Knowledge Management

Knowledge falls into two main types:
 

Explicit Knowledge

Knowledge that can be written down.
 

Tacit Knowledge

Knowledge that can only be learnt from experience,
perhaps from tens of thousands of hours of experience.

A cooking recipe is a form of explicit knowledge. Relaying this explicit knowledge, passing it from person to person, from generation to generation, is crucial to our civilisation. Sometimes the knowledge is lost, to be rediscovered centuries later, like the reason why Roman cement and concrete has been so durable (Opens a new window).

In IT, it is critical to record processes, to provide in-line help in software, and more detailed knowledge base information for power users.

Here is an example:

The monthly review of support tickets indicated a clear pattern that although information to answer customer's questions was available in the customer knowledge base, they were still sending in tickets to the help desk. Each of these tickets represented a loss of opportunity to work on projects, but support needed to react professionally, within service level agreements. Three actions were recommended:
1: Give the requested answer, and if it was already in the knowledge base, diplomatically link to the article.
2: Give the requested answer, but if it was not in the knowledge base, log to a queue to later add to the knowledge base, allocate 20% of one person's time to updating the knowledge base, then let the customer know when added, with a link to the article, thanking them for asking the question.
3: Send out periodic notifications, alerting all subscribers to new additions to the knowledge base.
Gradually the knowledge base become the first place more people would check; "User Education" ticket numbers went down, and projects were completed quicker.

For more information on how we can help you with improving IT knowledge management, please write to robert@esm.solutions