Lecture # 03 "Knowledge Management System Life Cycle"

CHALLENGES IN BUILDING KM SYSTEMS:

·         Changing Organization Culture :

Changing an organization’s culture is one of the most difficult leadership challenges. That’s because an organization’s culture comprises an interlocking set of goals, roles, processes, values, communications practices, attitudes and assumptions.

Example: The World Bank represents a particularly difficult case of organizational culture change. Its formal goal—development—is ambiguous.

·         Knowledge Evaluation : Knowledge evaluation offers a systematic process which aims to provide an overview of the needs of your employees, their ideas as well as available approaches in your organization.

·         Knowledge Processing: Knowledge Processing  include all kinds of research and information gathering.

·         Knowledge Implementation: Knowledge implementation means whatever  lessons learned from feedback can be stored for future to help others facing the similar problems .

Compare Conventional System Life Cycle and KM System Life Cycle :

·                     A conventional system is sequential (certain steps are carried out in sequence), while the knowledge management system life cycle is incremental and interactive.

·                     In the conventional system, testing generally occurs at the end of programming, while the knowledge management development life cycle provides for testing throughout various phases of system development as the system evolves.

·                     The conventional system is process-driven and documentation-oriented, with emphasis on the flow of data, while the knowledge management development life cycle is result-oriented.

·                     The conventional system does not support rapid prototyping or advanced languages, while the knowledge management development life cycle promotes rapid prototyping and incorporates changes on the spot.

Along with these differences, however, are many similarities as well:

·         Both cycles begin with a problem and end with a solution.

·         Both cycles require the initial gathering of information (conventional) or knowledge (KMSDLC) for the process to begin and ending up with a tested system ready for use.

·         Both the knowledge developer and the systems analyst need to choose a tool to design the system.

Stages of Knowledge Management System LC:

There are eight stages of KM System Life Cycle each stage is discussed below in detail:

Evaluate Existing Infrastructure:

To know the basic infrastructure we need to evaluate the existing system. Evaluate the knowledge for new system so the system work well.

System Justification:

The system must be answerable for these questions:

·         What kind of knowledge going to loss (Tacit knowledge)?

·         Need to evaluate according to the location?

·         Expects are not willing what we will to do.?

·         Does that knowledge require expertise?

Feasibility Study:
Feasibility done in a specific time. 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 task:

·         Form a KM Team

·         Prepare a master plan

·         Evaluate cost/performance of the proposed KM system.

·         Quantify system criteria & cost (rating scale)

Scope Factor:
Consider breadth and depth of the project within financial, human resource, & operational constraints.

Example :Looking at scoping is to consider constraints such as money, time, and talent.  For example, if a system that is supposed to take four months to complete has a deadline of three months, the developer will have to scope the project around the deadline, either by working late nights or by cutting corners to provide enough of a system to do the job within the time constraint.

Role of Strategic Planning
Start working without idea. Strategic planning is needed to achieves the goals of organization and the proposed system must considered the areas:

·         Vision: Trying to achieve /Will have to be done.

·         Resources: Check affordability of the business.

·         Culture: Political culture (In political culture we have co operative and non-cooperative people).

Form the KM Team:

The criteria for selecting  the team is same as the selection of team for any project development like:

Size of team , Complexity of project , Leadership and Promising what we delivered.

Role of Rapid Prototyping:

·         Screenshots

·         Show limited functionality to the experts

·         Example: Diagnosis any disease – cannot diagnose just if expert is satisfied then diagnose the system.

Expert Selection:

·         Excellent communication skill.

·         Past year experience , feedbacks from others make decisions easy.

·         Continue or leave.

·         Experts not willing to help how to find the backup(Relay on the second best expert).

·         Experts in its specific domain.

·         One knows the expert in in fact an expert through its skills and interest in his/her particular area.

·         Stay or move to other places (user).

·         Backup and replacement.

·         One knows what is and what is not within the expert’s area of expertise by identifying the expertise of that expert.

Role of Knowledge Developer : (System Analyst)

·         Able to plan everything ( Conceptually)

·         Ability to interact with champions.

·         Knower- decide whether solving is correct or not.

Knowledge Capture

Extracting , analyzing  or interpreting the knowledge.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.

Example: Data mining – hidden facts.

Design 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 determines if the system was built right, while validation ensures that the correct system was built to meet the user’s expectations.

·                     Implement the KM System:

Covert the KM system into actual operation. Verify and validate the KM system , also review of system is involved in this phase.

Some facts also involved in implementation,

Quality assurance:

Training the users: Novice users / Supported by user manuals, explanatory facilities and job aids.

Managing change: Usually resist change.

·         Quality assurance is important, which includes checking for:

• Reasoning errors: based on experiments.(subjective measures)
• Ambiguity (uncertainty)
• Incompleteness: Missing data.
• False representation (false positive and false negative): Something is true or false , force it is true or false.

Manage Change and Rewards Structure:

·         Experts :Share knowledge getting the rewards or not.

·         Users: Employees share knowledge get the rewards or accomplishment.

·         Troublemakers: Come from change- involve them in training sessions etc.

·         Projection: Example manual to automation.

·         Avoid aggression: Not willing to use system.

Post-system Evaluation:

·      Decision making tasks are improved or not.

·      Need change in the system(How)

·      New person is welcome and train in a good manner.

·      Implication for Knowledge Management:

·      Long- range strategic planning.