Knowledge Management -
A Conceptual Overview

What is Knowledge Management ?

Why Knowledge Management ?

An Example: Organizational Confusion

What are effective approaches to KM ?

Topics for Future Versions

What is Knowledge Management ?

Knowledge management (KM) has many different definitions. For the purpose of this white paper, the following definition is used:

This definition intentionally emphasizes information related to work. However, work is intended to include all types of endeavors, including factories, offices, retail shops; study both in and out of schools; non-for-profit organizations; and so on.

The emphasis here also is on long-term information about organizational processes (how-to), history, mathematics, and so on, rather than on transactional information (e.g., the status of orders for factory scheduling). Decision support systems (DSS) summarize transactional data again into longer-term information; for this white paper, KM addresses the processes and presentation styles used by such DSS systems to gather, structure, and present that information.

The goal of KM is to help to assure that every participant can access and make use of the information required to perform any function of an activity. In this context:

where accessibility includes the notion that the specific knowledge can be found easily,that it is presented in a form that is most usable ("accessible") to that individual participant, and that the individual is thus enabled to transform that information into active, actionable understanding.

A larger, longer-term goal of KM is continually to raise the longer-term capability of each organizational participant, by making learning as effective as possible.

Why Knowledge Management ?

The knowledge that the participants in an organization need to work effectively for that organization requires consistent attention.

In many organizations, the value of the reuse of information is recognized, but that information is handled ineffectively:

• Data, sometimes organized will enough to be called information, is usually saved in some form.
  
  
• The context and value of the saved items must be rediscovered and reanalyzed when they are retrieved.
  
  
• The data is unstructured – freeform text, disconnected diagrams, data values out-of-context.
  
  
• Searching is usually ineffective.
  
  
• The data lacks sufficient metastructure for consistent storage and effective retrieval.
  
  
• The data also lacks sufficient internal structure to enable multiple viewing presentations, each targeted to different individuals or groups.

So, while an organization may invest some resources in capturing information, it does not reap the greatest return from the investment, neither through generally effective retrieval of that information, nor through presentation options that make it most accessible to the participants.

An Example: Organizational Confusion Resulting in Lost Time and Rework

Recently, a company in Silicon Valley encountered significant problems and delays in the implementation of a new IT application. (The company shall remain nameless, for confidentiality).

Three different IT organizations were involved in various aspects of implementing this application. The implementation required two extra weeks of work and frequent revisiting of various features of the operating system, database, and security configurations around the application itself.

Only towards the end of the implementation did it become clear that there was a major misunderstanding across the three groups about the corporate standards to be used for this configuration. In all fairness, the security standards were changing, as they must to keep current. However, it is still the case that nearly all of the delays, and much unnecessary rework, was caused by this lack of common understanding.

While not the entire solution, a strong KM orientation could have helped this situation. KM features that could have helped include: a knowledge repository approach that would have enabled, even enforced, all three groups to work from the same set of standards; information capture mechanisms that encouraged repository submissions, to keep it up-to-date; and business process identification that encouraged, perhaps even enforced, reference to the repository at key points during the implementation.

What are effective approaches to KM ?

Approaches to achieve effective knowledge include the following:

• An understanding of the knowledge assets important to the organization, derived by answering the following questions:
  
  
  • What knowledge is important and relevant to the organization's business processes? Where does that knowledge reside now?
    
    
  • How is the relevant knowledge generated, and how is it used? What are the knowledge flows of the organization?
    
    
  • How does the organization benefit from this knowledge? I.e., what are the costs (expenses incurred, delays) when the knowledge is not available when and where it needs to be?
    
    
  • How could a managed approach to this knowledge enhance its availability and usefulness?
    
    
• Information items that are well-structured from creation:
  
  
  • Explicit information structure, most likely through XML-based document generation tools;
    
    
  • Implicit, derived structure from intelligent data gathering (e.g., Intraspect, Tacit); and
    
    
  • Effective searching, enabled by the explicit and implicit structuring above, and be derived structuring (e.g., Atomica).
    
    
• A knowledge base that provides mechanisms for both submission and retrieval of information, and involving supporting technologies:
  
  
  • A repository structure, which may be centralized or (more likely) distributed;
    
    
  • A search capability, which should support both free-text and structured searches;
    
    
  • Multiple presentation formats and styles.
    
    
• Consistent organizational encouragement, including some or all of the following:
  
  
  • Management leadership-by-example;
    
    
  • Incentives;
    
    
  • Organizational structure; and
    
    
  • Communications.

The approaches above can be achieved through an overall approach that involves all of the following aspects:

• A strong business and process architecture, supported by both ...
  
  
• A strong technical architecture, and ...
  
  
• An established organizational support structure, all as part of ...
  
  
• A strong, consistent, and believable program.

Strategic activities that implement these approaches include:

• Business process analysis, to make explicit the types of knowledge required for the business;
  
  
• Technology analysis, to select the vendor products and development effort to provide the capabilities mentioned above;
  
  
• Organizational structuring, to provide a "home", an "owner", and management sponsorship for KM;
  
  
• Benefits analysis, to determine the most appropriate incentives for the organization;
  
  
• Communications strategizing, to determine the most effective communications vehicles.

Many of these can be initiated quickly, in focused worksessions. Initial drafts can be proposed, adopted, and acted upon, so that these exercises to do not last too long and generate "analysis paralysis". As with all organizational endeavors, the incentives to accomplish something quickly tradeoff with the risk of having to rework later.

Leveraging many aspects of the Internet and the World Wide Web can speed the process with reduced risks. These aspects include:

• Consensus on general architecture and structure, but flexibility in the details;
  
  
• Distributed, rather than centralized, information storage;
  
  
• Simplicity, to enable quick rework when required;
  
  
• Reuse of existing solutions, rather than reinventing from scratch.
  

eLearning and its relationship to KM

eLearning does not apply only to off-the-shelf information, such as training on vendor products or programming languages. eLearning can help members of the organization function better within the organization, by assisting knowledge-building about the organization itself. And this, in turn, can be based on a solid KM foundation.

Topics to be explored in future versions this white paper include:

Benefits of KM: strategic, tangible, and intangible

"Context" - the context of information is key to its usability as knowledge

Organizational factors, and how they impact KM

Technologies and architectures, and how they support KM

Enterprise portals, and their role in KM

Ontologies and taxonomies

eLearning and its relationship to KM

Additional examples of KM successes, and of difficulties due to the lack of KM

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