Wikis in Knowledge Management: Enabling Effective

Collaboration

Colin MooneyDIT, Kevin Street.

07/11/2009

Topics Introduction

How Knowledge Management Works?

Knowledge Management & Web 2.0

AIB ‘OnePlace’ Wiki Pilot

Conclusions & Future Work

Q&A

Introduction

2008

MSc: Computing (Knowledge Management) at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Dissertation: “Wiki-Based Collaboration in a large Organisation: An Enabler of Effective Knowledge Management.”

2009

MSc: Operations & Technology Management at Dublin City University Centre for Executive Education.

Dissertation: “Strategic Options for Captive O&T Divisions towards becoming BPO providers.”

How KM Works?What is knowledge Management?

KM

What is Knowledge Management? “... what people know, and how what they know can support business

and organisational objectives. It draws on human competency, intuition, ideas, and motivations.”

“is a collective process of capturing, modelling and organising individuals knowledge into an organisations’ single repository so as to facilitate its reuse and sharing among the employees and other stakeholders for the purposes of new insights.”

“Is creating an environment where people have ease of access to knowledge which makes a difference to their everyday working lives.

“It is not just about the systems we use to make knowledge available. It is how we share that knowledge – the processes and procedures that surround those systems that enable effective knowledge sharing. It’s interacting and thinking outside the box and having the tools to collaborate on these ideas.”

What is Knowledge Management?

Tacit Knowledge Knowledge Sharing Collaboration Knowledge Retention Team Work Productivity Communication Expertise

KM Systems Content

Management Document

Management Knowledge

Discovery Knowledge Bases Web 2.0 Enabling Virtual

Teams ICT Tools

1. PEOPLE PERSPECTIVE

2. TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE

3. Organisational Perspective

KM Cycle

KM

CaptureIdentifyAnalyse

TaxonomyMetadataStructure

Make VisibleConsistentAccessible

PromoteRewardEncourage

Spiral of Knowledge

Tacit to Tacit

Tacit to Explicit

Explicit to Explicit

Explicit to Tacit

Knowledge Networks: Collaboration Knowledge Management is about connecting people

together, therefore collaboration is key to successful knowledge management.

Large Organisations are made up of many networks, with key players who act as information brokers, boundary spanners, central connectors, and peripheral specialists. (Cross & Prusak 2002)

By analysing these networks, we can understand the knowledge flows in an organisation.

Collaboration - Email

Benefits of KM

Avoiding Redundant Effort

Avoiding Repeated Mistakes

Taking Advantage of Existing Expertise

Making Individuals More Effective

Making Teams More Effective

(Garfield 2008)

KM & Web 2.0A New Era

“The world wide web has been instrumental in catalysing the knowledge management movement. Since knowledge and the value of harnessing it have always been with us, it must be the availability of these newer technologies that has stoked the knowledge fire.” (Davenport and Prusak 2000)

Web 2.0 “The internet is evolving from a channel for

content distribution to a platform for collaboration, sharing and innovation.” (Gilroy and Ives 2006)

3 Principles:

1. The Web has become a collaboration space.

2. The Web is now a platform to publish and create.

3. The Web has become an innovation platform, which enables increased idea sharing.

Web 2.0 Features - SLATES Searching – Enabling people to find what they are

looking for.

Linking – Connecting knowledge.

Authoring – Everyone becomes an expert.

Tagging – Recommending and rating content.

Extensions – Plugins, Inter-Connectivity.

Signals – Notification and Syndication (McAfee 2006)

The Wiki Way! Wikis make it easy to keep all your information current

and accurate. Information stored in a wiki is dynamic. With wikis,

anyone can edit a page (depending on their access privileges / role).

Wikis keep your information safe. You can view changes made by different users or rollback to previous versions.

Even as members of your team turn over and new employees are hired, the wiki can be an unbroken repository of knowledge that evolves with your organisation.

Enterprise Wiki Requirements Control & Security

Spaces

Permissions and Roles

Enterprise Integration

LDAP Integration and Single sign-on

Application & Database options

Content Organisation Hierarchy

Attachments: Automatic versioning & WebDAV (Attachments at the desktop) Fast and Accurate

Searching All content (pages, attachments, comments, etc) controlled by user permissions

Full-text attachment searching

Collaboration – Wiki / Portal

Enterprise Wiki PilotOnePlace Wiki Pilot at AIB Bank

OnePlace

Knowledge Management

OnePlace

Director of O&T

General Manager

Executive

Senior Manag

er

Manager

Author

Drivers of SuccessTop-Down From

Senior Management

Bottom-Up from

Grassroots

Laterally through COP’s

The Approach

Engage Senior Management to back the initiative.

Secure exclusive, high profile use-cases for the portal.

Brand the portal to promote its use.

Meet with prospective teams and user groups to gauge reaction.

Drive wiki adoption by becoming a ‘Wiki Champion’.

“Selling KM”: Language is Key To demonstrate the commercial wiki products were now

ready for use in an enterprise environment for business applications.

To encourage collaboration between teams in the “O&T Community” through the use of the “OnePlace” wiki portal.

To position wiki technology as part of the overall suite of collaboration tools in the pilot organisation.

To analyse the reaction and comments of users involved in the pilot.

Wiki Champion

Be a Clear Communicator: Keep things simple ...

Be A Coach: You will need to coach the early users ...

Be Patient: Be patient with your early adopters ...

Be Enthusiastic: People will react to your enthusiasm ...

Be Engaging: Be available to discuss or help ...

Have Fun!: It will help you succeed.

https://oneplace.aib.pri

Conclusions & Future WorkCollaboration, Knowledge Management, Wikis....

Conclusions Knowledge Management is much more about people

and the processes which enable knowledge management than specific technologies.

Simplicity is important, providing knowledge workers with the tools to quickly capture, organise, share and reuse knowledge which is important to their work.

Portals and Web-based tools are enabling and improving virtual collaboration for virtual teams.

Conclusions ctnd.. Success Factors:

Starting with high-value or exclusive knowledge.

Engaging senior ranking users.

Target focused pilot group(s) within each department.

Securing use across a wide variety of departments.

“Social Computing Changes The EnterpriseCollaboration Landscape”

Email: mooneycol@gmail.com Blog: http://www.extacit.blogspot.comLinkedIn: http://ie.linkedin.com/in/colinmooney

References Cross, R. And Prusak L. 2002. The People Who Make Organisations Go - or

Stop. Harvard Business Review. 80 (6) , pp105-112.

Davenport, T. and Prusak, L. 2000. Working Knowledge: How Organisations Manage What They Know. United States of America: Harvard Business Press.

Garfield, S. 2008. Weekly Knowledge Management blog by Stan Garfield. [Online]. Available from: http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/garfield/archive/2008/02/13/5734.html

Gilroy, K. and Ives, B. 2006. Preparing for “intranet 2.0” – how to integrate new communication technology into your intranet IN:Transforming your intranet. United States of America:Melcrum.

Koplowitz, R. Brown, M. And Barnett, J. 2008. “Social Computing Changes The Enterprise Collaboration Landscape”, Forrester Research

McAfee, A. 2006.Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. MIT Sloan Management Review. 47 (3), pp21-28.