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KCS Study Notes

Attributes of Knowledge

  • Knowledge is information people use to make decisions or take action
  • Knowledge is relative - what's knowledge to one person may not be to another (depends on abilities and responsibilities)
  • Knowledge is gained through interaction and experience
  • Knowledge continually evolves as we gain experience but is never perfect or complete
  • Shared group knowledge is more powerful than individual knowledge

Service

  • Service = helping others be successful and productive
  • Consists of "requester-responder" or "customer-supplier" relationship networks
  • Interactions occur within and across all business functions, not bounded by company boundaries

Principles and Core Concepts

  • Principle: Fundamental truth or belief that serves as foundation for behavior and reasoning
  • Principles apply to multiple practices and explain why we do what we do
  • Core concepts: Based on principles, more specific and numerous than principles

Practice vs Technique

  • Practice: Organizes what needs to be done; application of principles and core concepts
  • Technique: Describes how to do things; more granular than practices
  • Collection of techniques make up a practice

Key Vocabulary

  • Knowledge: Information we can act upon (by-product of interaction)
  • Content: Captured and findable knowledge (text, pictures, audio, video, etc.)
  • Network: Collection of people and content benefiting from shared experiences
  • Issue: Question, problem, or exception motivating people to interact
  • Knowledge worker: People who use information to make decisions and take action
  • Requestor: Knowledge worker seeking knowledge
  • Responder: Knowledge worker offering knowledge

Create Value

  • Value is created when knowledge workers successfully use knowledge to make decisions and take action
  • Value is created through interactions between requesters and responders
  • KCS is successful when reusing, improving, and creating knowledge articles
  • Knowledge is the by-product of an interaction or experience
  • Knowledge is created when requesters and responders work together to solve issues
  • Knowledge is improved when responders capture and structure knowledge as they work
  • Knowledge is reused when requesters search for and find existing knowledge to resolve issues

Demand-Driven Knowledge Management

  • Knowledge is a by-product of interaction
  • Key questions in knowledge management:
  • What knowledge should we capture?
  • What knowledge is important or valuable?
  • How do we validate the knowledge we have?
  • KCS proposes letting demand answer these questions: respond to real issues, reuse known knowledge, capture new things; avoid fabricating non-existent issues
  • Supported by autonomic systems and systems thinking for self-optimization
  • Proactive prediction is difficult without past experience; better to sense and respond
  • Demand-driven principle: focus on needs of those served
  • Demand determines what knowledge to capture and what has value
  • Reuse validates knowledge in the Solve Loop
  • In the Evolve Loop, patterns of reuse develop predictive/preemptive capabilities and identify high-impact improvements
  • Contrast with manufacturing (deterministic: known outcome, predefined processes) vs. problem-solving (non-deterministic: emergent processes based on context)
  • KCS based on just-in-time action, not just-in-case
  • Capture experience, let demand highlight valuable knowledge
  • Solve issues by reusing, improving, or creating knowledge articles
  • Don't review/improve unused knowledge; reused knowledge is validated through reuse (reuse = review)
  • Best people to validate knowledge are those who use it daily

Practice 2: Structure

  • Structure knowledge to make it findable and usable
  • Use a consistent format for knowledge articles
  • Key components of a knowledge article:
  • Title: Clear, concise summary of the issue
  • Problem description: Detailed explanation of the issue
  • Environment: Context in which the issue occurs
  • Resolution: Steps to resolve the issue
  • Keywords: Terms to aid in searching for the article

KCS Health

Capturing Value in the Interaction Process

  • KCS recommends capturing the articles during the interaction process

Respect the contributions of all people interacting with the knowledge

  • KCS article can be captured or modified whenever and wherever issues occur.
  • Requestors and responders are both in positions to capture new KCS articles or improve existing ones.

Structure KCS articles for rapid reuse

  • Reusing existing KCS articles improves the speed, accuracy, and consistency of the response

Structure information for findability and readability

Collective ownership

Evolve Loop articles