Knowledge Management Solution Offering

From MIKE2.0 Methodology

(Redirected from Collaboration, Knowledge Capture and Communities of Interest Solution Offering)

This Solution Offering currently receives Major Coverage in the MIKE2.0 Methodology. Most required activities are provided through the Overall Implementation Guide and SAFE Architecture, but some Activities are still missing and there are only a few Supporting Assets. In summary, aspects of the Solution Offering can be used but it cannot be used as a whole.

Introduction

The Collaboration Environments, Knowledge Capture and Communities of Interest (Knowledge Management) Solution Offering provides an approach for building and maintaining content that is developed in a collaborative, user-driven fashion. Content development is done much more rapidly by harnessing the collective power of community-based development and knowledge sharing is streamlined. Key enablers include techniques for building taxonomies and social networks, signaling, tagging, search and security. General techniques for working on shared content such as peer reviews and progressive content maturity processes are also part of this solution offering.

Executive Summary

Building a knowledge-based organisation is no easy task. Knowledge must be derived from information assets which are oftentimes poorly formed and continuously growing. Any weakness in a culture of sharing, teamwork and dedication obfuscate the real knowledge assets in an organisation. Staff attrition means that knowledge often walks out the door when an employee leaves and our organisations are increasingly a nebulous mix of internal staff, contractors, partners and the outside world. Many programmes focused on “knowledge development” have therefore been failures.

Despite these challenges, failure is not an option. In an information-driven business, everyone is a knowledge worker and therefore wastes time or makes bad decisions due to inefficiencies. Therefore, organisations should re-focus their efforts and aim to continually improve their knowledge capital. New techniques, technologies and information-oriented governance models should be applied to counter persistent challenges.

Collaboration and communities provide a way to harness and improve knowledge capital. By getting individuals to collaboratively build common content, the solutions that are developed come from a team as opposed to individuals. The collaborative development process can also help people learn more effectively– knowledge is built through doing and by bringing in multiple perspectives when solutions are delivered. Therefore, this Solution Offering provides a linkage between the two competencies.

Solution Offering Purpose

This is a Core Solution Offering. Core Solution Offerings bring together all assets in MIKE2.0 relevant to solving a specific business and technology problem. Many of these assets may already exist and as the suite is built out over time, assets can be progressively added to an Offering.

A Core Solution Offering contains all the elements required to define and deliver a go-to-market offering. It can use a combination of open, shared and private assets.

Solution Offering Relationship Overview

MIKE2.0 Solution Offerings provide a detailed and holistic way of addressing specific problems. MIKE2.0 Solution Offerings can be mapped directly to the Phases and Activities of the MIKE2.0 Overall Implementation Guide, providing additional content to help understand the overall approach. The MIKE2.0 Overall Implementation Guide explains the relationships between the Phases, Activities and Tasks of the overall methodology as well as how the Supporting Assets tie to the overall methodology and MIKE2.0 Solutions. Users of the MIKE2.0 Methodology should always start with the Overall Implementation Guide and the MIKE2.0 Usage Model as a starting point for projects.

Solution Offering Definition

This Solution Offering provides a strategy, set of implementation techniques and mechanism for ongoing continuous improvement of a collaborative, knowledge-based environment. Key aspects of this solution offering include:

• Defines the business strategy for collaboration and knowledge development: goals, success factors and the scope of content

• Defines the technology strategy for collaboration and knowledge development: the systems, architectures and technology products

• Provides governance models: standards and policies for collaborative development, best practices and efficient models to building a knowledge-based organisation

• Provides techniques for building a content taxonomy. This can follow the formal structures seen in many corporate taxonomies, the informal models seen on the web or a blended model that sits somewhere in the middle

• Design and develops the security model for sharing content across the organisation, with partners and to the public

• Design and develops integrated knowledge repositories to support a federated knowledge environment

Through this approach, organisations can build collaborative communities and improve the knowledge capital of staff.

Different Dimensions for Knowledge Management

• Technology aspects that enable collaboration and information sharing
• Social aspects of getting people to work together, learn and improve
• Organizational aspects to optimize working relationships across boundaries

Keys to Enabling Knowledge Management

• Metrics for measuring success against a business strategy
• Organizational Design that includes specific roles to drive collaboration
• Training to enable skills development such as use of new technologies
• User Experience Management improving the technology environment inline with how users work (and should work)
• Technology Capabilities provide foundational capabilities to enable collaboration and sharing of knowledge

Relationship to Solution Capabilities

The MIKE2.0 Collaboration, Knowledge Capture and Communities of Interest Solution Offering is primarily focused on Information Development. It uses a number of activities from the Overall Implementation Guide to see a project through from strategy to implementation.

Relationship to Enterprise Views

This solution is primarily about enabling Information Development in a knowledge context. It provides the ability to access primarily unstructured content and bring it together for users in a fashion that makes it easy to understand, communicate and learn.

Mapping to the Information Governance Framework

The Information Governance Solution Offering is required across all Solution Offerings. For this offering it is particularly important that the governance models focus on security for accessing information as this can be an area of significant complexity. The scope should cover structured data and unstructured content, with appropriate roles related to taxonomic development, standard lexicons and priorisation of information based on relevancy.

Mapping to the SAFE Architecture Framework

For an a collaboration and knowledge management programme, a number of components may be required from the SAFE Architecture. All components within Enterprise Content Management are particularly relevant to this offering. In addition, a Search capability is a priority area.

Mapping to the Overall Implementation Guide

A typical Collaborative and Knowledge Management Search engagement will involve a large number of the Activities from the Overall Implementation Guide. Users of MIKE2.0 should review each activity as a starting point to see if they are required based on the scope of the project requirements.

The Usage Model for Enterprise Content Management provides a list of all the required activities for this offering. Shown below are the most important activities for a typical programme and how they relate to the overall approach.

Phase 1 - Business Assessment and Strategy Definition Blueprint

For a comprehensive, top-down programme a number of the activities are required from this phase to define the overall Business Strategy. Some programmes can be quite tactical but generally should cover these tasks at a very high level. Some strategy activities may not be needed if they were already done as part of part of an enteprise programme, as described in the Enterprise Content Management Strategy Solution Offering.

Enterprise Information Management Awareness

The Enterprise Information Management Awareness activity is important to introduce concepts related to collaboration. This is an area that has undergone significant technology changes over the past few years and users typically benefit from education related to community-based content development, security and web-based collaboration.

Overall Business Strategy for Information Development

In the Overall Business Strategy for Information Development activity, the strategic business initiatives are defined in the context of information requirements. For collaboration and knowledge development, this activity defines the scope of information to be shared and collaboratively developed, as well as the ultimate knowledge goals for the organisation.

Future State Vision for Information Management

The Future State Vision for Information Management is an important activity for defining the strategic conceptual architecture for collaboration and knowledge development As this typically involves a number of different conceptual components, a systematic approach to architecture is important. High Level Solution Architecture Options should also be defined at this stage.

This activity also defines the future-state business processes for information management. This process is critical for knowledge development; at this stage it is focused on high level processes and processes should be re-engineered to improve the mechanism for developing knowledge capital most effectively.

Phase 2 - Technology Assessment and Selection Blueprint

For a comprehensive, top-down programme a number of the activities are required from this phase to define the overall Technology Strategy. Some programmes can be quite tactical but generally should cover these tasks at a very high level. Some strategy activities may not be needed if they were already done as part of part of an enteprise programme, as described in the Enterprise Content Management Strategy Solution Offering.

Strategic Requirements for Technology Backplane Development

In the MIKE2.0 Methodology, Enterprise Content Management technologies are seen to reside along the Technology Backplane of Information Development and Infrastructure Development. This activity is used to define the capabilities that are needed for the strategic implementation of these programme.

Strategic Non-Functional Requirements

Strategic Non-Functional Requirements for Collaboration and Knowledge Management are defined at a overarching level in this activity. There is a particular focus on usability, performance and ability to scale to meet future business volume growth requirements.

Current-State Logical Architecture

The Current-State Logical Architecture assesses the current capabilities in the environment for Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange. This activity specifically defines which technologies can be re-used and the scope of any content that should be migrated.

Future-State Logical Architecture and Gap Analysis

The Future-State Logical Architecture and Gap Analysis builds on the conceptual architecture that is already defined and takes it to the level of detail required to make strategic technology decisions. A gap analysis can then be conducted be conducted between the current-state and future-state to determine which technologies can be re-used.

Future-State Physical Architecture and Vendor Selection

Through defining the Future-State Physical Architecture and Vendor Selection, logical capabilities are mapped to specific product options. This mapping is then used to make technology decisions, often through an RFP-based selection process.

Phase 3 - Information Management Roadmap and Foundation Activities

Within Phase 3, the scope of the solution for a specific increment is defined and the overall content model begins to take shape.

Detailed Business Requirements

When developing the Detailed Business Requirements for collaboration and knowledge development, the focus is on the scope of information to be shared and defining the business goals for collaboration. This activity builds off the strategic set of requirements, adds more detail and prioritises business requirements for the increment of work to be implemented.

Taxonomy Design

The Taxonomy Design activity defines the structures for relating content to one another. For collaboration and knowledge environment, the development of this taxonomy is one of the critical aspects of the solution. Taxonomy design may range from a formally designed structure to one that grows more organically.

Phase 4 - Design Increment

For Collaboration and Knowledge Development, a number of design activities are required which are described below.

Information Security Design

Information Security Design defines which information can be seen by users within the collaborative environment. The most important aspects of security design relate to how information is accessed and who can edit content. Group-based access control is typically used to implement security rules.

Infrastructure Management Process Design

The Infrastructure Management Process Design applies to the back-end environment that stores content. It also applies to the management processes and technology responsible for holding backup content from the collaboration environment and making it quickly available in the case of a recovery scenario.

Collaborative Framework Design

Collaborative Framework Design is one of the most important activities for this Solution Offering and all tasks are needed. It is the activity that defines how users will interact with one another, how internal and external assets will be brought together in the collaborative environment and how users may specifically classify content.

User Interface Design

The User Interface Design activity defines the front-end interface in which a user will interact with the collaborative system. From a search perspective, the simplicity of this interface design is essential. Simple data re-engineering steps such as lemmatisation and spell checking may be interactively provided through this interface.

Also critical is the ability for users to be able to quickly make decisions from the large amounts of information that is returned. Users need to be able to visualise information results through graphical views, categorisation of results and personalisation.

Phase 5 - Develop, Test & Deploy Increment

Through development, testing and deployment activities the solution the prototyped is hardened and implemented into production.

Technology Backplane Development

The Technology Backplane Development activity covers the development of integration and information management components for Collaboration, Knowledge Capture and Communities of Interest. This includes development of interfaces, web components and security technologies.

Testing Activities

Depending on the complexity of the solution, different testing activities will be required although testing is generally not complex. Functional Testing and some level of System Integration Testing will be required at a minimum; SVT is are also important. Perhaps most important is UAT; it should be ensured that are users are actively engaged throughout the development and testing process. Testing for collaboration and knowledge exchange technologies is much quicker than other types of engagements.

Mapping to Supporting Assets

Logical Architecture, Design and Development Best Practices

• Integrating a Formal Taxonomy to an Informal Taxonomy

• Business Case for Knowledge Management

• High Level Solution Architecture Options for an Enterprise Information Platform

Product-Specific Implementation Techniques

Product Selection Criteria

Relationships to other Solution Offerings

This Solution Offering relates closely to the following Offerings:

• The Enterprise Content Management Strategy Solution Offering can be used to define the overall strategy for implementing content management across the enterprise. If this strategy work has been done it serves as input to this offering and some activities in phases 1 and 2 can often be skipped.

• The Enterprise Search Solution Offering shares common tasks due to the importance of search for collaboration and knowledge development.

• The Enterprise 2.0 Solution Offering makes use of many of the same techniques for collaboration and knowledge development. This solution offering can be considered to be subset of the solution capabilities required for this composite solution.

• The Networked Information Governance Solution Offering makes use of many of the same techniques for collaboration and knowledge development in the context of providing an advanced approach to the Information Governance Solution Offering. This solution offering can be considered to be subset of the solution capabilities required for this composite solution.

Extending the Open Methodology through Solution Offerings

Listed below are proposed extensions to the Overall Implementation Guide to meet the requirements for this offering:

Potential Activity Changes

• Change Management is an important aspect of knowledge development - activities should potentially be added to cover this area as part of an overall approach to Information Development

Organisational QuickScan for Information Development

The existing QuickScan assessments should be extended to cover collaboration and knowledge sharing

Detailed Business Requirements

This activity should potentially be enhanced to provide a better coverage of Information Management process. This is particularly important for the knowledge development process.