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ASK THE EXPERT
With Ivanka Menken
Q
A
There is quite a number of articles around Knowl-
edge Manement in a Web 2.0 world. I quite like the
following passage:
As mentioned before, knowledge management
requires technology to store knowledge, analyze
knowledge, and share knowledge. The success of
any knowledge management solution is the actual
participation which can be unpredictable.
Take a simple project in generating and sharing
knowledge for a new topic (for purposes of our ex-
ample, we have 100 content writers for every 10000
potential users).
The steps of a simple project consist of:
• Defining the Scope
• Researching for Sources
• Generating Content
• Advertising the Release
• Monitoring the Use
• Analyzing the Participation
Of these steps, the first and fourth steps require little
to no technical support. All the other steps cannot
be truly predicted without historical data which can
be skewed based on the topic or the approach tak-
en for each step. The second and third steps require
content writers to perform their role in knowledge
management, that is, you have 100 people re-
searching the topic and writing content relevant
to that topic and the organization. Assuming that
each person is actively using technology for this
purpose 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, we are calcu-
lating 2500 hours of resource demand each week.
The resources required by the content writers are:
- Storage which increases based on the amount of
content being created
- Network which is high because the writers need
to research and read/write over the network
- Computing which is needed to support the
speed and performance of different tasks
Can you find me an article
to explainWeb 2.0 and
Knowledge Management?
However, different levels of computing resources
may be required for research tasks and creation
tasks. Dedicating resources to these tasks inap-
propriately may cause performance issues, so it
is necessary to assign the right resources to the
right task when required.
Once the content is written, the content writers
will not use as many resources in this topic, except
to correct or clarify the content. However, the re-
sources are needed to support participation by
the users, to ensure they connect quickly to the
content, to access appropriately, and to provide
feedback. Tools such as search engine algorithms
to determine relevancy, recommendations, and
the like are all methods for attracting users to the
knowledge solution, but they all use additional
storage, computing, and network resources to
function properly without impacting the user’s in-
teraction with the content.
During this time, knowledge about how many
users will attempt to access a particular piece of
knowledge is unpredictable. Using our previous
calculations, each piece of knowledge took one
hour to research and create. The content writers
would generate 2500 pieces of knowledge in the
first week. Relying on the Pareto principle, only
20% of this content will be accessed significant
and only by 20%of the potential users. This means
that 2000 users will determine the most relevant
500 pieces of knowledge created (but we don’t
know which users or knowledge).
From the perspective of resources, each person
and/or piece of knowledge will require a sufficient
assignment of resources to ensure a connection.
But with no predictable understanding of usage
at this point, dedicating resources is out of the
question.
The last step, analyzing participation, will provide
clarity about the success of the project, user’s level
of participation, and the value of the content cre-
ated. This analysis will require additional storage,
computing, and network resources to complete
and report. Overtime, more data will provide
greater support in predicting resource require-
ments and planning expansions to the system.
Realistically, the steps are iterative and overlap-
ping. When content writers have created a re-
spectable pile of knowledge on one topic, they
will move on to the next topic and so on. As us-
ers begin to rely on the knowledge in the system,
their daily participation will increase and more
users will begin using the system regularly. Busi-
ness strategy will probably encourage knowledge
generation and participation, thus intervening to
support relevant steps. Whatever the progression,
the demand on resources will increase signifi-
cantly for a successful knowledge management
program.
Because the demand for different types of re-
sources varies based on the task and the partici-
pation involved, some level of flexibility must be
built in.
Cloud computing provides this flexibility and will
assign resources when they are required, with lit-
tle to no dedication of resources occurring. While
this flexibility in resources may seem attractive in
supporting a single knowledge system, this at-
tractiveness increases dramatically when a knowl-
edge management program utilizes several sys-
tems and solutions across the organization.
Business strategy will probably
encourage knowledge generation
and participation.