This text briefly describes software that was constructed during a collaborative project to investigate the requirements for the management of an organisational knowledge resource. The project took place over an extended period between 1994 and 1998 and involved the organisation that became the AKRI and a number of businesses including large and small manufacturers, service companies and representatives from the university and college sector.
The software was constructed in an experimental way alongside the research, interviews and meetings that took place. Initially, a diverse group of business representatives (mainly senior managers) were asked what they would want or expect if they already had a desktop software tool that could answer questions about their organisations knowledge resource. This discussion revealed a set of expectations that managers may have with regard to managing the knowledge resource based on specific things that they would like to know. Questions included:
Continuing discussion lead to a common understanding that the organisational knowledge resource could be looked upon as a resource with supply from staff knowledge (and possibly other sources) and a demand from project knowledge needs. A system such as this should also be open to interrogation so that managers could ask the questions that they originally thought beneficial.
From this start, an experimental software idea began to emerge. I will use screen shots from this software, as it ended up, during the following discussion. However, it should be noted that the ideas behind this software developed over many meetings, interviews and seminars. The developing software was used to embody the ideas introduced at each stage so that contributors to the project could see exactly where the ideas were taking the work and they could share a common understanding of the developments that were taking place.
The software was written in a multimedia development language. This was not ideal for many of the experiment analytical features but it was an excellent choice to implement a working prototype with point and click interface. At the time a compromise was drawn between idea implementation (function) and user satisfaction, with a bias towards functionality. During the description of the software I will refer to it as KM1 since we never did give it a proper name.
It should be noted that I use terms within this description such as ‘strength of knowledge’ and ‘knowledge sub areas’ that I would not use now but were in fact used at the time. KM1 is also part of the development of the ideas and views that are now held by AKRI but I like to think that we have moved on. This said however, the value of KM1 was in the creation of it, the involvement of partners and all of the contributory elements and ideas that helped it develop. The work is an interesting example of how humans learn and develop their views through experience, involvement and of course, making mistakes.
The front screen of KM1 shows a simple point and click user interface. Experimental data about the early AKRI (then NWAIAG) was embedded into the system but computations (using this data) were required to make the analytical features available. Figure 1 shows this initial interface.
Three main options were available from the main screen. These loosely reflected the supply and demand framework for knowledge but the central option was access to the analytical features. It was necessary to select the rebuild option before the analytical features were available. Rebuilding the data for analysis took one or two minutes but on machines today it is just one or two seconds for the small experimental information resource. Speed was not an issue for this experimental system but rapid idea implementation was very important.
I will briefly discuss the implementation of the supply (staff) and demand (project) elements before discussing the analytical features available (operations).
Figure 2 shows a typical staff page that is accessible after one or two levels of categorised staff identification pages (index pages). The page identifies who the person is, including a rather stretched picture, the persons job title, some personal details and some factors that were felt important by the contributing project partners at the time. These factors were distilled out of many contributions and the six were felt to be enough to reflect all of the management needs. Clearly, assigning values to these is not so easy.
The main function of the screen in figure 2 is to identify what this person knows about and to provide some information about the persons depth of understanding and use of this knowledge. There are names of several large knowledge areas along with unit values for how strongly this person is thought tšó p5 @@@~ð```Àý
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#td> Figure 7 provides a representation that is computed for each knowledge element in the knowledge resource and is similar in presentation to the risk view. Gap is intended to reflect the difference between the knowledge availability and the demand for that knowledge and takes working allocation and strength into account. Again, detailed descriptions of the computations performed here can be found in the two papers referenced above. The way that gap is represented here is by providing representations for both supply and demand on the same axes and allowing the user to see easily where problems lie. The green line represents knowledge needed by projects and the yellow line, the knowledge available through staff assignment. The selected itlt="Next" align="middle" name="MSFPnav9">
Figure 7: KM1 Analysis – Gap
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Last update 04 February, 2005.