. They can be edited with conventional spreadsheet software and uploaded to JumpStart by the push of a button. Figure 2 provides an illustration of a typical input document:

At NASA input documents such as Task Plans and Monthly reports are typically in formats such as Microsoft® Excel, Microsoft® Word, Microsoft® Powerpoint® and Adobe® Acrobat® since they can be easily distributed by email. JumpStart users just take the spreadsheets, presentations, and reports that they use in their day-to-day activities to input data into the JumpStart system. This input process is extremely simple, typically requiring users to upload information through a web server, or simply drag and drop documents into (Web DAV4) folders on the desktop. The input data is automatically converted into XML and stored in a highthroughput information management system (discussed in detail in the Technical Details section).

JumpStart can automatically generate aggregated documents from several input documents from multiple programs, very quickly. For instance JumpStart has been used to automatically generate NASA IBPDs (Integrated Budget Performance Documents) spreadsheets using rollup approaches, thus saving significant time and eliminating budget errors. The details and benefits are discussed further in the conclusions section. Other examples of the aggregated documents are integrated budget/cost reports or summary Quad-Charts that can be automatically created by JumpStart.

JumpStart is also interfaced and interoperable with existing NASA information systems. For instance it is connected to the ERASMUS5 reporting system and to the NASA Technology Inventory6, thereby significantly reducing cost and time for entering the same data multiple times into different systems.

In essence, JumpStart acts like the nervous system of a complex living organism—it rapidly transports vital information from its operating parts to decision-making authorities and back, allowing a program to move ahead in a coherent and efficient manner and to master changes in the environment fast and proactively.

A schematic illustration of the information workflow is provided in Figure 3 above. While information storage and other details are discussed in the following section, we must stress that this approach manages information using open and interoperable standards (i.e., XML) but without enforcing day to day users to mark-up their data in any particular format. We begin with enterprise information in business documents which is converted automatically to XML for storage, management, and integration, and which is then composed and formatted for output to business documents and applications as needed for end applications.