Friday, April 24, 2009

Can Web 2.0 Really Help the Knowledge Management Cause?

PrimeObjects Web 2.0 team is working hard to achieve exactly same goal.

The article from Phil White on KMEdge.org.

What do we want out of knowledge management implementations?

    * We want organic growth of information, but we also want an "official version."
    * We want to promote innovation and open usage, but we cannot risk exposing proprietary intellectual property.
    * We want fast, intranet-based tools, but we don't want to spend money.
    * We want everything in beta, but the tools still need to be stable.
    * We want free-flowing information, but without negatively impacting legal, e-discovery, or litigation.
    * We want integration with large legacy systems, but we also want low implementation costs.
    * We want grassroots adoption, but with executive sponsorship.
    * We want to increase KM effectiveness, but with little or no additional funding.

Ok, I'm sure you get the point.  I think we've all faced these tradeoffs--and many more--when undertaking KM implementations. We've preached for many years, "Integrate everything and get it out at the right time to the right users." But solving this dilemma has been elusive at best.

At Rockwell Collins Inc. (where I am manager of knowledge and critical skills management), we've begun to experiment with Web 2.0 technologies to address some of these challenges. In an effort to make KM real to our engineering user base, we piloted two Web 2.0 applications: a wiki and a forum.

Using the wiki, we can create content that is both vetted and user-contributed at the speed of the intranet.  We put the information that people need in line with their daily activities and, by showing the productivity enhancement capabilities, we were able to secure executive sponsorship.  

However, a nagging question remains: Will people use the new tools?  Will they really achieve the value we are promoting?  These may appear to be strange questions since wikis are so viral outside the corporate setting.  But we must remember that these two environments are different and operate under different rules. What is acceptable in my social or leisure time is not necessarily acceptable during my professional time.  But my team has a gut feeling that Web 2.0 technologies can play a vital role in advancing KM at our organization.

Why has the corporate world been so slow to adopt these technologies? I believe the answer lies in the necessary paradigm shift related to how we process information. It's a shift from a lot of hierarchical order and paper to higher levels of comfort with user contribution, less inherent order, and a "please, no paper" attitude. All these trends can be seen in the changing mindsets of younger generations in the workplace. In order to gain acceptance for this more loosely connected information paradigm, we must provide the proper context and incentives to encourage people to participate.

In the engineering world--which is our primary focus at Rockwell Collins--I believe the key is to make Web 2.0 technologies easy and intuitive to use. For us, connecting a forum to a wiki appears to have provided an effective solution. People who prefer to ask questions instead of searching can enter the forum and post their queries. The forum searches the wiki for possible answers. If none are found, the question goes to a support person. As we build up the content in the wiki, we are seeing an increase in the percentage and volume of questions that can be resolved through wiki articles. People who prefer to perform their own searches can go directly to the wiki and find the answers they need.  If collaboration is required to formulate a solution, users can create a new wiki entry and engage others to help develop the answer. What started as a simple support system has grown into our engineering encyclopedia of knowledge, including information on people, processes, and tools. The wiki not only contains information on launching and running our engineering tools, but it also helps engineers understand and utilize our engineering standard processes.