Considering I’ve used this blog to rail on poor self-service website experiences I decided to focus in on the best practices web self services pdf to wrap up the remaining reading posts.. Here are some of the things I found interesting.
“A recent Forrester study showed that more than a third of companies rate their self-service capabilities as below average to poor”
The article discusses the importance to have a strong, relevant, and healthy KB at the core of your self-service website. The KB should have:
- Access methods to know that make sense to your users
- Quick, simple escalation choices to agents who have a customer-centric view in mind.
The article referenced an interesting statistic:
“Users with a positive search experience spend 270% more on e-commerce sites”
While the article stressed that a self-service website shouldn’t just rely on search, it recognizes that search is an important feature of a KB. As a result it makes the following recommendations:
- too many answers make it overwhelming
- ask clarifying questions
- spelling suggestions
- automated learning built into a kb to promote documents to top of results based on use or expert weighting
- save searches,
- replay past searches,
- auto complete search terms
Going beyond search a good self service website should include:
- FAQ’s
- service alerts
- subscribe to content of interest
The article also discussed one best practice which is to change authoring of KB articles from non-customer centric authors to customer service agents. This way the KB articles can be more relevant to the questions being asked by users/customers.
Some other best practices recommended:
- Feedback forms can be appended to all solutions
- If an agents is unable to find right solution, agent can author a jit knowledge article
- Expert users ability to post
- Forums integrated into kb articles
All in all this was a very straightforward and relevant article on KB’s at the center of a self-service based web site.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Elevator Questions
"I see from your transcripts that you took a course in KM. What is KM?"
Who the hell gave you my transcripts?
I keed, I keed….
Put simply, knowledge management revolves around the ability for an organization to capture, codify, and easily serve established knowledge from an organization. KM lies on the bedrock that organizational knowledge can be a powerful resource inside an organization and should be easily transferred between different internal and external parties.
"Tell me how you would apply KM in my organization."
Well it would be incredibly important to see what problems or issues currently prevent KM from being effectively applied in the organization. Once we can determine the root causes we must then solve them and employ one or many different techniques to establish an effective knowledge management system for the organization.
"What KM technologies would you recommend here?"
Again, this is a difficult answer to give you without fully knowing what the organization needs are and what barriers, if any, there are to effective knowledge management.
"KM sounds great, but how do I justify KM here?"
KM is not just something that should be added to your current operations, but it should be seen as the very lifeblood of operations. While it might be hard to quantify the amount of knowledge lost due to ineffective KM, it’s easy to monetize knowledge lost and to see knowledge as an essential resource of your organization. KM not only saves time, energy, and money, it also can provide a competitive advantage over others in your market.
"KM sounds great, but what KM metrics do you recommend?"
It's hard to discuss metrics before deciding on a technology. Overall it's important to see if a KMS has added value to organization instead of just disrupting your processes. You can determine that in a variety of ways: output, behavior, etc.
"Tell me the main barriers to adopting KM I can anticipate. How would you overcome them?"
People. For many different reasons people will be your main barrier. Some people will be resistant to the work involved in KM, some will not really understand it’s purpose, and others will be threatened that their knowledge will be in a system instead of their head, making them feel expendable. Besides people, processes are another huge barrier. If your business processes are not properly setup for KM, KM here will certainly fail.
"Summarize for me what you learned in that KM class."
Well, the most important thing I learned is that all problems are knowledge problems. But about KM specifically is that Knowledge is one of the most important resources in any organization, and the better an organization can manage knowledge, the more they’ll stand to be an industry leader in whatever field or discipline.
Who the hell gave you my transcripts?
I keed, I keed….
Put simply, knowledge management revolves around the ability for an organization to capture, codify, and easily serve established knowledge from an organization. KM lies on the bedrock that organizational knowledge can be a powerful resource inside an organization and should be easily transferred between different internal and external parties.
"Tell me how you would apply KM in my organization."
Well it would be incredibly important to see what problems or issues currently prevent KM from being effectively applied in the organization. Once we can determine the root causes we must then solve them and employ one or many different techniques to establish an effective knowledge management system for the organization.
"What KM technologies would you recommend here?"
Again, this is a difficult answer to give you without fully knowing what the organization needs are and what barriers, if any, there are to effective knowledge management.
"KM sounds great, but how do I justify KM here?"
KM is not just something that should be added to your current operations, but it should be seen as the very lifeblood of operations. While it might be hard to quantify the amount of knowledge lost due to ineffective KM, it’s easy to monetize knowledge lost and to see knowledge as an essential resource of your organization. KM not only saves time, energy, and money, it also can provide a competitive advantage over others in your market.
"KM sounds great, but what KM metrics do you recommend?"
It's hard to discuss metrics before deciding on a technology. Overall it's important to see if a KMS has added value to organization instead of just disrupting your processes. You can determine that in a variety of ways: output, behavior, etc.
"Tell me the main barriers to adopting KM I can anticipate. How would you overcome them?"
People. For many different reasons people will be your main barrier. Some people will be resistant to the work involved in KM, some will not really understand it’s purpose, and others will be threatened that their knowledge will be in a system instead of their head, making them feel expendable. Besides people, processes are another huge barrier. If your business processes are not properly setup for KM, KM here will certainly fail.
"Summarize for me what you learned in that KM class."
Well, the most important thing I learned is that all problems are knowledge problems. But about KM specifically is that Knowledge is one of the most important resources in any organization, and the better an organization can manage knowledge, the more they’ll stand to be an industry leader in whatever field or discipline.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Week 7: Dave Simmons Visit
I really liked Dave’s speech to us. While many of the things he discussed about his current situation sounded suspiciously more like information management than knowledge management, I still greatly appreciated his anecdotes and real world experience.
Here were some of the things Dave touched on that I really found insightful:
“The real knowledge is in the failed projects”
“Organizing info so we can derive knowledge from it”
He also quoted the famous KM line: “We’re starving for knowledge but drowning in information”
He stressed the importance of keeping a personal journal, which was something I was thinking a lot about personally.
“Discernment for better decision making”
When it comes to information “less is more” focused information is better than more information
And the most important piece of knowledge he dropped on us:
“Simple projects can have the biggest impact”
Here were some of the things Dave touched on that I really found insightful:
“The real knowledge is in the failed projects”
“Organizing info so we can derive knowledge from it”
He also quoted the famous KM line: “We’re starving for knowledge but drowning in information”
He stressed the importance of keeping a personal journal, which was something I was thinking a lot about personally.
“Discernment for better decision making”
When it comes to information “less is more” focused information is better than more information
And the most important piece of knowledge he dropped on us:
“Simple projects can have the biggest impact”
Week 6: Part II Reading / In Class notes
#2
IT vs. business users
Centralize vs. leverage
Simplify vs. access
Manage vs. empower
#4
Get persuasive content that educates and informs customers can
Strengthen customer loyalty
Achieve unified brands, messages, and corporate image
Accelerate worldwide product launches and promotions
Optimize customer process efficencies (also reduces costs by 70% or more)
Provide regulartory compliance and security
#6
o Capture KM
o Create CM
o Route KM
o Manage CM
o Convert KM
o Publish CM
CM under KM
#8
Corporate records for reg compliance and e-discovery
Eliminate IT headaches
Bus critical info
5 req’s (in bullets)
#10
make it easy to install
easy to uprgrade interface
make sure it searches quickly
accurate
comprehensive
#15
accounts payable: indexing paper documents to integrate everything.
Contract management: collaborative solutions, document capture, online electronic approval
IT vs. business users
Centralize vs. leverage
Simplify vs. access
Manage vs. empower
#4
Get persuasive content that educates and informs customers can
Strengthen customer loyalty
Achieve unified brands, messages, and corporate image
Accelerate worldwide product launches and promotions
Optimize customer process efficencies (also reduces costs by 70% or more)
Provide regulartory compliance and security
#6
o Capture KM
o Create CM
o Route KM
o Manage CM
o Convert KM
o Publish CM
CM under KM
#8
Corporate records for reg compliance and e-discovery
Eliminate IT headaches
Bus critical info
5 req’s (in bullets)
#10
make it easy to install
easy to uprgrade interface
make sure it searches quickly
accurate
comprehensive
#15
accounts payable: indexing paper documents to integrate everything.
Contract management: collaborative solutions, document capture, online electronic approval
Week 6: Part I Reading / Blog Questions
Huber
Media richness falls under the Information Interpretation branch. That’s interesting because that’s exactly the same conclusion we reached after the “One” exercise in class. I do agree, because as stated I did agree with that conclusion from the “One” exercise. Media richness can aid in helping to frame and correctly interpret information (but as noted during the exercise, can also cause there to be bias drawn as well).
Unlearning also falls under information interpretation. Huber describes “unlearning” in two different ways. One way can be functional in that it helps someone to forget or discard obsolete or incorrect knowledge. The other form of unlearning occurs when knowledge is not retained by the worker, nor is it passed on, which is a negative outcome from unlearning.
General:
“What is the difference between knowledge management and organizational learning?”
KM focuses on the content of the knowledge whereas OL focuses on process.
“Knowledge transfer vs. organizational learning”
Knowledge transfer is actually the process of transmitting the content from a KMS to a known or unknown entity and again, OL is the process of having said content used to help shape the processes of the organization.
“Knowledge transfer vs. knowledge management”
Transfer is the process of transmitting the content contained in KM.
Media richness falls under the Information Interpretation branch. That’s interesting because that’s exactly the same conclusion we reached after the “One” exercise in class. I do agree, because as stated I did agree with that conclusion from the “One” exercise. Media richness can aid in helping to frame and correctly interpret information (but as noted during the exercise, can also cause there to be bias drawn as well).
Unlearning also falls under information interpretation. Huber describes “unlearning” in two different ways. One way can be functional in that it helps someone to forget or discard obsolete or incorrect knowledge. The other form of unlearning occurs when knowledge is not retained by the worker, nor is it passed on, which is a negative outcome from unlearning.
General:
“What is the difference between knowledge management and organizational learning?”
KM focuses on the content of the knowledge whereas OL focuses on process.
“Knowledge transfer vs. organizational learning”
Knowledge transfer is actually the process of transmitting the content from a KMS to a known or unknown entity and again, OL is the process of having said content used to help shape the processes of the organization.
“Knowledge transfer vs. knowledge management”
Transfer is the process of transmitting the content contained in KM.
Week 5 Reading and Blog Questions
Action Learning
Out of all 6 steps, Determining causes of the problem is the most important step in organizational problem solving. The blog questions state that there are “2 new steps before determining the cause” I’m not quite sure if that’s a reference to presenting the problem and reframing the problem. However presentation of the problem and reframing the problem certainly makes a lot of sense. It’s important to present the problem and then to look at the problem from a different angle in order to properly define the problem. Once a problem is properly defined only then can you attack it’s root cause.
Understanding & Supporting Decision Making
The underlying idea of naturalistic decision making is the notion that “how people make decisions begins with observation, and not testing hypothesis drawn from mathematical and statistical theories.” Essentially naturalistic decision-making deals with intuition and how that shapes the decision making process. According to the research provided naturlisitc decision-making rarely compares options (less than 5% of the time actually). The Naturilistic decision-making camp looks at the traditional model of decision making (hypothesis-expirement-theory etc) is too narrow of a way to describe true scientific thinking.
What data mining can’t do
The “more is not better” has to do with the fundamental idea of data mining: and that is that data mining is based upon understanding the “radomness” of human behavior by using fairly basic probability distributions. So, when it comes to data warehousing more is not necessarily better because sometimes all of that additional data can be a bit of a red herring and can capture more of the random idiosyncrasies of human behavior which can then make the data too muddied and much more difficult to draw conclusions.
Reflection questions:
“Is there a difference between decision making and problem solving?”
I believe yes there very much is a difference between decision making and problem solving. Decision making, as seen in the naturalistic article, often times can be based on intuition and quick thinking. While this has many positivies, it also has many negatives when it comes to problem solving. As we saw in the action learning article there are many steps involved in adequately solving a problem, with defining the root cause as the most important. Often times in decision making processes defining, framing, and finding root cause isn’t determined nor are they often thought about.
True or False:
There are good decisions, and there are bad decisions: Kinda true, kinda false
There are simply decisions. It’s context that makes them good or bad.
Better information yields better decision making: True
Absolutely.
Better knowledge yields better decision making:True
Out of all 6 steps, Determining causes of the problem is the most important step in organizational problem solving. The blog questions state that there are “2 new steps before determining the cause” I’m not quite sure if that’s a reference to presenting the problem and reframing the problem. However presentation of the problem and reframing the problem certainly makes a lot of sense. It’s important to present the problem and then to look at the problem from a different angle in order to properly define the problem. Once a problem is properly defined only then can you attack it’s root cause.
Understanding & Supporting Decision Making
The underlying idea of naturalistic decision making is the notion that “how people make decisions begins with observation, and not testing hypothesis drawn from mathematical and statistical theories.” Essentially naturalistic decision-making deals with intuition and how that shapes the decision making process. According to the research provided naturlisitc decision-making rarely compares options (less than 5% of the time actually). The Naturilistic decision-making camp looks at the traditional model of decision making (hypothesis-expirement-theory etc) is too narrow of a way to describe true scientific thinking.
What data mining can’t do
The “more is not better” has to do with the fundamental idea of data mining: and that is that data mining is based upon understanding the “radomness” of human behavior by using fairly basic probability distributions. So, when it comes to data warehousing more is not necessarily better because sometimes all of that additional data can be a bit of a red herring and can capture more of the random idiosyncrasies of human behavior which can then make the data too muddied and much more difficult to draw conclusions.
Reflection questions:
“Is there a difference between decision making and problem solving?”
I believe yes there very much is a difference between decision making and problem solving. Decision making, as seen in the naturalistic article, often times can be based on intuition and quick thinking. While this has many positivies, it also has many negatives when it comes to problem solving. As we saw in the action learning article there are many steps involved in adequately solving a problem, with defining the root cause as the most important. Often times in decision making processes defining, framing, and finding root cause isn’t determined nor are they often thought about.
True or False:
There are good decisions, and there are bad decisions: Kinda true, kinda false
There are simply decisions. It’s context that makes them good or bad.
Better information yields better decision making: True
Absolutely.
Better knowledge yields better decision making:True
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Week 4: Readings
Week 3 was an off week for articles.. here is a summary of Week 4's readings:
Many forms of e-collaboration
The author presents the many different ways to build a collaborative work place. At the beginning of the article he outlines the three fundamentals of collaborative tools. They are
• A way to communicate
• A mechanism to share documents
• Some means to discover other members of the community
He then goes on to discuss when your office or working group needs an online collaboration tool. He outlines three of the most common tasks that an online collaboration tool can help manage more effectively. They are:
• Manage the control and access to your materials
• Track what was posted when and who has reviewed it
• Make your project debriefing meeting based on a record of what happened during the project life cycle
He also discussed how online collaboration tools can help make your team more effective and efficient by having a centralized repository of documents and information so a team doesn’t have to go searching in multiple places.
Finally a comprehensive list of types of collaborative tools were listed. I was familiar with all of them so I will only list them. Some of the types discussed were:
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Portals
• Groupware
• Discussion Boards
• Instant Messaging
• And of course… email
Finally the article discussed the importance of defining the r requirements your team has in order to choose the correct collaborative technology. The major requirements were:
• How frequently do people need to communicate?
• What types of communication is preferred – asynch vs. synch
• What access is need to previous communications
• How often do groups want to share documents and other digital objects?
7 Things you should know about Wikis
This is simple to summarize. Here are the seven things:
1. What is it (a collaborative page that can be viewed and updated by members of a community)
2. Who’s doing it? (basically, everyone who needs to)
3. How does it work? (over view of the technology )
4. Why is it significant? (it’s a powerful and flexible collaborative tool)
5. What are the Downsides? (integrity of info. Structure can be challenging. Collaborative bias)
6. Where is it going? (article states they show great potential)
7. What are the implications teaching and learning? (Focuses on the educational use of wikis)
Grassroots KM
This is a very interesting Gartner article on KM in the enterprise and looks at current trends and makes future predictions of KM in enterprise. Basically the article notes a trend (as of it’s writing in 2003) of enterprises moving away from large enterprise controlled KMS’s to “grassroots” KMS’s run by individual business units inside an enterprise. The idea is that each business unit might have individual needs for a KMS solution and therefore one large KMS in the enterprise might not suit their needs, however multiple different KMS’s across an organization may help each individual until maximize their KM needs. The article goes on to predict that this trend will continue over time and that enterprises will start to encourage each business until to have it’s own KMS solution.
Personal toolkit
This article was moderately helpful. The real key to the article was the chart that laid out different types of technologies that can be helpful for different needs and uses. The chart was arranged by principles, processes, values, skills, and tools. The different principles listed were: accessing, evaluating, organizing, analyzing, conveying, collaborating, andsecuring,
IEEE Spectrum Wikipeida review
The IEEE article outlines how Wikipedia works and how relevant and accurate its information is or could be. To me the major finding was in the Brittanica vs. Wikipedia showdown. A study done by the journal Nature discovered 3 errors per Brittanica article and 4 per Wikipedia article. However the IEEE article goes on to caution to not just flat out trust a wikipedia post, it does mention that Wikipedia can be quite useful.
For me personally I’ve found Wikipedia to be a great first step/resource. I think the greatest strength is in it’s references section. Often times Wikipedia can point me to a great list of references about a topic, which can help me to further learn about it instead of me trying to compile all of the information myself.
Many forms of e-collaboration
The author presents the many different ways to build a collaborative work place. At the beginning of the article he outlines the three fundamentals of collaborative tools. They are
• A way to communicate
• A mechanism to share documents
• Some means to discover other members of the community
He then goes on to discuss when your office or working group needs an online collaboration tool. He outlines three of the most common tasks that an online collaboration tool can help manage more effectively. They are:
• Manage the control and access to your materials
• Track what was posted when and who has reviewed it
• Make your project debriefing meeting based on a record of what happened during the project life cycle
He also discussed how online collaboration tools can help make your team more effective and efficient by having a centralized repository of documents and information so a team doesn’t have to go searching in multiple places.
Finally a comprehensive list of types of collaborative tools were listed. I was familiar with all of them so I will only list them. Some of the types discussed were:
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Portals
• Groupware
• Discussion Boards
• Instant Messaging
• And of course… email
Finally the article discussed the importance of defining the r requirements your team has in order to choose the correct collaborative technology. The major requirements were:
• How frequently do people need to communicate?
• What types of communication is preferred – asynch vs. synch
• What access is need to previous communications
• How often do groups want to share documents and other digital objects?
7 Things you should know about Wikis
This is simple to summarize. Here are the seven things:
1. What is it (a collaborative page that can be viewed and updated by members of a community)
2. Who’s doing it? (basically, everyone who needs to)
3. How does it work? (over view of the technology )
4. Why is it significant? (it’s a powerful and flexible collaborative tool)
5. What are the Downsides? (integrity of info. Structure can be challenging. Collaborative bias)
6. Where is it going? (article states they show great potential)
7. What are the implications teaching and learning? (Focuses on the educational use of wikis)
Grassroots KM
This is a very interesting Gartner article on KM in the enterprise and looks at current trends and makes future predictions of KM in enterprise. Basically the article notes a trend (as of it’s writing in 2003) of enterprises moving away from large enterprise controlled KMS’s to “grassroots” KMS’s run by individual business units inside an enterprise. The idea is that each business unit might have individual needs for a KMS solution and therefore one large KMS in the enterprise might not suit their needs, however multiple different KMS’s across an organization may help each individual until maximize their KM needs. The article goes on to predict that this trend will continue over time and that enterprises will start to encourage each business until to have it’s own KMS solution.
Personal toolkit
This article was moderately helpful. The real key to the article was the chart that laid out different types of technologies that can be helpful for different needs and uses. The chart was arranged by principles, processes, values, skills, and tools. The different principles listed were: accessing, evaluating, organizing, analyzing, conveying, collaborating, andsecuring,
IEEE Spectrum Wikipeida review
The IEEE article outlines how Wikipedia works and how relevant and accurate its information is or could be. To me the major finding was in the Brittanica vs. Wikipedia showdown. A study done by the journal Nature discovered 3 errors per Brittanica article and 4 per Wikipedia article. However the IEEE article goes on to caution to not just flat out trust a wikipedia post, it does mention that Wikipedia can be quite useful.
For me personally I’ve found Wikipedia to be a great first step/resource. I think the greatest strength is in it’s references section. Often times Wikipedia can point me to a great list of references about a topic, which can help me to further learn about it instead of me trying to compile all of the information myself.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Week 3: A discussion on Ed Brill's presentation
Today (April 16th) Ed Brill came to visit the class. Ed is a Business Unit Executive at IBM and is in charge of sales for their Lotus suite.
Ed is obviously a very dynamic speaker. I both liked and disliked Ed’s presentation.
What I liked
I was extremely interested in the first quarter of the presentation. I thought Ed did a great job with an overview of knowledge management and IS management in the first quarter of the presentation. I think the best part of his presentation was his slide that showed the history of IS systems adoption and a look into the future (a future that will apparently include 3D Virtual worlds) This was a fascinating look into where companies have been, what challenges they are facing today, and what challenges they will face in the future.
I also liked many of the practical experiences that Ed shared with us. His stories about Aon and other companies he met with helped to drive home the point of the challenge of knowledge management.
What I didn’t like / made me feel very uncomfortable
While I understand Ed’s background is to be a Lotus guy through and through, I thought his devotion to IBM and Lotus was incredibly off-putting and toed the line of inappropriate for the classroom. I was hoping the rest of Ed’s presentation would be like the first quarter: Leveraging his knowledge and experience to bring insight into the challenges of Knowledge Management. Sadly, it didn’t always take that form. His Microsoft bashing was above and beyond the normal complaints that one might have with Redmond, and were highly inappropriate. They were shots at an opposing vendor, smash talk of a competitor. I think there’s a place to note how Microsoft’s death grip on office and home productivity software has stifled and can stifle innovation and knowledge management, but unfortunately his approach to this issue didn't strike the right chord. There was nothing substantive about his Microsoft bashing. Quite frankly, those kind of Ad Hominem attacks do not belong in the classroom. Also, while Ed promised that the presentation wouldn’t be a sales pitch, it really felt that way toward the end. In all fairness, Ed probably didn’t even intend to make this happen, but Ed’s a salesmen through and through and sometimes it’s easy to do what comes naturally.
Overall I think Ed Brill could be a great speaker to bring into a classroom, but I think that he needs to leverage his experience to bring practical knowledge to students, instead of resorting to proprietary chest thumping.
Ed is obviously a very dynamic speaker. I both liked and disliked Ed’s presentation.
What I liked
I was extremely interested in the first quarter of the presentation. I thought Ed did a great job with an overview of knowledge management and IS management in the first quarter of the presentation. I think the best part of his presentation was his slide that showed the history of IS systems adoption and a look into the future (a future that will apparently include 3D Virtual worlds) This was a fascinating look into where companies have been, what challenges they are facing today, and what challenges they will face in the future.
I also liked many of the practical experiences that Ed shared with us. His stories about Aon and other companies he met with helped to drive home the point of the challenge of knowledge management.
What I didn’t like / made me feel very uncomfortable
While I understand Ed’s background is to be a Lotus guy through and through, I thought his devotion to IBM and Lotus was incredibly off-putting and toed the line of inappropriate for the classroom. I was hoping the rest of Ed’s presentation would be like the first quarter: Leveraging his knowledge and experience to bring insight into the challenges of Knowledge Management. Sadly, it didn’t always take that form. His Microsoft bashing was above and beyond the normal complaints that one might have with Redmond, and were highly inappropriate. They were shots at an opposing vendor, smash talk of a competitor. I think there’s a place to note how Microsoft’s death grip on office and home productivity software has stifled and can stifle innovation and knowledge management, but unfortunately his approach to this issue didn't strike the right chord. There was nothing substantive about his Microsoft bashing. Quite frankly, those kind of Ad Hominem attacks do not belong in the classroom. Also, while Ed promised that the presentation wouldn’t be a sales pitch, it really felt that way toward the end. In all fairness, Ed probably didn’t even intend to make this happen, but Ed’s a salesmen through and through and sometimes it’s easy to do what comes naturally.
Overall I think Ed Brill could be a great speaker to bring into a classroom, but I think that he needs to leverage his experience to bring practical knowledge to students, instead of resorting to proprietary chest thumping.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Week 3: Head above water?
I wanted to elaborate more on the image I shared with the class today. The image was that of us as a species. The information and communication revolution that has currently been taking place before our very eyes has basically opened a floodgate, drowning us in an ocean while we paddle our way through wearing nothing but our bright orange floaties.
I’m convinced that the technology in place of which to communicate has far outpaced our ability.
Week 2 Readings
Alavi
“Knowledge is authenticated information” I think this was perhaps the most important thing I read in this document. It touched upon our earlier conversations about truth and knowledge. Here Knoweldge is defined as “authenticated” meaning that the information is authenticated as true and useful.
I thought the Tuomi argument was incredibly interesting – essentially the idea is that there are no such things as information or data without knowledge.
This article focuses heavily on personal knowledge and the relationship between knowledge and a person. To put simply the goal of knowledge management is to take the knowledge of an individual and be able to capture it and leverage it as an asset for an organization.
Bohn
The Bohn article is a very interesting look at how to measure knowledge about a process. The article outlines eight stages. Below is a figure of those stages
Nonaka
The Nonaka article was a long look at how to make an organization a knowelge centric organiation. The goal of the article was to give pratical advice and guidance as to how to create an organizational environment where employees are always looking to improve in the knoeledge management of an organiation.
“Knowledge is authenticated information” I think this was perhaps the most important thing I read in this document. It touched upon our earlier conversations about truth and knowledge. Here Knoweldge is defined as “authenticated” meaning that the information is authenticated as true and useful.
I thought the Tuomi argument was incredibly interesting – essentially the idea is that there are no such things as information or data without knowledge.
Tumoi argues that knowledge exists which, when articulated, verbalized, and structured, becomes information which, when assigned a fixed repre-sentation and standard interpretation, becomes data. Critical to this argument is the fact that knowledge does not exist outside of an agent (a knower): it is indelibly shaped by oneís needs as well as oneís initial stock of knowledge (Fahey and Prusak 1998; Tuomi 1999). Knowledge is thus the result of cognitive processing triggered by the inflow of new stimuli.
This article focuses heavily on personal knowledge and the relationship between knowledge and a person. To put simply the goal of knowledge management is to take the knowledge of an individual and be able to capture it and leverage it as an asset for an organization.
Bohn
The Bohn article is a very interesting look at how to measure knowledge about a process. The article outlines eight stages. Below is a figure of those stages
Nonaka
The Nonaka article was a long look at how to make an organization a knowelge centric organiation. The goal of the article was to give pratical advice and guidance as to how to create an organizational environment where employees are always looking to improve in the knoeledge management of an organiation.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Studying Risk
I found a very interesting post on risk over at Bruce Schneier's blog. Here's a quick snippet:
As I continue to evaluate strategies of organizations and how they commit their resources (or don't) it's interesting to see how decision making processes can work on the more primeval of levels.
I've already written about prospect theory, which explains how people approach risk. People tend to be risk averse when it comes to gains, and risk seeking when it comes to losses...... This behavior has been demonstrated in animals as well: "species of insects, birds and mammals range from risk neutral to risk averse when making decisions about amounts of food, but are risk seeking towards delays in receiving food."
As I continue to evaluate strategies of organizations and how they commit their resources (or don't) it's interesting to see how decision making processes can work on the more primeval of levels.
What I'm (Google) Reading
The following are the feeds I subscribe to on Google Reader:
- All things Digital (http://www.allthingsd.com)
- AppleInsider (http://www.appleinsider.com)
- Ars Technica (http://www.arstechnica.com)
- Chicago Cubs News (via mlb.com)
- Chicago White Sox News (via mlb.com)
- Ed Brill (http://www.edbrill.com)
- Engadget (http://www.engadget.com)
- ESPN (http://www.espn.com)
- IGN Wii (http://wii.ign.com)
- Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com)
- Len & Bob's Blog http://blogs.trb.com/sports/custom/weblog/wgnsports/atom.xml )
- Macrumors (http://www.macrumors.com)
- Macworld (http://www.macworld.com)
- Nintendo Wii Fanboy (http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com)
- Schneier on Security (http://www.schneier.com/blog)
- Woot (http://www.woot.com)
- Xbox 360 Fanboy (http://www.xbox360fanboy.com)
Week 2 Class: Networks and Nodes I
I thought today’s (April 8th) class was a very interesting and unique take on knowledge. I’ve already blogged about the knowledge and truth debate, so I want to focus more on personal knowledge, networks, and nodes. I really enjoyed the breakdown of the Steve Jobs commencement speech. The way the different major topics/important information was basically broken down into a sequenced chain was interesting. It also got me to thinking about how this could be an effective tool for our KMS project. All too often when I work with a KMS, they’ll give me the information I might need for a specific step in a process, but afterwards I’m always wondering “Ok what next.” I think it would be cool if a KMS could “chain” knowledge base articles so that after you solve problem one you don’t have to go back and reinitiate a new search for the next step. Instead, I should just have a link that can take me to the KB article for the next step.
All in all though, I’m starting to realize that proper KM for an organization is a very very difficult process. I think the key though will always be A) an organization that is always committed to KM through and through and B) a disciplined approach to KM. I think sometimes A) might be true but B) falls to the wayside, especially when a project is facing tight deadlines. Sure, it would be great to document everything for a KB, but that might mean adding extra time into a project plan to ensure that happens.
All in all though, I’m starting to realize that proper KM for an organization is a very very difficult process. I think the key though will always be A) an organization that is always committed to KM through and through and B) a disciplined approach to KM. I think sometimes A) might be true but B) falls to the wayside, especially when a project is facing tight deadlines. Sure, it would be great to document everything for a KB, but that might mean adding extra time into a project plan to ensure that happens.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Veritas? What is Veritas?
The question posed in week 2 was quite interesting. As an organization do you want to work on “knowledge” management or “truth” management? I think the debate that broke out in class basically crystallized the argument and to me begs the essential question: “When and how does knowledge become truth?” During class I brought up the idea that knowledge is not as important as truth. I used the example of the common “knowledge” 500 years ago that the world was flat. However the truth was very different. The history of man is filled with early recordings of knowledge. Some of it has stood the test of time, others have been refined, evolved, and changed. Those recordings that have stood the test of time have come to be known as truth. But truth has a certain subjectivity to it. Truth still needs to be proclaimed as such by some authority. Scientifically a theory becomes law when the authority (usually empirical data) consistently produces a similar result. But who is the authority on proclaiming truth in an organization? We’ve read knowledge management documents that help to describe certain business processes, but whose to say those processes are true? Is the authority in this situation the results produced by certain processes? What if an organization arrives to a goal in a project yet uses the most inefficient processes known to man? Are those processes now gospel, simply because of their results? And therein lies the problem, very few pieces of information inside an organization can ever be empirically tested to carry the weight of truth. And if that’s the case, then information can never be promoted further than knowledge. But ultimately it helps us to realize that the real goal or knowledge management is to turn your KMS from a knowledge base, into a pillar of truth..
My experience with KMS
Through my years as a technologist I’ve come across many different knowledge management systems. Most of them however were simple repositories / knowledge bases. (See Microsoft Support, Host monster help, Apple)
According to the definitions discussed in class these would be considered a “repository” KMS system. What I’ve found in using them is that I really would prefer them to be network modeled KMS’. Basically it seems like the only way to really have a strong KMS is through commonly understood codification and tagging practices. What’s frustrating about the tagging processes of multiple KB’s is that they don’t publish their practices and processes to the general public. If I knew more how they codify and tag their articles I’d be able to perform smarter searches to help me find the information I need.
Week 1: Readings
Week 1’s readings troubled me deeply. I have a very contagious, albeit treatable, condition known as senioritis. The sheer volume of reading however has done nothing to help this condition.
There were some overarching themes found throughout all the readings that we’ll discuss in this blog post.
I think the most important piece of information from all the readings came out of the Harris “One More Time What is KM?” reading. It has a definition for Knowledge Management:
“A simple definition for KM is formalizing the management of an enterprise's intellectual assets.
Enterprises look to manage their intellectual assets because of the capital embedded in them. This embedded capital is not financial; rather, it is human, organizational and relationship capital. These forms of capital are often hidden, are not highly leveraged and are difficult to value. Yet, they are clearly available to invest.”
Structured vs. unstructured
The Bowman article discussed the difference between structured and unstructured information. Structured information is that information which is found in traditional storage methods such as databases. Unstructured information is information found in documents, spreadsheets, media files, etc.
Network model vs. Repository
The Bowman article also outlined two ways to structure a KMS. The Network Model, which basically helps the user “connect the dots” between different pieces of knowledge as well as structure the knowledge in different directories and categories. Rich user collaboration is also an important feature of the network model. The repository model basically uses IT to capture all the knowledge and just put it in.. well.. a repository.
Tacit knowledge vs. explicit knowledge
A few of the articles also outlined the different types of knowledge. Simply defined, tacit knowledge is knowledge that is collected through experience, precetion, behavior, etc. Whereas explicit knowledge can be captured and disseminated explicitly.
Week 1 Class: "The beginning of the end"
Week 1: Class
Week 1’s class started off just like any other first day at DePaul, except this time it was actually like a real “syllabus day.” Professor Burns let us out early, which was fantastic regardless of how much it fanned the flames of my inflamed senior.
Professor Burns laid out a roadmap for our class, including the importance of this very blog (to me 50% says it’s important). He also gave us an introduction to Knowledge Management. We went through the basic IS exercise of examining data, information, knowledge and wisdom. However Professor Burns really through the gauntlet down by making the statement that “most of the problems you’ll encounter in life are knowledge problems.” I want to speak more of that here.
That thought really intrigued me, and I think it really touched a chord. I’ve been working with technology my whole life and I think I’ve somewhat developed this point of view, but never gamed it out and put it as elegantly. But often times my friends and family always would ask me (of course after fixing something of theirs) “How do you know all of this stuff?” Of course I would always talk about how my passion is technology, and how I just love working with technology, but I think what it all boils down to is a problem of knowledge. From an early age I started to recognize the overwhelming power and possibility that computers and technology gave us as a species. I knew that my life would always be intertwined with technology, and as a result I tried to learn all that I can about it. The reason I know how to fix someone’s PC, or how to install a program, or setup a home theater system is simply because they’re problems I’ve experienced in my life, and have acquired the knowledge to solve them. There are vast amounts of technologically related issues that I have little to no knowledge of, but what I’ve learned in my experience thus far is that these are simply frontiers of technology that have yet to intersect with my life. When they do, my understanding of them will simply be a problem of knowledge….
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