Week 4

KMCS APPROACHES

Evaluate existing Information: Identifying and evaluating the current knowledge makes it easier to point out the critical missing gaps & justify the formation of new knowledge. As a part of this phase, we focus on the system justification, scoping the evaluation, determining feasibility.

a. System Justification: Developer to justify whether it is worth undergoing changes that ensures top support.KM system justification involves answers to specific questions.

1. Is current knowledge going to be lost through retirement, transfer or departure to other firms?

2. Is the proposed KM system needed in sever locations?

3. Are experts available & willing to help in building a KM system?

4. Does the problem in question require ears of experience & cognitive reasoning to solve?

5. When undergoing knowledge capture, can expert articulate how the problem will be solved?

6. How critical is the knowledge to be captures?

7. Is there a champion in the house?

b. Scope Factor: Consider breadth and depth of the project within financial, human resource, & operational constraints. Project must be completed quickly enough for users to foresee its benefits. Check to see how the current technology will match technical requirements of the proposed KM system

c. Feasibility Question: A feasibility study addresses several questions:

Is the project doable? Affordable? Appropriate? Practicable?

Traditional approach to conducting a feasibility study could be useful in building KM system. It involves several tasks:

Form a KM team.

Prepare a master plan

Evaluate cost/performance of the proposed KM system.

Quantify system criteria & costs (rating scale).

d. Role of Strategic Planning: Risky to plunge into a KMS without strategy, Knowledge developer should consider.

Vision — Foresee what the business is trying to achieve, how it will be done, and how the new system will achieve goals

Resources — check on the affordability of the business to invest in a new KM system

Culture — is the company’s political and social environment amenable to adopting a new KM system?

Form the KM Team: After the evaluation of the company’s existing infrastructure is complete; a KM team should be formed. Team success depends on a number of factors:

1. Caliber of team members in terms of personality, communication skills &experience.

2. Team size.

3. Complexity of the project.

4. Leadership & team motivation.5.Promising more than can be realistically delivered.

Knowledge Capture: Knowledge capture involves eliciting, analyzing & interpreting the knowledge that a human expert uses to solve a particular problem. Knowledge capture & transfer are often carried out in teams, not just through individuals. Capture includes determining feasibility, choosing the expert, tapping the expert’s knowledge, and tapping the knowledge to plug gaps in the system & to verify and validate the knowledge base after the system is in operation. A competent & cooperative expert is essential to the success of knowledge capture.

Design of the KM Blueprint: The KM system design (blueprint) addresses several issues:

System interoperability and scalability with existing company IT infrastructure, Finalize scope of proposed KM system with realized net benefits, Decide on required system components, Develop the key layers of the KM architecture to meet company requirements. Key layers are: User interface

Authentication/security layer, Collaborative agents and filtering, Application layer, Transport Internet

Physical layer.

Testing the KM System:

Verification procedure: ensures that the system is right

Validation procedure: ensures that the system is the right system. Validation of KM systems is not foolproof

Implement the KM System: Implementation means converting a new KM system into actual operation.

Conversion is the major step in implementation.

The other steps are post implementation review & KM system maintenance.

It is the transformation of the precise representation of knowledge into machine equivalent -a specific program or software package.

Manage Change and Rewards Structure: Goal is to minimize resistance to change.Experts, Regular employees (users), Troublemakers.Resistances via projection, avoidance, or aggression

Post-system Evaluation: Assess the system’s impact in terms of effects on.People, Procedures,

Performance of the business. Areas of concern: Quality of decision making, Attitude of end users,

Costs of Knowledge processing and up-date.

Kulsum Raza !