IS 456 Class VIII, convergence in the course.

WARNING!!!!
Its time to wrap up the course, we have 3 more classes to go:

Todays theme:

• KM technologies
• Miscellaneous
• How to: Knowledge versus Information problem
  
• Stephan Dennings story telling presentation
  

Next Week:

• Metrics
• Barriers

KM technologies:

• Lot of ground covered here including going back over the content management best practices compilation of papers that started last week. Al used the article on "how to correct myopia in your organization" to work out a template of problem solving using excel. It appeard intitutive.
• The topic of best practices in other areas such as Web self service Best Practices,Communities of practice were also discussed.
• Discussion also focussed on the differences between Project management and Knowledge management. project management is managing THINGS such as tasks, work breakdown schedules, timelines etc. The question is how do you use Knowledge Management to manage projects. More on that next week

How to: Knowledge versus Information problem

• Al in his effort in trying to give an example of "Knowledge versus Information" Problem asked the class if they have ever met a "Jerk", if so what makes him a jerk?. one person said, her boss was one, when asked why, the answer was that he micro managed the her work. This lead to a series of question and answers that boiled down to three things:
• What you know, What you know, you don't know and What you don't know, you dont know.

Stephan Dennings Presentation on Storey Telling:

• The class endeded with a great slide presentation. Al had managed to pick up Stephan Denning's preso on Storey Telling to share with the class. Lots of good stuff in there including the style of presentation that used very sparse content on each slide, but told a powerful storey. I always compare presentations to Larry Lessigs, and this one got a 7 on a scale of 10. But more importantly is the topic of storey telling with the approach of starting out with a jarring incident to catch the attention, planting the seed with a good story and finally appealing to the reasoning part of the senses to drive home the point. Enjoyed it.
  

IS 456 Class VII - Homework - Elevator Questions

1. "I see from your transcripts that you took a course in KM. What is KM?"

• Knowledge management can be defined as Structuring, Storing, capturing, disseminating, using knowledge we gain out of this relationships between nodes in an organization.
• Knowledge Management focuses on the content of Knowledge in the process of " Acquire Create (and refine) Store,à Transfer/Share Use, Improve Performance".
• One view point to describe KM is to look at it as data stored in a database: Data is stored in Fields, Information is stored in Records and Knowledge is the pattern(s) that can be discovered across tables and data sets. Everything can be looked at as a Knowledge Problem if you wear the right glasses/lenses!!.

2. "Tell me how you would apply KM in my organization."

• KM can be applied to Discover hidden assets - information and expertise, Eliminate duplicate and redundant projects, Assimilate employees faster into the organization
  Innovate faster, and bring products to market faster, Break through knowledge silos to find relevant content and Discover untapped talent and expertise
• KM could be applied to reduce the pain that your organization faces in dealing with the mass quantities of information that the organization and its customers are exposed to on a daily basis.
• Use KM to effectively manage and contain the tension between the users and the IT department
• Use knowledge management to diagnose and solve knowledge and information problems that the organization faces today.

3. "What KM technologies would you recommend here?"

• Stealth KM. Since adoption follows the porter curve, it is important to follow the stealth KM model to acquire knowledge before recommending technologies.
  
• Diagnose the existing content management system by understanding how the "Create, Manage and Publishing" process works and supplement that with KM domains of "Capture, Route and Covert".
• An effective "Knowledge Search" mechanism to access knowledge when and where needed.
• 1) Collective Search Toolbar: Delivering collective intelligence to users at their point-of-search.
  2) Social Bookmarking and Tagging: Information Discovery and sharing.
  3) Social Networking: Social Networking for getting your work done.
  4) User Communities: Enterprise information flow business processes
  

4. "KM sounds great, but how do I justify KM here?"

• The best justification for KM is its capability to reduce "Information Pain" faced by the organization.
  
• Each organization is unique, therefore any justification has to be made within the context of the knowledge or informational problems the organization faces.
  

5. "KM sounds great, but what KM metrics do you recommend?"

• Measuring knowledge management (KM) is not simple. Determining KM’s pervasiveness and impact is analogous to measuring the contribution of marketing, employee development, or any other management or organizational competency. It is nonetheless a necessity if KM is to last and have significant impact in an organization.
• There are two things that all organizations should keep in mind as they develop measures and metrics. First, it is extremely difficult to create any measure of knowledge sharing that will show an absolute one-to-one correlation between a knowledge-sharing action and a business result. Much like measuring the success of training and development programs, measuring the impact of knowledge sharing requires correlation and some assumption. Second, to truly understand the impact of knowledge sharing and reuse, an organization must first understand the baseline business or process performance before beginning KM efforts. If you do not know where the starting line is, how can you say what your time is at the finish line?
• An effective metric or gauge for Knowledge Management might be an index that is comprised of the following four types of measures:
  1. Awareness – knowledge of what to document, how to document it, how to access KM data bases, etc.
  2. Behavior – participation in KM activities such as committees/teams, making presentations, etc.
  3. Outputs – creation of data bases, white papers, lessons learned reports, best practice documentation, etc.
  4. Outcomes – impact of new knowledge on key measures of organizational performance such as new product sales, productivity, cost reduction, or quality improvement.
  
• 
  
• The Department of NAVY put out a good paper on measuring KM. The following url points to this paper. This guide presents a practical framework for measuring the value of investments in KM initiatives. Since the value of KM depends on each organization’s goals and people, it is not a “cookbook” of standard procedures but rather an aid to help you identify and apply appropriate metrics for your initiative. The reader should be familiar with the concepts and approach for KM described in the KCO Toolkit; these topics are not discussed in detail since they are thoroughly covered in the Toolkit.
  
• http://www.providersedge.com/docs/km_articles/Metrics_Guide_for_DON_KM_Initiatives.pdf
• 
  

6. "Tell me the main barriers to adopting KM I can anticipate. How would you overcome
them?"

• Adoption barriers are the most common ones to anticipate. Rogers adoption curve shown below indicates the process/timeline for adoption of Change.
• 
  
• 

7. "Summarize for me what you learned in that KM class."

Most of what I have learned in class falls under the following themes

• Collaboration
  Knowledge management systems
  Personal Knowledge Management
  Problem solving and decision making in in organizations
  KM Technologies
  Knowledge elicitation - Organizational learning and knowledge transfer

The class also provided me better insight into social networking, blogging and microblogging, Problem solving, decision making, organizational learning and knowledge transfer.

The blogging exercise in class has the potential to help me hone my writing skills that will come in handy as I work on my PhD dissertation.

The Wiki collaboration tool, while cumbersome (sharepoint versus media wiki) provides insight into collaborative writing skills.

The best bang for the buck, I got from class is my exposure to twitter and related tools that let you follow conversations of selected genre. I have been able to gain a lot of insight into KM and related technologies by following conversations in twitter and friendfeed and Google Reader. I highly recommend, a feed based approach in augmenting ones reading on specific subjects and microblogging to follow current trends through conversations.

IS 456 Class VII, Dave Simmons and Review of homework VI a

DAVE SIMMONS guest Speaker:

We had a guest speaker in today. The dude had an interesting background the most pronounced of which being, he was a librarian for over 20 years. Impressive!!. He now is a KM expert and works at GSA in Chicago manging KM for a the building leasing.

Dave's Bio:
Dave Simmons is a Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) with KM experience in both private and public sectors. Prior to working for the US Government, Dave ran his own business intelligence and research business, was the Director of Prosepect Management and Research for Chicago's Children's Memorial Foundation, and was the Director of Knowledge Management for Global Operations at LEGO Systems A/S in Billund, Denmark (yes, LEGO toys). Dave has worked in information technology and management areas for well over 20 years.

My first thought as I listened to him was, I am a registered Architect in this country with 17 years in Architecture plus I have 15 years in information systems, doing my masters in Information systems, with a KM/Collaboration/Datamining background, Why cant I get a job like Dave's?...The answer, I have not built TRUST with the folks who hire KM experts, perhaps!!

Dave covered quite a few areas in KM/CM , perhaps the most important one being: There are 3 processes within 3 areas of KM. They are: People, Process and Information can be seen in INNOVATION, CUSTOMER INTERACTION and OPERATIONS. The sketch below explains the concept better.



Other interesting nuggets from his talk included Stealth KM and how to go about driving adoption and Collecting lessons learned and leveraging those lessons. Stealth KM in his opinion is collecting information about people/process/information.

Dave is all about relieving INFORMATION PAIN at least that is his mantra. He drives home the point of being humble to build TRUST.

Dave's final thoughts:

KM is more about discernment, we are choked for knowledge but drowning for information.Knowing to discern information is important.Less is more and focussed is better.
Last thing:
Write it down, keep track of your self. Not learning from your own actions if you don’t.
You need to report to your self, you will make a subtle shift with out knowing it so keep track

KM = solve information pain.
Write once use many times.
Connect KM to daily work.
Constantly challenge yourself: is what your doing on a tangent?
Eat an elephant one bite at a time.


The second half of the class reviewed Homework VI a:
I had already submitted this in my previous posting, so this part of the lecture was a review for me. I am posting that part of the home work again, just in case Al did not see my previous post.

HomeWork Week VI part a.

Readings are based on the Enterprise Content Management readings distributed as pdf, titled: Best practices of Content Management.
2 The Chaos of Content
* List 3 sources of tension between IT and the user community, in terms of enterprise content management.
o ANS: The 3 sources of tension discussed are: Growth, Brand and Speed.
Growth: Companies that are trying to grow their on line presence often see this tension between IT and the business unit(user community), where the user wants the best customer experience and IT can only provide the most efficient, with the resources they have
Brand: Consolidating Brand assets centrally when companies are going global is a huge challenge in areas of consistency and meeting localized needs of various cultures and demographics.
Speed: If IT does not have speed to deliver the brand managers will most probably take matters into their own hands, making the task of delivering what the users need quickly and being consistent across the business.

4 Unlock the Value of Content to Maximize Online Business Performance
* Getting the right content, to the right person, is a popular KM phrase.
* How can better content enable enterprises to optimize the customer experience?
o ANS: Optimizing Customer experience can be achieved by delivering the most accurate, Current, persuasive and appropriate content, in short BETTER content. Better content will Strengthen Customer loyalty, Achieve unified brands, messages and corporate images, Accelerate worldwide product launches and promotions, Optimize customer process efficiencies and Provide regulatory compliance and security.

6 Content Management vs. Knowledge Management
* The article mentions some differences between CM and KM. Which of these terms describe CM, and which describe KM?
o ANS:
o Capture: Knowledge Management domain
o Create: Content Management domain
o Route: Knowledge Management domain
o Manage: Content Management domain
o Convert: Knowledge Management domain
o Publish: Content Management domain

* Is CM or KM bigger in scope, i.e. does one belong under the other’s umbrella?
o ANS: Content Management can be defined more as a static " Create/Manage/Publish" process while Knowledge management is broader and envelopes CM owing to its dynamic and holistic "capture/route/convert/measure" approach.

8 Managing Email Overload: The Smart, Secure and Legal Way
* Name 3 drivers that dictate what an email management solution must do.
o ANS:
1) Email as a source of corporate records needed for regulatory compliance and legal discovery
2) Email growth is explosive
3) Email is a source of business critical information

* Name 5 requirements of any email management solution.
o ANS:
1) Retain messages in compliance with corporate and regulatory policies
2) Provide a highly scalable repository that is capable of fast growth and has scalable retention capabilities.
3) Facilitate searching as required for legal discovery
4) Improve system performance
5) Integrate email with other corporate records and content.

* What are some consequences of not having an email management system?
o ANS:
1) Additional time spent on administration of the email
2) Overloaded servers will degrade performance of the email platform
3) Users will be burdened with mailbox limits
4) Risks of non-compliance and or additional hours will be spent during litigation and regulatory requests.
5) Benefits of sharing important information through the company is lost.

10 Today's Search: All The Power. No Pain.
* What are some criteria for evaluating an enterprise search solution?
o ANS:
1) Ease of installation
2) Time needed to learn how to build interfaces and put the server up
3) The ability to easily manipulate the user interface
4) relevance of search results
5) time to search and load over 2.5Million documents in a wide variety of formats and data sources.

11 The Emerging Role of SharePoint in ECM
* Do you think SharePoint is a good choice for students to search a discussion forum on COLWeb? Why or why not?
o ANS: Microsoft’s documentation claims that Sharepoint is an ideal platform for Basic search and retrieval. However depending on its implementation this may or may not be true.
When I went to the discussion form at colweb using IE (http://collaboration.cti.depaul.edu/2008-3/IS356/841) I received a permissions error, indicating I donot have privileges to view this page. When I went to the discussion forum at colweb using Firefox, it does not render the page at all.
The reason: The IT team has not completed implementation of this component. Perhaps it is just a configuration error.

12 Top Five Reasons to Outsource Document Capture
* Name the "top five reasons to outsource your document capture project".
o ANS:
1. Focus on your organization’s core business processes;
2. Improve service levels to clients and reduce transaction costs at the same time;
3. Faster and more secure implementation of compliance and discovery initiatives;
4. Providing near-term cost savings while avoiding technological obsolescence;
5. Cost-effective disaster recovery

13 Will Your Next CMS Scale to Meet Your Demands?
* Is content management something you buy, or something you do? Explain.
o ANS:
CM is something you DO since it is more of a pursuit than a product.

We know your organization, its needs and its appetite, and propensity for change. Finding a flexible, scalable solution that best aligns with a well-defined strategy is a logical goal. Ending up with the most features or the lowest initial is not necessarily a measure of success in a CM implementation.

14 The Value of SharePoint-Based ECM Solutions
* What are the key chunks of functionality that an enterprise content management system should have?
o ANS:
1) Document management, Forms management, Web content management and email management
2) Transactional content functionality such as document scanning and imaging, report management and enterprise class BPM.
3) Achieve enhanced business content control and management,
4) Broaden user adoption across the enterprise
5) Enjoy higher, longer-lasting returns on their ECM investments.
6) Minimize the impact on both the information worker desktop as well as the internal IT operational infrastructure

15 How to Correct Your Organization’s Content Myopia
* What is the best approach to transforming these business areas with Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?
o ANS:
o Accounts payable:
start by scanning, classifying and indexing paper documents as well as capturing electronic invoices. Save time and improve accuracy using tools such as queue-based workflows and automatic notification. Integrate accounts payable information with enterprise resource planning and other line-of-business systems to ensure it gains the widest possible currency.

Contract management
Begin by leveraging collaborative workspaces to share documents, track deliverables and hold threaded discussions. Enable users to access associated contentoffice documents, scanned images, email and more from a common content repository. Develop electronic forms to streamline contract requests and notify others about contract milestones and obligations.

o Client engagement:
Enable collaboration across projects and around the globe. This will provide the capability to track milestones and resolve issues, give clients visibility into processes from project launch to completion, and track key metrics across various projects. Increased delivery throughput, exceeding client expectations and driving new engagement opportunities will be the benefits that this collaborative approach will bring.

o Compliance:
Start by automating the entire content lifecycle to protect content from inappropriate use or disclosure while ensuring its accessibility. Mitigate risk of non-compliance by automatically auditing content during any stage and enforcing policies for retention and, as appropriate, disposal.

o New product development:
Create flexible workspace templates to enforce best practices and track progress across multiple projects through enterprise database rollups, dashboards and reporting tools

o Enterprise marketing:
Streamline the marketing process and provide seamless access to marketing content. Coordinate campaigns, product launches and ongoing branding and marketing communications. Keep projects on track, reduce overall costs and exert greater control over brand assets using media repositories, creative workflows and virtual workspaces.

16 Widgets, Wizzbangs and Whoozits
* New functionality on your web site should be in alignment with "the companies Business Model".
* Give an example of when a discussion forum might not be a good idea on a website.
o ANS: Cell phone provider website where customer turnover is very high. Prospective customers could get turned off by negative comments.

17 Is On-Demand Content Management Right for You?
* In a few paragraphs, explain when SaaS would be an appropriate alternative for content management?
o ANS:
Software as a Service can deliver great project success at a dramatically reduced cost if the CM project has a heavy dependency on Document management and Workflow tools. Along with this criteria, the following evaluation guidelines will assist with assessing the FIT of SaaS as the preferred Choice in CM implementation.

The Breadth test: If your CM requirements needs one or more components not often found in off-the-shelf CM packages, such as send/receive faxes from the application, OCR, Scanner integration, E-Forms and combining form based data, Ability to view proprietary formats and advanced document workflow.

The Speed Test: If your implementation,/adoption rate is required to be RAPID, then SaaS is a better fit than the traditional CM application deployed by the IT/project teams.

The Cash Flow Test: If the project requires lower TCO and lesser Risk, SaaS is a better option than traditional CM deployment.

Evolving needs test: If the needs of the user community are constantly evolving, the In-House CM implementation might tend to become cumbersome. The SaaS option under these circumstances would provide a better fit.

The 80/20 test: The mixture of integration and configuration is referred to as the 80/20 rule. If 80% of the solution is provided out of the box by the SaaS solution, then it should be considered over the traditional CM implementation.

IS 456 Class VI Homework assignments

Homework for Week VI:
Homework for this week is in two parts, please see both sections below:

Homework Week VI

Start with the Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning.pdf article
* Skim this article, as reading goes, this is rather rough sledding.
* See figure 1. We’ve seen this before, now some things have been added.
* Where does "learning" occur?
o ANS: Learning occurs at the "Refinement" Stage where the Explication, Drawing inferences, Encoding, Evaluation, Selection for inclusion in memory occurs.

Huber article:
* Don’t spend too much time on this article. I wanted you to see Figure 1, that is the main idea.
* This is difficult reading, but still is a widely cited article from way back in 1991.
* It answers the question, how many different ways can the organization learn? See the 4 branches of the diagram.

o Knowledge acquisition is the process by which knowledge is obtained.
o Information distribution is the process by which information from different sources is shared and thereby leads to new information or understanding.
o Information interpretation is the process by which distributed information is given one or more commonly understood interpretations.
o Organizational memory is the means by which knowledge is stored for future use.
* Under which of the branches do you find "media richness? Have you seen this before? Do you agree?
o ANS: Media Richness is found in the "Information Interpretation" branch. We came across media richness when we discussed "Multimedia and the cognitive process" using Mettalica’s song "One" in class. The concept that stood out during the discussion was "BIAS".

* What is unlearning, and where does it fall?
o Ans: Headberg in 1981 defined "Unlearning" as a process through which learners discard Knowledge. He also described it as discarding obsolete and misleading knowledge and termed it intentional and functional in the Organizational learning process. Unlearning falls in the Information Interpretation Branch.

General:
* What is the difference between knowledge management and organizational learning?
o ANS: Organizational Learning focuses on the Process and Knowledge Management focuses on the content of Knowledge in the process of " Acquire àCreate (and refine) àStore,à Transfer/ShareàUse,à Improve Performance". Organizational Learning can be summarized as a goal of Knowledge Management.

* Between knowledge transfer and organizational learning?
o ANS: Knowledge transfer is a sub part of the Organizational Learning Process. The overall Organizational learning process has these components: Acquire àCreate (and refine) àStore,à Transfer/ShareàUse,à Improve Performance

* Between knowledge transfer and knowledge management?
o ANS: Knowledge transfer is a sub part of the Organizational Learning Process. Knowledge Mangement deals with the CONTENT in the Organizational learning Process. The overall Organizational learning process has these components: Acquire àCreate (and refine) àStore,à Transfer/ShareàUse,à Improve Performance

HomeWork Week VI part a.

Readings are based on the Enterprise Content Management readings distributed as pdf, titled: Best practices of Content Management.
2 The Chaos of Content
* List 3 sources of tension between IT and the user community, in terms of enterprise content management.
o ANS: The 3 sources of tension discussed are: Growth, Brand and Speed.
Growth: Companies that are trying to grow their on line presence often see this tension between IT and the business unit(user community), where the user wants the best customer experience and IT can only provide the most efficient, with the resources they have
Brand: Consolidating Brand assets centrally when companies are going global is a huge challenge in areas of consistency and meeting localized needs of various cultures and demographics.
Speed: If IT does not have speed to deliver the brand managers will most probably take matters into their own hands, making the task of delivering what the users need quickly and being consistent across the business.

4 Unlock the Value of Content to Maximize Online Business Performance
* Getting the right content, to the right person, is a popular KM phrase.
* How can better content enable enterprises to optimize the customer experience?
o ANS: Optimizing Customer experience can be achieved by delivering the most accurate, Current, persuasive and appropriate content, in short BETTER content. Better content will Strengthen Customer loyalty, Achieve unified brands, messages and corporate images, Accelerate worldwide product launches and promotions, Optimize customer process efficiencies and Provide regulatory compliance and security.

6 Content Management vs. Knowledge Management
* The article mentions some differences between CM and KM. Which of these terms describe CM, and which describe KM?
o ANS:
o Capture: Knowledge Management domain
o Create: Content Management domain
o Route: Knowledge Management domain
o Manage: Content Management domain
o Convert: Knowledge Management domain
o Publish: Content Management domain

* Is CM or KM bigger in scope, i.e. does one belong under the other’s umbrella?
o ANS: Content Management can be defined more as a static " Create/Manage/Publish" process while Knowledge management is broader and envelopes CM owing to its dynamic and holistic "capture/route/convert/measure" approach.

8 Managing Email Overload: The Smart, Secure and Legal Way
* Name 3 drivers that dictate what an email management solution must do.
o ANS:
1) Email as a source of corporate records needed for regulatory compliance and legal discovery
2) Email growth is explosive
3) Email is a source of business critical information

* Name 5 requirements of any email management solution.
o ANS:
1) Retain messages in compliance with corporate and regulatory policies
2) Provide a highly scalable repository that is capable of fast growth and has scalable retention capabilities.
3) Facilitate searching as required for legal discovery
4) Improve system performance
5) Integrate email with other corporate records and content.

* What are some consequences of not having an email management system?
o ANS:
1) Additional time spent on administration of the email
2) Overloaded servers will degrade performance of the email platform
3) Users will be burdened with mailbox limits
4) Risks of non-compliance and or additional hours will be spent during litigation and regulatory requests.
5) Benefits of sharing important information through the company is lost.

10 Today's Search: All The Power. No Pain.
* What are some criteria for evaluating an enterprise search solution?
o ANS:
1) Ease of installation
2) Time needed to learn how to build interfaces and put the server up
3) The ability to easily manipulate the user interface
4) relevance of search results
5) time to search and load over 2.5Million documents in a wide variety of formats and data sources.

11 The Emerging Role of SharePoint in ECM
* Do you think SharePoint is a good choice for students to search a discussion forum on COLWeb? Why or why not?
o ANS: Microsoft’s documentation claims that Sharepoint is an ideal platform for Basic search and retrieval. However depending on its implementation this may or may not be true.
When I went to the discussion form at colweb using IE (http://collaboration.cti.depaul.edu/2008-3/IS356/841) I received a permissions error, indicating I donot have privileges to view this page. When I went to the discussion forum at colweb using Firefox, it does not render the page at all.
The reason: The IT team has not completed implementation of this component. Perhaps it is just a configuration error.

12 Top Five Reasons to Outsource Document Capture
* Name the "top five reasons to outsource your document capture project".
o ANS:
1. Focus on your organization’s core business processes;
2. Improve service levels to clients and reduce transaction costs at the same time;
3. Faster and more secure implementation of compliance and discovery initiatives;
4. Providing near-term cost savings while avoiding technological obsolescence;
5. Cost-effective disaster recovery

13 Will Your Next CMS Scale to Meet Your Demands?
* Is content management something you buy, or something you do? Explain.
o ANS:
CM is something you DO since it is more of a pursuit than a product.

We know your organization, its needs and its appetite, and propensity for change. Finding a flexible, scalable solution that best aligns with a well-defined strategy is a logical goal. Ending up with the most features or the lowest initial is not necessarily a measure of success in a CM implementation.

14 The Value of SharePoint-Based ECM Solutions
* What are the key chunks of functionality that an enterprise content management system should have?
o ANS:
1) Document management, Forms management, Web content management and email management
2) Transactional content functionality such as document scanning and imaging, report management and enterprise class BPM.
3) Achieve enhanced business content control and management,
4) Broaden user adoption across the enterprise
5) Enjoy higher, longer-lasting returns on their ECM investments.
6) Minimize the impact on both the information worker desktop as well as the internal IT operational infrastructure

15 How to Correct Your Organization’s Content Myopia
* What is the best approach to transforming these business areas with Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?
o ANS:
o Accounts payable:
start by scanning, classifying and indexing paper documents as well as capturing electronic invoices. Save time and improve accuracy using tools such as queue-based workflows and automatic notification. Integrate accounts payable information with enterprise resource planning and other line-of-business systems to ensure it gains the widest possible currency.

Contract management
Begin by leveraging collaborative workspaces to share documents, track deliverables and hold threaded discussions. Enable users to access associated contentoffice documents, scanned images, email and more from a common content repository. Develop electronic forms to streamline contract requests and notify others about contract milestones and obligations.

o Client engagement:
Enable collaboration across projects and around the globe. This will provide the capability to track milestones and resolve issues, give clients visibility into processes from project launch to completion, and track key metrics across various projects. Increased delivery throughput, exceeding client expectations and driving new engagement opportunities will be the benefits that this collaborative approach will bring.

o Compliance:
Start by automating the entire content lifecycle to protect content from inappropriate use or disclosure while ensuring its accessibility. Mitigate risk of non-compliance by automatically auditing content during any stage and enforcing policies for retention and, as appropriate, disposal.

o New product development:
Create flexible workspace templates to enforce best practices and track progress across multiple projects through enterprise database rollups, dashboards and reporting tools

o Enterprise marketing:
Streamline the marketing process and provide seamless access to marketing content. Coordinate campaigns, product launches and ongoing branding and marketing communications. Keep projects on track, reduce overall costs and exert greater control over brand assets using media repositories, creative workflows and virtual workspaces.

16 Widgets, Wizzbangs and Whoozits
* New functionality on your web site should be in alignment with "the companies Business Model".
* Give an example of when a discussion forum might not be a good idea on a website.
o ANS: Cell phone provider website where customer turnover is very high. Prospective customers could get turned off by negative comments.

17 Is On-Demand Content Management Right for You?
* In a few paragraphs, explain when SaaS would be an appropriate alternative for content management?
o ANS:
Software as a Service can deliver great project success at a dramatically reduced cost if the CM project has a heavy dependency on Document management and Workflow tools. Along with this criteria, the following evaluation guidelines will assist with assessing the FIT of SaaS as the preferred Choice in CM implementation.

The Breadth test: If your CM requirements needs one or more components not often found in off-the-shelf CM packages, such as send/receive faxes from the application, OCR, Scanner integration, E-Forms and combining form based data, Ability to view proprietary formats and advanced document workflow.

The Speed Test: If your implementation,/adoption rate is required to be RAPID, then SaaS is a better fit than the traditional CM application deployed by the IT/project teams.

The Cash Flow Test: If the project requires lower TCO and lesser Risk, SaaS is a better option than traditional CM deployment.

Evolving needs test: If the needs of the user community are constantly evolving, the In-House CM implementation might tend to become cumbersome. The SaaS option under these circumstances would provide a better fit.

The 80/20 test: The mixture of integration and configuration is referred to as the 80/20 rule. If 80% of the solution is provided out of the box by the SaaS solution, then it should be considered over the traditional CM implementation.

IS 456 Class V - Homework

Homework:

Please answer these questions on your blog, based on the articles enclosed in this folder:

Action learning article:

o Focus on the "Problem solving process" picture, Fig. 4-1.

o There are 6 steps. Which is the most important?

§ ANS: “Reframe the problem” is the most important in my opinion, because it reviews the presented problem and digs deeper to understand if it is a knowledge problem or an Information problem. Framing and Reframing the problem are critical steps of creative problem solving. While Framing the problem, presents it, Reframing the problem scrutinizes the problem further, by asking why. So this step by far is the most important as it provides the information necessary for the root cause.

o Note that 2 new steps are described, before 'determine the root cause'.

Understanding & Supporting Decision Making.pdf

o What is naturalistic decision making, and how is it different from the traditional decision making, i.e. the theory-hypothesis-test-conclude?

§ ANS: The naturalistic decision making process uses observation as a s first step prior to testing hypothesis. NDM also tries to understand the role of intuition in the decision making process that the theory-hypothesis-test-conclude model does not include in its framework. The premise of the NDM theory is that the scientify investigation of how people makes decisions begins with observation.

What data mining can't do.docx

o In terms of data, data modeling, data warehousing and data mining, why is more not necessarily better?

§ ANS: Recency and Frequency are two measures that have been around for a long time. Most time they are all we need in the Analytics process. Data collection technology should work toward making these measures more accurate to get a better bang for the buck. Having more data there fore does not necessarily mean it is a good thing, rather, Collecting data geared toward the models you are using should be the right approach. Another train of thought to consider is that suppringly simple spreadsheet models can take you much further, particularly in capturing initial behaviour. As the author puts it “Start Simple”, you will be surprised how much you gain by starting out in the spreadsheet realm.

General Reflections:

Is there a difference between decision making and problem solving?

ANS: Yes, Problem solving follows the premise that there is an awareness of a discreprency, resources to do it and pressure to act. Tools used for problem solving generally provide a Root Cause Analysis and selection of best possible choices among a series of solutions.

Decision making on the other hand, tries to be “more programmed” and tries to eliminate BIAS from the process of decision making to arrive at a rational approach to process. The steps in decision making normally follow: Identification of a problem, --->identify decision making criteria, --->allocation of weights to criteria. --->develop alternatives--->Analysis of alternatives--->selection of an alternative --> implementation of alternative-->evaluation of decision effectiveness.

o

True or false:

o There are good decisions, and there are bad decisions.

§ ANS: False, there on only “decisions”, based on alternatives, analysis of alternatives and selection of alternatives.

o Better information yields better decision making.

§ ANS: True, Better information (as opposed to Bad information) yields better decision making. It can help you develop better alternates and help you allocate weights better.

o Better knowledge yields better decision making.

§ ANS: True, Better knowledge (more actionable pieces of information) yields better decision making.

End of Homework.

IS 456 Class V - 4/30/2008 - Organizational learning

Review of Last Class and Homework.
Al reviewed the homework submitted by the students. He chose 10 homework submissions that according to him were well scoped and commented on those. Not sure why he did not pick the ones that were not well scoped and provided feedback, but he is the boss in class, so he chooses!!

Tonight's Threads
Diagnosing and solving knowledge problems in organizations. I have started using MS one note following the discussion in Class IV. Here are some notes that I made on themes such as problem solving and decision making:

Problem solving stages: Make decisions, solve problems or make tasks. Difference between decision making and problem solving:
Some decisions solve problems, or they can create a problem that you have to solve later. Problem solving is probably bigger than Decision making because you have to do a lot more. Reframing the problem is an important step in Problem Solving

Decisions: structured decision, ill structured decisions (mergers and acquisitons)
Problem: awareness of a discreprency, resources to do it and pressure to act. Root cuase, fishbone diagrams etc are problem solving. Decision making: more programmed, Story: irrational exuberance. Al was looking at 14 schools, Schools were asking Al, if they made the short list?.

Al used his decision making approach when picking his first teaching Job:
a. Identification of a problem, --->identify decision making criteria, --->allocation of weights to criteria. --->develop alternatives--->Analysis of alternatives--->selection of an alternative --> implementation of alternative-->evaluation of decision effectiveness.

Naturalistic is decision making under pressure --->trader floor -->fighter pilot etc

Problem solving and decision making in in organizations
See the week 5 zip files on COLWeb--with blog questions enclosed. Some more about analyzing problems, specifically organization design content. Here are the answers to the questions that are required for this homework.
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Homework:

Please answer these questions on your blog, based on the articles enclosed in this folder:

Action learning article:

o Focus on the "Problem solving process" picture, Fig. 4-1.

o There are 6 steps. Which is the most important?

§ ANS: “Reframe the problem” is the most important in my opinion, because it reviews the presented problem and digs deeper to understand if it is a knowledge problem or an Information problem. Framing and Reframing the problem are critical steps of creative problem solving. While Framing the problem, presents it, Reframing the problem scrutinizes the problem further, by asking why. So this step by far is the most important as it provides the information necessary for the root cause.

o Note that 2 new steps are described, before 'determine the root cause'.

Understanding & Supporting Decision Making.pdf

o What is naturalistic decision making, and how is it different from the traditional decision making, i.e. the theory-hypothesis-test-conclude?

§ ANS: The naturalistic decision making process uses observation as a s first step prior to testing hypothesis. NDM also tries to understand the role of intuition in the decision making process that the theory-hypothesis-test-conclude model does not include in its framework. The premise of the NDM theory is that the scientify investigation of how people makes decisions begins with observation.

What data mining can't do.docx

o In terms of data, data modeling, data warehousing and data mining, why is more not necessarily better?

§ ANS: Recency and Frequency are two measures that have been around for a long time. Most time they are all we need in the Analytics process. Data collection technology should work toward making these measures more accurate to get a better bang for the buck. Having more data there fore does not necessarily mean it is a good thing, rather, Collecting data geared toward the models you are using should be the right approach. Another train of thought to consider is that suppringly simple spreadsheet models can take you much further, particularly in capturing initial behaviour. As the author puts it “Start Simple”, you will be surprised how much you gain by starting out in the spreadsheet realm.

General Reflections:

Is there a difference between decision making and problem solving?

ANS: Yes, Problem solving follows the premise that there is an awareness of a discreprency, resources to do it and pressure to act. Tools used for problem solving generally provide a Root Cause Analysis and selection of best possible choices among a series of solutions.

Decision making on the other hand, tries to be “more programmed” and tries to eliminate BIAS from the process of decision making to arrive at a rational approach to process. The steps in decision making normally follow: Identification of a problem, --->identify decision making criteria, --->allocation of weights to criteria. --->develop alternatives--->Analysis of alternatives--->selection of an alternative --> implementation of alternative-->evaluation of decision effectiveness.

o

True or false:

o There are good decisions, and there are bad decisions.

§ ANS: False, there on only “decisions”, based on alternatives, analysis of alternatives and selection of alternatives.

o Better information yields better decision making.

§ ANS: True, Better information (as opposed to Bad information) yields better decision making. It can help you develop better alternates and help you allocate weights better.

o Better knowledge yields better decision making.

§ ANS: True, Better knowledge (more actionable pieces of information) yields better decision making.

End of Homework.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Multimedia and cognitive processes
An interesting exercise. Al had the class read the lyrics, then listen to the sound track and finally watch the video and soundtrack of Mettalica's song labeled "One". At step he requested the class to write down what the song is about and then compare it to the previous answers. The idea behind the exercise was to understand the influence of media in the learning process, particularly the impact of BIAS. In this particular case study, my analysis was as follows:
1) After reading the lyrics, my impression: the song was about WAR and its RAVAGES.
2) After listening to the soundtrack: I was glad I had read the lyrics, as it was hard to decipher the sound bytes. I guess heavy metal is a hard listen (atleast for me).
3) After watching the Video: I picked up some additional BIAS that came through, such as the Son and father relationship and the soldier sending signals via morse code as a plea for help.

Parting Shot:
4 types of learning we’ll discuss later:
1) Knowledge acquisition is the process by which knowledge is obtained.
2) Information distribution is the process by which information from different sources is shared and thereby leads to new information or understanding.
3) Information interpretation is the process by which distributed information is given one or more commonly understood interpretations.
4) Organizational memory is the means by which knowledge is stored for future use

See you next week.

Tagging memorable Knowledge

For those of us who wish for an attribute system that TAGS memorable Knowledge:

The scope of this project has the sense that we could choke on it, but so was the scope of the first trip to the moon. Is there a need to focus on memorable knowledge?. Or similar attributes for Knowledge?

IS 456 Class IV - 4/23/2008 - Personal Knowledge Management

Three Stories Each Week and a Parting Shot: The format this week is a tad different following the theme of the lecture. Its going to be all about PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT. To emphasize my point and Al's, the two stories this week actually there are three will be represented by mind maps created out of the freemind tool.

Parting Shot: After taking down all the notes using the freemind tool, the verdict is "use ONENOTE for class notes", I think it works much better. Next week I plan on doing just that. I Wanted to do this class in Freemind, its done. Now I can truly say been there done that!!

Story One: Assignments due on 4/29. See mind map below, click on it to view it in its own windows and then zoom in and out as needed. Two assignments due on 4/29 along with this blog entry. Al has provided the templates, so there should not be any format issues. I will post them to next weeks blog.
Story Two: Review of last class. Not much in terms of review except for a discussion on what is the difference between this class and the other Knowldege classes. See mind map below, click on it to view it in its own windows and then zoom in and out as needed.


Story Three. KM theme for today - Personal KM management: Lots of KM ground covered via a demo of the MINDMAP tool. Through the demo Al covered KM processes, KM solutions and his Expert system paper. The second demo went into the the Microsoft product ONENOTE and how class notes can be organized. See mind map below, click on it to view it in its own windows and then zoom in and out as needed.
Conclusion:Using the Freemind tool for documenting these stories is a one time experiment, not sure if I will use this again. But it is certainly possible to document it. Reading the material is another matter. It requires the reader to double click the image then zoom into the various parts. Talk about making it harder to get to?. Finally, below is the whole class in one snapshot, enjoy it if you can stand the drill down and read approach!!

IS 456 Class III - 4/16/2008

Two Stories Each Week and a Parting Shot: The first story will interpret or shall I say document what I gathered in class, the second Story will be about the readings and finally the parting shot. I will start with the parting shot, sort of like reading the conclusion to get a gist before delving into the whole....Today we had a guest speaker, Ed Brill from IBM, contrary to what I was expecting, he kept the IBM sales pitch down to a low key. I noticed he got a little defensive on the subject of Exchange versus Notes but that goes with his territory is my guess.

Parting Shot: Knowledge is about NODES and RELATIONSHIPS as can be seen from the logic modelling done by Burns of Steven Job's paragraph on "Love What you Do", As was discussed last class. It is also about hierarchies as can be seen from the mind map shown below.


Story One: Ed Brill's chat with the class. Ed brought a hefty presentation chalk full of graphics and icons. 42 slides in all. I came away with the impression that Ed communicates better talking to group, than his presentation skills using PowerPoint. Or may be he was using Openoffice's PowerPoint look alike. The chat started with a discussion on Trends in Collaboration, and Virtual collaboration in particular. He touched upon various forms of collaboration including the recent trends in microblogging that is geared toward the mobile space with short burst of 140 words.

The historic perspective: 1990's money --> Engineers, 2008 --> innovation driving differentiation was the next topic of discussion. He then went into a case study of a Chicago firm that hired a CIO to turn things around. Who leveraged the idea of using a blog to capture/elicit innovation from the janitor all the way to the top. Further he went into examples of http://mystarbucksidea.com and http://ideajam.net and http://salesforce.net. All these sites are built on the same concept of capturing/eliciting innovation with a simple, accessible weblog platform. The discussion also touched upon the reward and reputation management space that enhances this form of innovation elicitation. He ended this theme with the parting shot: major trends to watch in the near future would be the hand held device which will play the role of the primary interface. If twitter's success is any indication, he could have nailed this trend.

Much of the next hour was spent on discussing Lotus notes and its development, its competetion and the surrounding software suites at IBM. He walked the class through the new generation features of Notes that integrates Instant messaging and left us thinking about the changing model: "The document should not be the center of the collaboration universe, rather people or something other than the document object paradigm".

The highlight of the evening was his discussion on the power of the blog to mobilize the masses. His story about "searchdomino.com" that was advertising Micorosft's migration tools, was in my opinion very insightful. The outcome of this episode was credibility damage that led to searchdomino loosing its subscription base and in turn its advertising revenue. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword!! This might look interesting in a logical model!!

Story Two: Al's clas notes: Following the Ed's talk, Al continued with the lecture for the evening, with the open discussion about "Information Overload". Next weeks lecture will follow on the logic modeling exercise from last week and discuss mind maps and hierarchy based Knowledge representation. Week 4 reading material has been posted to the document repository on COL web.

Conclusion: Time flies when you are having a good time. Today's lecture was a good example. Having a good guest speaker helps!! For those of you who want to follow me on twitter, I twitter as @mibdepot.

IS 456 Class II - 4/9/2008

Two Stories Each Week and a Parting Shot: I modified the format for this week to two stories and a parting shot from my previous entry, where in I indicated that there will be three stories each week. The first story will interpret or shall I say document what I gathered in class, the second Story will be about the readings and finally the parting shot. I will start with the parting shot, sort of like reading the conclusion to get a gist before delving into the whole....

Parting Shot: Knowledge is about NODES and RELATIONSHIPS as can be seen from the logic modelling done by Burns of Steven Job's paragraph on "Love What you Do". The whole paragraph when looked through the lens of LOGIC MODELLING can be viewed as the following schematic representation, The theme of the whole class focused on LOGIC MODELLING as you will see from Story Two. So take away for the week, put on the logic modelling hat to get better at KM.

Knowledge management can be defined as Structuring, Storing, capturing, disseminating, using knowledge we gain out of this relationships between nodes.

Story Two: Class notes. The first hour (an entire hour) in class was spent on introductions, with the KM context interspersed in between. The discussion warmed up into Intellectual Assets and Tacit and Explicit knowledge and a brief discussion on Nonanka's article and how Nonaka could have got it wrong. Al then took us through logic modelling process (using examples) using decision tree examples. All examples were geared toward how to translate directives in plain English into "Actions, Conditions and Rules". Powerful stuff. Brought back memories of pseudo code and structured English and programming. This followed a discussion on The models of KM as discussed by Bowman. The Network Model and the Repository Model. The discussion moved on to the definitions of important concepts in KM and a Question on Which is better? Knowledge or Truth?

My thoughts on this (it is my own compilation!!): Truth is a reality that is snapshot in time, it is temporal. While Knowledge is an unending collection, a summation if you will of the content of the collective human mind, that grows, gets modified and is organic. Knowledge modifies truth and transcends the temporal nature of Truth, following the cognitive process in learning.

Story One: the Readings. As an afterthought from last week, I am going to label each article I read, with the date it was created, so I don't confuse old concepts with the new.
1) CFO-"Who you know" - [2003]: A paper that talks about the immense nature of knowledge in existence, expert systems to capture knowledge of the brightest and the best, talks about folks who coined "don't try to bottle it, just try to find it when you need it". Finally discusses why acronyms are being used today, with the computation that it will take us 2018 years to watch all videos that have been captured.
2) Notes on Scheriber: Chapters 2 and 8. [2000]: Discusses Process roles in KM and Knowledge elicitation techniques to extract data for modelling. Elicitation uses two questions: a) how to get experts to tell us what they do and 2) How to determine what constitutes their problem solving competence. It also has a interesting definition of experts: academic/practicing/samurai.
3) Topiary - case study [2004]: is about a Chicago based company that sells KM tools, the two slides at the end on measurement appear to have been slapped together as an afterthought.
4) IA PowerPoint extrapolated from "one more time what is KM" by Harris and Berg []: defines Intellectual assets and talks about tacit and explicit km.
5) Alvi - a review of KM and KMS [2001]: Lots of material on KM with interesting tables, particularly one about taxonomy and examples. (I think I like the work TAXONOMY, just like I liked the world FOLKSONOMY, makes me sound intelligent?). Great discussion on KM I am sure, but I did not find anything to store away for a rainy day!!
6) Bohn - measuring and managing technological knowledge. [1994]: Great paper at that time, I am sure. He concludes with a statement from Lord Kelvin from 1890, which was a nice touch. But to his credit in 1994 he was thinking about using decision trees and variables and how efficiency can be improved by understanding the impact of these decision tree variables better.
7) finally, Nonaka [1991]: Talks about spiral knowledge and forms of Knowledge and combinational relationship between tacit/tacit, explicit/explicit, tacit/explicit and explicit/tacit. Also talks about how Japanese firms in the 1990's produces superior products by using slogan's and themes to motivate and drive quality and innovation.

Conclusion: This is a force of habit, wanting to conclude. It is interesting that all the readings we are doing are a little dated. Nonaka's went back to 1991. Is this a representation of the sate of KM, stale with nothing new?. I remember having to study the great masters in History of Architecture before I studied the contemporary greats. May be the readings from classes 8 on up will focus on today's material. I will be patient.

Whats the hoopla about FREE in the press these days.

The FREE Business model has been getting some press these past few days, so it is time I clarified where that rabble diverges from mine on the subject of FREE.

I don't have an issue with "Free" or "tending to free" in a competitive business model, after all if you can assure a level of quality and can do it cheaper, why not pass on the savings to the customer and increase your volume of sales and your customer base/loyalty. The issue I have is with the concept of FALSE advertising. If something is not FREE, don't call it that. If you call it FREE, I believe there should not be any strings attached. Don't expect anything in return, other than folks using your product, liking it and if they so choose they can show their gratitude in any form they CHOOSE to.

False advertising appears to be very pervasive in our culture. You see it entrenched in corporate America and in the Political process that we hold so dear. Candidates slamming one another to appeal to the masses appears to be an accepted form of our Genre these days. Is our collective conscience so scrambled that we need to slam our neighbors, brothers and sisters to get ahead?.

IS 456 Class I

Three Stories each week, totalling 500 words is Al's requirement. At the end of 10 classes this should achieve a letter grade equal to an A in lieu of Exams. Each story will contain 167 words more or less, and the three stories will through the magic of writing and presentation styles tie in to form a whole. If I learned anything from Larry Lessig, his ideas on UGC (user generated content) and how he ties 3 stories to make one argument, then this should be smooth sailing. Sounds simple but the math works as follows. 3 hours of watching Al's class + 2 hours of reading the material he suggests each week (this week it is 7 papers and 2 ppt's) + 1 hour to compile and write this blog will equal 60 hours of effort for this course.

Story 1: Readings for the week: I narrowed in on Steve Job's Stay Hungry - Stay Foolish, commencement speech and was pleasantly surprised that he still pays homage to Lessig in his style of presentation. Did not know he had cancer and recovered among other things. Pollard and his future of KM, came across as a depressing article, he should really style his presentation on Lessig as Jobs did. May be then his stories will connect better. The Knova white paper - 10 Principle for KM, like most folks who write about this subject make KM appear to be everything and a mystery. In this day an age of transparency and connecting with the masses, I wish folks would stop doing this particularly in white papers. Here is how the author describes KM in the starting paragraph: "depending upon the nature of the initiative. KM, as we all know, is not a technology or a set of methodologies…". The author (Tom Tobin) then goes on to list 10 principles of KM, which increases the mystery 10 fold and ends up subscribing to Pollard's doomsday vision of KM. The fourth reading "Performance management" by Cognos's Doug Barton (IBM bought them out), talks about CPM, but fails to define the acronym anywhere in the material. Doug starts out by saying that CPM is financial performance management, but then goes on to talk about everything else, so I came away wondering. The fifth reading "One more time what is KM" by Harris and Berg, talked about Tacit and explicit Knowledge, which caught my eye and appears to be a recurring theme in other papers I read, I took this one step further applied my scant datamining skills and googled "tacit and explicit" + Knowledge and got 38400 hits. This has to be an important concept, I am sure by the end of this course, this concept will rise to the top. I did a word frequency check on Casanato's "Glossary of terms" and got a score of 8 for TACIT and 10 for the term EXPLICIT. I love finding patterns using heuristic word frequency!!. The final reading "Building KM systems" by Bowman, is a well written paper that gets into data mining techniques and structure of knowledge repositories. In his conclusion he talks about the measuring the return of KM systems and the lack of approaches thereof. May be we should design systems with "measuring the return" as a key criterion, we might be in a less of a mess if we did perhaps. I will end with that thought for my first story.

Story 2: Class Notes: The Second Story: What I gained from Class this week. This being the first class, the focus was mostly on an overview, ground rules and who is Al. Did not know that Al is going in for his Juris Doctorate. I am told that on a PhD tract one has to write 1000 words a day, far cry from the 500 words a week that this blog will generate for the next 10 weeks. If in some small way I can contribute to that 1000 words, may be this blog will achieve a higher purpose. So Al, this one is toward your Juris Doctorate: Larry Lessig is the Key!! Beyond that, this course is about KM themes such as: KM Technologies, Diagnosing/Solving Knowledge problems, KM best practices, PKM, BPM/BRM (hot and new) and Knowledge Based systems.

Parting Shot for this week: BPM and BRM will be explored in detail, where in we will learn to document Informal systems using the "Swim Lane Diagram" that depicts work flow.

Story 3: Conclusion:
This is a discussion/Learning course about Data/Information/Knowledge/Wisdom by exploring 7 THEMES over a 10 week period. One view point to describe KM is to look at it as data stored in a database: Data is stored in Fields, Information is stored in Records and Knowledge is the pattern(s) that can be discovered across tables and data sets. Everything can be looked at as a Knowledge Problem if you wear the right glasses/lenses!!. Stay Hungry - Stay Foolish, and I will get there.



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