Is there a way to ensure that Best Practices are identified for re-use at the beginning of a project? Not to mention following through with this idea across the entire length of a projects life?

We all know that in medium / large IT organizations there are a lot of changes made to the project delivery approach depending  on a variety of factors ( new environment, client request, new ideas, crunched timelines, etc ).  Invariably during the course of this change people stumble across newer and more efficient ways of doing work that deliver higher value.

So the question really is how do we capture these best practices and make them readily available to the next set of people trying to start a new project?

This is a great way of creating a process that allows new project members to bring themselves up to speed with the current project.

What is also important to understand is that capturing best practices alone, while effective, is not the best way to ensure the value spreading through your organization. Capturing critical resource information is just as important, which means once you’ve identified a resource you can update your best practices records to indicate who the “go-to” person for an identified best practice or lesson learnt is. This will start dialogue between people and drive knowledge sharing.

Over time you will see a steady shift as more and more people start using this as a platform to do a quick “read” before getting started with a project.

Stumbling Blocks:

You need to figure out creative ways of getting project members to translate the experiences they have gained into best practices. There is an effort to this, however you need to judge whether this investment in time is justified in the long run for your organization.

Benefits  of doing it correctly :

This will enable to achieve detailed task in projects faster, and also ensure quality in those tasks, as it reduces rework effort, and brings in consistency in work across different members.

Eventually it should help achieve better productivity, and lower defect density both at in process, and post delivery stage.

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One of the most widely used knowledge sources in the world today is a free service.

“Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. The name Wikipedia is aportmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.

Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites. There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on some 8,700,000 articles in more than 250 languages. As of today, there are 2,072,273 articles in English every day hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to enhance the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia.”

The Wikimedia foundation runs wikipedia, and since this is a free service they live on donations. It is in all our best interests to donate ( however little we can ) to ensure that this legacy of free knowledge sharing continues.

You can help them by donating here. Remember, every donation counts!

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Branding, Branding, Branding!!

“As any marketer will tell you, A large portion of a products success depends on it’s brand value. The same holds true for a Knowledge Management initiative.

There is no doubting that you have a good product, otherwise you wouldn’t be taking it to the market ( being presumptuous here ) . However to ensure its success, you need the brand. Once people start associating KM in your organization with something prestigious the interest in it will automatically increase.

Strong KM practices can be run into the ground because of a lack of branding. Unlike most other job functions Knowledge Management has to be sold to the general public. You need to approach your employees like customers.”

Is the term Knowledge “Management” mis-leading?

“The term “Knowledge Management” can be misleading at times. When i first got into this field a couple of years ago i was a little wary of what i was supposed to accomplish. The very idea of Managing Knowledge was something i just couldn’t wrap my head around.

Today, after having practiced KM in the real world and studied it, i’ve come to understand that true KM is more environment management than actual managing of knowledge.

So what is environment management? Well, simply put, it’s creating an enviroment that fosters knowledge sharing. Attempting to actually manage knowledge is a hopeless task. This is because the very nature of KM frowns upon the use of strict guidelines and processes that most other functions require.”

Is Technology necessary for Knowledge Management?

“A large percentage of my posts so far have touched upon technology in the KM sphere. Now, while a portion of you practicing KM out there might feel that technology has no place in KM i still feel that in this day and age creating a robust technology platform that can support a KM initiative is one of the most important milestones you can set for your company.

Let me be very clear about the meaning of my statement above, technology is not Knowledge Management. As stated in earlier posts, a warped understanding of the term “Knowledge Management” have led a large number of companies to re-christen their information system initiatives under this umbrella. This aside, i do feel very strongly that unless you have a strong technology framework your KM initiative will not be as widespread as it should.

A prime example would be in the area of communications. The single biggest challenge to sharing knowledge in any organization are its barriers to communication. Once you’ve opened those up knowledge automatically starts flowing. Environment management, that’s what KM is all about.”

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Continuing with a once a week post on the various blogs i read, its time for me to focus attention on APQC’s Knowledge Management Blog. Another one of the KM blogs that I’ve been reading for a while now.

Written by Jim Lee, this blog has been around for a while now.

Here is an extract from one of his newer posts.

Knowledge Sharing driven by IT? IT can be done…

“Having just recently attended the Air Force Knowledge Now Users’ Conference, I’m impressed by how they’ve implemented their knowledge sharing program, particularly since it appears that they’ve successfully navigated the “build it and they will (not) come” conundrum. The knowledge sharing program, led by Randy Adkins and his KM team, has thousands of communities of practice—all enabled by collaborative webspaces. Their content, activity, presence, and “location” are virtual. They’ve developed their community this way so effectively that it almost seems ironic to come face-to-face with the actual members”

In the coming weeks i shall be featuring many such KM blogs, so that you the reader can get to know what other KM bloggers think about the subject of Knowledge Management.

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YouTube a KM Platform?? Are you out of your mind? thats probably the first reaction you had when you read the title of this post. Honestly? i dont blame you , i was having the same thoughts a week ago , but then as you know when an idea takes hold it takes a while to shake off.

So I asked myself this very simple question, What makes a good KM platform? and then started listing the points down one by one. This is what i’ve come up with so far ( this is a very basic list, so bear with me) .

1. Communities of Practice
2. Expertise Map
3. Great Search feature
4. Collaboration
5. Information Repositories

The whole idea behind institutionalizing KM anywhere is to for people to get to the right information at the right time. While there are hundreds of applications out there ( open source and otherwise ) the fundamental success factor for any KM initiative is to establish a self sustaining knowledge sharing culture that uses the platform to facilitate collaboration. Something YouTube has excelled at, now whether this fits your corporates definition of a KM tool is question that we shall tackle on another day.

Right, back to the question at hand. Analyzing what YouTube has to offer gives us a pretty good insight on how the knowledge ( headbanging teens and American idol wannabes ) is stored and structured. Here you can get to any information using a category tab, a great way to structure your information. Tags are another huge feature here which makes structuring and subsequently locating information a lot simpler.

Channels allow you to subscribe to your favourite information sources and receive a steady stream of information without searching for it. Finally and most importantly a Community section which gets people of similar interest together to discuss about information / interests that they have in common.

As with any self respecting KM tool the option to rate information is a must, YouTube accomplishes that with aplomb. Users are allowed to rate videos, post comments and so on enabling the “weeding” out of less desirable content.

Information like which are the most viewed videos, favourited videos and such add as a bonus to the information seeker as it gives him/ her the opportunity to feel the pulse ( so to speak ) of the community.

Statistics on how many videos were viewed /submitted by individual users can be pulled up very easily enabling ( further down the line ) a creation of an “expertise map”.

There you have it, while YouTube is not what one would call an ideal KM tool it addresses one of the most difficult issues KM practitioners face, getting people to share information. Filling the other functional gaps shouldn’t be too difficult. Now if only we can get our corporates to start shooting embarrassing videos of themselves.

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Communication is one of the biggest enablers for knowledge management in any organization. Your people need to know the what, where and why of the KM initiative if you want to ensure its success.

The number of methods of communication strategies have increased in leaps and bounds since we entered the age of information technology. E-mail, RSS feeds, posters, etc are just some of the methods to enable the distribution of information. The extensive use of clever visuals also aids tremendously with getting the message across. Some companies have even gone so far as to create video clips of success stories in their organization. Even something as simple as a screen saver can be a powerful tool when it comes to reaching out to your people.

Using a combination of some of the methods described above is a great way of spreading the word on any initiative. As we all know, the greatest driver for knowledge sharing is recognition. A communications platform gives you the ability to promote employee recognition across the organization.

Things to keep in mind : As with most organizations, there is a central channel by which company wide information is dispersed. In most cases via e-mail as this is the cheapest and fastest way to ensure that the information gets to everyone. The draw backs of using such a platform for your KM initiative are the fact that these “vessels” are used to send information about everything, minor and major. The end result of this is a large portion of employees don’t even bother to check it.

So, at the end of the day how do you ensure that your message isn’t lost in all the noise? If you are looking for a simple answer there isn’t one. All i can say is look at everything you send out twice, pilot it with a bunch of people who can give you an outsiders opinion, and most importantly keep your fingers crossed.

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The term “Knowledge Management” can be misleading at times. When i first got into this field a couple of years ago i was a little wary of what i was supposed to accomplish. The very idea of Managing Knowledge was something i just couldn’t wrap my head around.

Today, after having practiced KM in the real world and studied it, i’ve come to understand that true KM is more environment management than actual managing of knowledge.

So what is environment management? Well, simply put, it’s creating an environment that fosters knowledge sharing. Attempting to actually manage knowledge is a hopeless task. This is because the very nature of KM frowns upon the use of strict guidelines and processes that most other functions require.

I’ve seen and heard the way KM is practiced in a large number of organizations, from both the private and public sectors, small, medium and large companies and the one principle that has ensured the success of KM is the fact that its been driven by a change in the cultural and perception of its employees.

Another common mistake that a surprisingly large number of corporates make is “re-defining” their existing information management processes by calling them Knowledge Management processes. While content management and information management do constitute part of the KM initiative they do not define it. This only serves to further confuse end users to the meaning of knowledge management.

The situation has gotten so bad in some instances that employees associate KM with the process of uploading a couple of documents every year to fulfill their “KM” contribution quota. It is practices like these that give Knowledge Management a bad name.

In a previous post i’ve tried to address the issue of why knowledge sharing is so different in the corporate world. However, there have been many instances where these hurdles have been overcome. This is only when there is solid support from the management and when the initiative is viewed as a means to improve the way employees work and not just a way of increasing margins.

Tying all of this together is a framework that includes a rewards and recognition program, branding and a very robust communication strategy. Communication is a large part of knowledge management and i have a few thoughts on this subject that i shall put down in my next post.

So, for the rest of you out there…… Does the term Knowledge Management acurately convey what you actually accomplish?

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Users spend over a hundred hours every month on collaborative sites like Wikipedia. While it seems cruel to call this Knowledge “Management”, it does describe the very foundation of KM. Get people to share their knowledge.

More importantly, this cultural phenomenon has shown long term sustainability of such initiatives without traditional drivers like Rewards and Recognition. ( Read Here ). Which addresses the basic question this post raises : Why is Knowledge Sharing so different in the corporate world? For a lot of you the answer might seem obvious, but with the trend of KM adoption in corporates rising there is a serious need to understand what can be done about this.

There are many instances where KM seems to flourish outside the corporate sphere. Now the question is, why does this happen? In most cases these are the same people doing the sharing. What makes it so different within an organization?

True, there are certain pre-concieved notions about corporates. The biggest of which is that you always seem to have someone looking over your shoulder. Add to that the fact that you need to be extremely careful about the things you say or do and you have a system designed to cut off free information sharing at its knees.

Wikipedia is a prime example of Knowledge Sharing, here thousands of strangers help put together an amazing collection of information without any perceivable reward. You might say the reward here is recognition. However, if you take a closer look, a large portion of these contributors are anonymous.

So why do they do it? What drives this need to share knowledge , when everything we’ve learnt so far tells us that we shouldn’t. Would you spend that much time contributing?

The answer i feel lies in the fundamental issue of competitiveness. It exists in the corporate world, it does not outside it. When you remove an individual from those restrains you get to see the true “sharing” potential of a person.

As always, please feel free to put down your thoughts on this subject…….

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