[Sigia-l] knowledge management

[Ginny Risk]

Jody, I agree with your characterization.  I was an early practitioner
of KM, and here is my take on it.

Knowledge Management is rooted in organizational development,
particularly learning organizations.  It is about sharing experience,
methods and work product in order to improve the quality and
productivity of the organization as a whole.  The "knowledge" that is
shared includes methodology, workflow, patterns and templates, the "the
materials generated during the course of business," which would be any
deliverables generated during the life of a project that are deemed
exemplary or reusable, and informal anecdotes, FAQs and expert contact
information.

A knowledge repository provides online access to the content that is to
be reused.  The content is organized in "a structure and processes that
are most useful to the target audience," which would be an IA.

The larger goal of KM is to change the organization's business
processes.  Organizational structure is changed and incentives are
developed.  Reusable content is usually scrubbed and synthesized.  The
kind of companies that find the expense of KM justified are those that
generate revenue from expertise, such as consultancies, or those that
spend heavily on research, such as pharmaceuticals.  

KM is directed at internal users, whereas IA is usually directed at
external users.  The target users are often customers or potential
customers.  Any company with an online presence needs an information
architecture, but I think the companies that get the most value from IA,
and the ones most often cited as examples, are companies that sell
products via the web site.  (In both cases, the more content there is,
the more it needs to be organized.)

IA and KM have in common:
	organizing content so that people can find it
	patterns and categories
	user-centered design and usability testing
	software for categorizing and organizing online content

The end product of IA is an online presence.
The end product of KM is reuse of expertise and work product.

IA is concerned with reuse in the content authoring or rendering
processes (CMS).
KM is concerned with an online presence for internal users (which does
not need to be as polished as an external site).

KM always includes an IA.  A site's IA can incorporate KM where content
is recycled, such as in a self-serve customer support repository.

Terminology is misunderstood and misused all around.  Many practitioners
struggle with metrics and demonstrating ROI.  In any case, whether or
not a project is of value should have little to do with which acronyms
are used to describe it.  The important thing should be to make it clear
what you expect to accomplish.

-- Ginny


-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Jody A. Hankinson
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 9:56 PM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] knowledge management


Everyone, thanks for the comments. I promise to post summaries in a
couple of days. Before then, I feel compelled to explain a bit more. And
heaven knows I hesitate, because I don¹t want to turn this into anther
"what is IA" discussion.

When I explain my practice to someone outside the field, the five second
version usually goes like this: I look at the information and materials
identifying patters of usage and creation. Simultaneously, I pull out
common themes from the materials themselves. Then, based on the goals
for the online presence, I develop a structure and processes that are
most useful to the target audience. The longer version includes audience
evaluation, user testing, taxonomy creation and addressing the needs of
users maintaining a site.

With that said, I *think* knowledge management is about
1. organizational patterns
2. the materials generated during the course of business
3. how those materials can be identified as knowledge and fed back into
the organizational patterns.

If I define myself as an IA by my abilities to see patterns, goals and
an audience then I am also practice knowledge management. Where I'm not
so sure is if I am practicing Knowledge Management, the phenomena that
has generated books, buzz, etc. 

I'll admit that I borrow terminology from some of the business trends,
particularly Learning Organizations. It's not so different from the
philosophies behind JAD. But that doesn't mean I call myself anything
but an IA! So Ziya, please don¹t jump from any tall buildings - our city
would be the poorer for it.

- Jody



On 5/7/03 5:35 PM, "Karl Fast" <karl.fast at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> A few years ago I read an interview with Larry Prusak, who coined the 
> term "Knowledge Management" along with Thomas Davenport.
> 
> Prusak argued that you could divide KM into two world views:
> 
> * One view is says KM is primarily a technology problem. If you
>   build good KM tools and you've got the problem licked.
> 
> * The second view is that KM is largely a people problem, meaning
>   that it involves managing people and creating an environment
>   that supports and rewards knowledge creation and sharing.
>   Sometimes this means software tools, but it usually means making
>   sure people get along.
> 
>   
> Prusak believes that the technology view of KM has been a disaster and

> the people view is the way to go.
> 
> 
> Now, if you swallow that story then I think it's hard to argue that 
> "IA could be defined as KM"
> 


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