Knowledge Management Model for VTT Electronics

Knowledge Management Model for VTT Electronics

Summary

This report presents the results of research into knowledge management (KM) performed at VTT Electronics, the Technical Research Centre of Finland. Based on literature analysis and prior experiences with software process improvement (SPI) projects, a process model is proposed as an abstract and generic model to be used in KM projects. Its purpose is to enable one to understand knowledge management, perform analyses and plan processes in a structured way, as well as ensure that important aspects are taken into account in KM projects. A distinction into two separate parts of the model is used, which divide the processes into co-ordination processes and operational processes. Herein, coordination processes describe what needs to be performed to initiate and control knowledge management activities; operational processes describe what is done when performing knowledge management activities. The co-ordination processes are organized into a cycle of analysis, planning, defining and effecting to support continuous improvement. The operational processes consist of the main processes: identification of need for knowledge, knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, knowledge collection and storage, and knowledge update. The model is presented on a detailed level, meaning that the mentioned high level processes are refined into 39 more detailed processes. Each of these is presented by describing its input-links, the activities the process covers, products, and output-links. Initial verifications made are presented. The model and its use is discussed, and finally, an outlook on further activities related to the development of the model is presented. The discussion covers both the explanation of expected benefits and anticipated pitfalls/shortcomings. Further development needs to address the identified shortcomings thus extending the model and thus allowing it to mature.

Introduction

Knowledge is essential in everyday work. Everyone knows how to carry out his work and this knowledge can be reused later in similar tasks by adopting this knowledge to new situations. The general purpose of Knowledge Management (KM) is to make knowledge usable for more than one individual, e.g. for an organization as a whole; that is, to share it. New knowledge-based views on organizations suggest that it is knowledge that holds organizations together [Brown and Duguid 1998]. KM has existed and has been used for a long time, although it was neither called by this name nor necessarily recognized as what it is until a few years ago [Davenport and Prusak 1998]. The way of making knowledge available for others has evolved with time. It once started with family clans, where knowledge was passed on from father to son by a long process of learning. With the coming up of teamwork, people were supposed to work closer together to benefit from the synergy of their joint knowledge. Today’s efforts aim at knowledge being shared among large organizations which may be geographically spread over the world and active in different kinds of areas. First cases perform this sharing even among different organizations, e.g. use defined interfaces to mediate knowledge not only inside one specific organization but to also share parts of it among partners. Another change influencing knowledge acquisition and sharing is the steadily increasing speed with which new technologies are evolving. These always require new or updated knowledge and allow new working practices. As an example, there is a growing number of new versions of software systems/applications and new or revised standards. Successful organizations need to absorb and utilize an increasing amount of knowledge to keep up with this development. At the same time, knowledge becomes outdated faster. As Kevin Marler put it: “You no longer need to be managing a sophisticated research lab for your people to be on the brink of technological change” [Marler 1999]. This emphasizes both the need for new knowledge in general and the need to manage the according processes to enable one to deal with large amounts of knowledge in a shorter time. Today, knowledge is increasingly considered the most important asset of organizations [Carneiro 2000] and it is assumed that every experience is reusable [Basili and Rombach 1991]. This does not apply only to specific parts like programming code but also means that any knowledge can be reused by others. “Identifying, managing, and transferring knowledge and best practices has worked for some companies, sometimes saving or earning them literally billions” [O’Dell and Grayson 1998]. But “Knowledge management is an evolving practice. Even the most developed and mature knowledge management projects we studied were unfinished works in progress” [Davenport and Prusak 1998].

The “rate of change in technologies exceeds the time to develop subject matter experts, training courses, and human resource interventions” [Marler 1999]. However, not only technologies are changing faster, but also products and product-lines, laws etc. Therefore, the focus is on how to speed up knowledge creation and sharing. KM is supposed to be the answer to this question. Before getting to the core of this work, the KM processes, terms are defined and KM and some important factors influencing it are introduced. The purpose is to provide an overview of the topic and the most important related areas. Although every organization has somehow dealt with knowledge since its beginning this does not mean that it is easy to control and steer KM processes. “Organizations cannot truly manage knowledge because it is tacit or internal to individuals; however, they can manage the environment necessary for the community of practice to flourish and share information that is a product of that knowledge” [Jarzombek 1999]. Knowledge can be managed – at least to a certain grade [Stecking 2000]; a proper management of the environment, however, is a necessary precondition [Davenport and Völpel 2001].

Knowledge Management Issues

This section presents a summary of the important influencing factors related to managing knowledge, these including the nature of knowledge, the nature of people, and organizational environments. Each of these has a remarkable impact on KM, as explained in the following.

The Nature of Knowledge

The ongoing discussion about defining knowledge and related terms is a sign of both the complexity of this topic and the various different viewpoints which the issue can be approached from. This kind of analysis is not carried out here. It can be said that knowledge is something that evolves in people’s minds by a combination of data, information and experiences. There are two general categories of knowledge, which have to be differentiated: tacit (implicit) knowledge and explicit knowledge [Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995]2. Tacit knowledge is the internal knowledge which is hard to describe (like e.g. how to ride a bike – everyone can do it, but hardly describe it), while explicit knowledge is codified knowledge, that is, knowledge written down (like e.g. a handbook). Knowledge is generated only in people’s minds [Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995]; also, it is very complex. It has to be, because human actions depend on a large number of parameters. It is the complexity that enables the adoption to different kind of situations. Similarly to a procedure in a programming language, which can solve a certain number of problems by using parameters to define a concrete problem, knowledge provides different reactions depending on the situation. In contrast to code, the parameters of knowledge are unfortunately hardly countable and definable. This makes it difficult to record or document knowledge in such a way that others can benefit from it. It is difficult but possible, however, to turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. This kind of knowledge can be stored and transferred and be later turned into implicit knowledge by the receivers. However, such explicit knowledge never describes the original tacit knowledge as a whole, but instead assumes a common basis of understanding on which the transmission back to implicit knowledge is based.

Nature of People

Additionally to the nature of knowledge, KM is also difficult due to the nature of people [Davenport and Prusak 1998]. This is especially problematic, because the possibilities to influence people are limited and difficult, while on the other hand people’s decisions heavily depend on their personal attitudes [Kreie and Cronan 2000]. Knowledge is part of what makes a person’s personality. Passing one’s knowledge to others also means enabling others to perform according tasks, thus making the originator more easily replaceable [Davenport and Prusak 1998]. Despite the fact that this is positive and desired from the organizations’ point of view, people often tend to keep their knowledge for themselves because they fear that they would not be needed anymore after passing their knowledge to others [Stecking 2000]. Without motivation and a supporting environment, people therefore tend not to share their knowledge. And even if people know about the necessity to share their knowledge with colleagues, they need a certain amount of trust to do so [Davenport and Prusak 1998]. This especially becomes a problem when people do not know each other, which is often the case in today’s large organizations. People tend to say then: “Why should I tell others what I know? Shall they go and find out for themselves, as I had to do!”3 [Stecking 2000].

Organizations

Organizations consist of a number of people connected to each other in different ways (departments, hierarchies, rules etc.). The willingness of individuals to share their knowledge in an organisation heavily depends on the organisational culture. “In addition to providing the infrastructure, organizations have to invest in hiring smart people and providing incentives for sharing information, then provide enough unstructured time to let people talk face to face” [Jarzombek 1999]. To motivate people towards knowledge sharing, the according activities must be encouraged and rewarded from the highest hierarchical level (upper management) to make it clear that sharing knowledge is seen as something important for the whole company, similarly to other improvement activities such as measurement or Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). Without this, the natural tendency mentioned before will prevent the flowing of knowledge.

Structure of the KM Process Model

This chapter introduces the KM process model by introducing its main processes, sub-processes and the way these are refined to tasks. The process model can be separated into two major parts: the co-ordination processes and the operational processes. The co-ordination processes represent the management tasks related to KM, these including analysing and planning KM, dealing with organisational issues, etc. They are structured into a cycle that supports continuous improvement and is based on the “Practical Process Improvement for Embedded Real-time Software” (Pr2imer) model [Komi-Sirviö, et al. 1998]. This model proposes a cycle of four stages for process improvement projects: current state analysis (CSA), definition of a target state, plan for development measures, and pilot operation and commissioning (see Figure 1). After the cycle has been performed, it starts with the first phase again. This cycle has been adapted for the KM process model as the KM Pr2imer consisting of the following phases: analyse, define, plan, and effect.

The operational processes present the processes of actually carrying out KM, i.e. knowledge collection, sharing, update, etc. Before elaborating on the processes and their sub-processes in the following sections, an overview of the model is provided below: Figure 2 shows the main processes of the model and their basic dependencies.

The co-ordination processes are underlying the operational processes. In Figure 2, this is shown by the rectangle lying behind all other processes. The operational processes are presented as the following main processes: “Identification of Need”, “Sharing”, “Creation”, “Collection and Storage”, and “Update”. Please note that there are two processes that represent the main process “Sharing” in the model: “Knowledge Pull” and “Knowledge Push”. The arrows connecting the processes provide an overview of the interaction and knowledge flows. The picture in the middle represents the place where the knowledge is stored. The purpose of this picture, showing a human and a machine, is to express the variety of possible ways of storing knowledge, including both technical (databases, documents, videos) and non-technical (human mind) repositories.

KM Co-ordination Processes

The co-ordination of KM activities is the very centre of all other activities as everything is initiated and controlled from here. Knowledge is always already dealt with (created and also shared), although the necessity to manage these processes might not have been realized yet. This clearly indicates that it is a
question of improving current practices instead of replacing them with some entirely new ones. First, the existing knowledge stacks, the channels used to transfer knowledge, and the general surroundings have to be analyzed to enable their management. Then a target state needs to be defined. To enable both an effective tracking of the success and an identification of any shortcomings of the processes set up, it is necessary to define metrics. This at the same time provides a possibility to make the usefulness of KM visible.

Technology

Determination of Infrastructure

After the organizational structure has been defined as domains and underlying processes, the important issue of utilizing technology must be clarified. This means that one has to define what kind of technology is going to be used, and how, for storage, access and management. This includes tools to be used in locating a specific content, transferring it and actually viewing it. For example, a locator-tool could automatically search through web pages. A transfer of found content could utilize the UDP/IP protocol (utilizing the existing network infrastructure), and a viewer could be a video-player-application.

Knowledge Management System

The processes presented in this chapter identify, evaluate, codify and store knowledge. Depending on the way the processes have been planned this might simply mean an update of a knowledge map or the storage of packaged knowledge into an electronically realized knowledge management system. Whenever new knowledge is generated this needs to be recognized first to be able to collect and store it. As knowledge may arise unconsciously from everyday work, it is not principally identified, except in the case of consciously driven knowledge generation. After new knowledge has been identified, an evaluation is needed to determine whether the knowledge is worth an integration to the repository. If the knowledge has been decided to be worth making it available using a knowledge repository, then a knowledge package needs to be designed, the knowledge needs to be codified to it and the package needs to be integrated to the repository. Any further changes in the knowledge environment require the knowledge map of the organization to be updated.

Conclusions

The processes are presented on a general level to allow the model to match as many situations as possible. At this level, the model therefore is supposed to be applicable in various types and parts of organizations. For example, it is assumed that the processes could be adopted for HRM as well as for SE. This, as a consequence, does not allow the processes to be used without adaptation. In this context, a distinction has to be made between the co-ordination processes (Chapter 4) and the operating processes (Chapter 5). The co-ordination processes are designed to assist in the adoption of the operating processes. Accordingly, the processes of the KM Pr2imer are more close to the real world than the KM operating processes. An organisation starting KM activities is supposed to perform the processes of the KM Pr2imer as described. The KM operating processes, on the contrary, are more generic and therefore general and need to be adopted according to scope. This is performed within the KM Pr2imer (see section 4.3.2). The initial verification and validation activities as presented above are not enough to finally determine the usability of this model for different cases. However, they do prove that the model in its current state can already be used with different scopes. Therefore, there is a need for further validation and verification activities to specify the cases in which the KM process model can be used and in which it probably cannot. The model, however, is to be considered an evolving means. That means that with the identification of situations that the model is not suitable for, modifications might become necessary. The resulting extended version of the model can then cope with such situations.