Implementation Guide

DRAFT – May 2006

By ALP Class of 2006

Duane Bernard
Kate Mazzara
Olu Okunola
Jawad Paracha
Melinda Peters
Don Sparklin
Jeff Withee
Table of Contents

Knowledge Management Overview 3

Strategies and Tools for Successful Implementation 3

People Component 4

Process Component 4

KM Process Implementation Guidelines 5

Knowledge Assessment 5

Communities of Practice (CoP) 9

Knowledge Mapping 12

Knowledge Capture 15

Process Documentation 18
Knowledge Management (KM) Abstract

This implementation guide provides procedures on how to start a local KM Program that
will support the overall mission of the State Highway Administration (SHA).

SHA is quickly losing many of its most experienced and knowledgeable employees as a
result of staff turnover due to retirement, retention issues, staff shortages due to hiring
freezes, PIN losses, and budgetary constraints. As a result, many SHA offices are losing
their most valuable asset, knowledge.

KM at SHA means the systematic approach of identifying, capturing, managing and

sharing explicit and tacit information to support its mission. In order to address this
knowledge loss and simultaneously achieve its mission, SHA have committed to instituting
KM organization wide.

The goal is to develop a cohesive and coherent KM framework that retains knowledge
at SHA, supports the various Performance Excellence initiatives, improves its business
processes, empowers, supports and encourages SHA people to deliver excellent
customer service.

It is important to recognize that some of the key elements needed to create an

environment which stimulates creation, sharing, and uses of KM at SHA are:

1. Getting leadership support and identifying champions

2. Making KM part of the SHA’s vision and business plan
3. Allocating resources (KM staff, IT support, and budget)
4. Providing incentives (employee recognition; personal, technical and
leadership development plans; and performance appraisals)
5. Creating a clear, tangible picture of the benefits of KM
6. Identifying motivating factors to influence others to support KM initiatives

Strategies and Tools for Successful Implementation

KM consists of three fundamental components: people, processes, and technology; it

focuses on:
1. People and organizational culture to stimulate and nurture the sharing and
use of knowledge
2. Processes or methods to find, create, capture, and share knowledge
3. Technology to store and make knowledge accessible.

It is important to note that this Implementation Guide does not address the Information
Technology (IT) support that each local KM Program may need. The leader/initiator of
such local KM program will consult with SHA’s IT office to develop a set of solutions that
will meet their program’s needs, until the formal IT system through out SHA is
implemented as part of the full KM implementation at SHA.
People Component

Leadership Demonstration: Managers and leaders need to understand the benefits of

KM. They need to provide continuous support for this
philosophy through their policies and actions.

Business Plan Integration: Specific KM activities must be integrated into the SHA and
local business plans at the Strategy and Action Plan level.
KM activities should be used as a method to achieve Goals
or Objectives.

Staff Allocation: Managers will be called upon to assign their staff to spend
time away from production tasks to participate in KM
activities.

Education and Training: As employees are first involved in KM activities, a small

amount of time should be spent reviewing the goals and
the anticipated outcome of KM activities (in general) and
their specific involvement.

Funding Source: A dedicated budget should be established for the KM

team to perform their duties. This funding would be
budgeted from administrative sources similar to the current
Performance Excellence funds.

Employee Incentives: Through praise, recognition, work plans or annual

appraisals, all staff needs to be shown a clear link between
their involvement and support for KM and their overall
performance.

KM Process Implementation Guidelines

This guide should serve as a roadmap on how to execute a specific KM activity. These
steps are not necessarily in chronological order, but it is advisable the KM team initiating
this process devise action plans in the order that best suit their needs.

KM Activity: Knowledge Assessment/Audit

Background: This is a means of assessing how effectively an organization

captures, manages, and transfers knowledge to support
key business processes and objectives.

Results of this assessment should assist in developing

appropriate polices and investments to align knowledge
management goals with business objectives.

There are seven (7) areas that are critical in the assessment
of an organization’s KM program effectiveness: Leadership,
Education and Training, Information Infrastructure,
 Collaborative Process, Social Network, Performance
Measures and Customer Service.

Resources Needed: Leadership Support, Facilitator, Knowledge Assessor

Suggested Procedure:
Approaches taken to collating this information include
questionnaire-based surveys, interviews and facilitated
group discussions, or a combination of these. In this
instance, surveys are quick tools that can jump-start your
knowledge management assessment.

It is suggested that the response to survey questions be rate

from 1-5. A score of 5 represents the ideal and 1 the lowest.

Below are some questions that will aid in developing the

survey:
Leadership Assessment
111... Is there a culture that encourages of knowledge
sharing?

222... Are incentives in place that encourage knowledge

sharing?

333... How would you rate organizational response to an

evolving business environment?

444... Is there fluid communication within the organizational

structure?

555... Is there a climate within the organization that fosters

and encourages an informal flow and sharing of best
practices?

Education and Training

Assessment
In order to assess the education and training levels of the
organization, one needs to know the learning needs and
competencies of the knowledge participants.

666... Does coaching help meet individual goals and

objectives?

777... Are individual professional development plans tailored

to meet the organization’s business objectives?

888... Does peer-to-peer advisory in your office assist in

quicker decision making?

999... Is training in line in with the challenges you face in your

day-to-day work?
 111000... Does your office have the knowledge needed to solve
problems quickly?

Information Infrastructure
Assessment
111111... How convenient is it for you to find the information and
knowledge needed to make decisions?

111222... Are useful sources of information and knowledge

frequently stumbled across by accident?

111333... How well can you to connect with people to share

knowledge?

111444... Is information obtained often found to be up to date?

111555... Do you have information you use frequently readily

available?

Collaborative Process
Assessment
111666... Is there an effective vehicle for developing, sharing
and managing specialist knowledge within your office
and other departments?

111777... How often are offices and/or individuals producing

excellent results readily identified within the
organization?

111888... To what extent is value placed in connecting people

with each other to engage in ‘live’ discussions of
business objectives and delivery of products and
services?

111999... How often findings from research, development and

sharing of new knowledge making their way into
practice quickly enough?

Social Network
Assessment This assesses relationships between people in order to
identify knowledge flows: who do people seek information
and knowledge from, and who do they share their
information and knowledge with.

222000... How well do you know your colleagues knowledge and

skills?
222111... How often do you seek information from other offices to
solve problems?

222222... How often do you solve problems with knowledge

generated within your office?
 222333... Does an individual (not necessarily a supervisor or
manager) within your office provide knowledge that
helps in problem solving?

222444... Is knowledge readily shared within your office or

organization?

Performance Measures
Assessment
This assesses and measures organizational knowledge
management performance with the aim to help it to
achieve its business plan objectives. The approach is to link
this measurement with the organization’s overall
performance measurement systems.

222555... Does your office and organization have knowledge

management goals that are concrete and sufficiently
clear?

222666... To what extent does information sharing affect your

ability to meet individual goals and objectives?

222777... To what extent does information sharing affect the

ability to meet your organization’s goals and
objectives?

222888... What is your confidence level in delivering on your

business objectives in a timely manner?

Customer Service
Assessment
There is only one way to measure customer perceived
value--ask the customer! Assessment should focus on how
the organization interacts and deliver products and
services to its customers, internal and external.

222999... Are the products and services requested delivered in a

timely manner?

333000... Are resolutions to inquiries readily available?

333111... Is the organization knowledgeable about the inquiries

often requested?

Results and Reporting:

The above is a self-assessment of the key components that

a KM program should have. The answers should be rated
on a graduated scale. Each component assessment score
can be averaged and used to indicate aspects of the
overall knowledge assessment.
 Average
Knowledge
Knowledge Suggested Knowledge
Assessment
Assessment Management Solutions
Criteria
Rating
Leadership < 4.00 Education

Education & Training SHA University, Coaching, Process

< 3.75
Documentation, Knowledge Capture
Information Liaise with Information Technology
Infrastructure <3.50
Department
Collaborative Process Community of Practice; Process
<4.00
Documentation

Social Network <3.75 Knowledge Mapping

Performance Measures
<3.75 Business Plan objectives and goals

Customer Service <4.00 Business Plan objectives and goals

The intent of these scores is to indicate the extent

these knowledge management solutions should be
implemented.
KM Activity: Community of Practice (CoP)

Background: CoPs are groups that meet periodically to

discuss a particular work area’s or activity and the best
practices and lessons learned. These are organized sessions
with prepared agendas, presentations and discussions that
are facilitated with the intent of sharing knowledge to build
expertise and solve problems.

Resources Needed: Leadership Support, IT Support, Executive Sponsor,

Facilitator, Content Managers/Coordinators,
Recorder/Reporters

Suggested Procedure:

Process Development
1. Clearly define the goal(s), scope and core activities of
this community.

2. Identify the Leadership of the community.

3. Establish and develop policies and guidelines for the

governance and membership of this community.

4. Select CoP’s leadership and core members. The core

members could be selected with the aid of knowledge
mapping.

People Component
5. Define the roles and responsibility of each member.
Suggested roles and responsibilities are:

a. Executive Sponsor: Nurtures and provides top-

level recognition for the CoP while ensuring its
exposure, support and strategic importance to
the organization.

b. Facilitator: Provides the overall guidance and

management needed to build and maintain
the CoP, its relevance, strategic importance to
the organization and its level of visibility among
stakeholders.

c. Content Manager: Searches, retrieves and

responds to direct requests for the CoP’s
knowledge and content.

d. Events Coordinator: Coordinates, organizes and

plans community events and activities.

e. Reporter/Recorder: Identifies captures and

edits, at a minimum:
 • Relevant knowledge
• Best practices
• New approaches
• Lessons learned into documents
• Problem discussions

6. Community Leaders should develop a set of operating

plans: Events plan, Marketing and Communication
plan, Education and Skills plan, and an Advisory
Services plan

Content Development
7. Identify potential content and format of CoP
documents.

8. Develop standard of how CoP activities will be

documented. For example, the agenda and meeting
minutes for the community should have a basic format
– see suggested form on page

9. Develop Taxonomy and method of organizing

materials.

Technology Component
10. Liaise with IT to develop and deploy a system that will
both support the storage of CoP’s data and the easy
information retrieval of the community’s documents
and members:

a. Intranet site for the CoP can include a directory of

its members, meeting agendas and minutes,
calendar of upcoming events and a discussion
area.

b. Develop sites for individual members that highlight

areas of expertise, project history and other
information pertinent to the goals of the CoP.

Results and Reporting:

Performance Measures
1. Number of hits/hits per member to web site

2. Duration of each session

3. Messages posted to and read using CoP. This can also

be used to obtain user feedback.

4. Number of documents uploaded/downloaded

Impact Measures:
5. Soft measures (anecdotal success stories, user surveys)

6. Hard measures (monetarized benefits)

Stages of CoP Implementation

1 2 3 4
Process Developed Developed Constructed Implemented
strategy performance processes CoP and
metrics and and measuring
operating developed performance
processes supporting
materials
People and Identified Engaged key Identified and Regular
Culture leadership, stakeholders engaged outreach and
exec sponsor and recruited potential interaction
and core CoP staff membership with
group membership

Content Identified Develop Collected Actively

potential taxonomy and maintaining
content and method catalogued and update
of organizing content content
materials

Technology No Conducted Designing Operating

and Systems technology – requirements and technology --
considering analysis/ implementing full
product selecting technology functionality
technology implemented
KM Activity: Knowledge Mapping

Background: The purpose of knowledge mapping is to identify what

knowledge is needed and where it can be found. It helps
to discover the location, ownership, value and use of
“knowledge artifacts”, learn the roles and expertise of
people, identify constraints to the flow of knowledge, and
highlight opportunities to leverage existing knowledge.

The “knowledge map” is to identify the knowledge and

how it should be managed.

Resources Needed: Leadership Support, IT Support, Executive Sponsor,

Facilitator, Content Managers/Coordinators,
Recorder/Reporters

Suggested Procedure:

Process Development
1. Identify the facilitator of this activity.

2. Identify subject office or technical area to conduct this

activity on.

Information Collection
3. Conduct interviews and ask targeted questions:

a. What type of knowledge is needed to do your

work?

b. Who provides it, where do you get it, how does

it arrive?

c. What do you do, how do you add value, and

what are the critical issues?

d. What happens when you are finished?

e. How can the knowledge flow be improved,

what is preventing you from doing more, better,
faster?

f. What would make your work easier?

g. Who do you go to when there is a problem?

4. Observe the day-to-day activities in progress. The aim is

to understand:
 a. Location, ownership, validity, timeliness,
domain, sensitivity, storage medium, use
statistics, medium and channels used in
accessing knowledge.

b. Documents, files, systems, policies, directories,

competencies, relationships and authorities
influence knowledge dissemination.

c. Boundary objects, knowledge artifacts, stories,

heuristics, patterns, events, practices, activities
and flows

d. Explicit and tacit knowledge which is closely

linked to strategic drivers, core competencies
and market intelligence

e. Documented and the informal practice,

policies, culture, bottlenecks, and knowledge
repositories.

5. Track the boundary objects:

a. Cross functional group of people that crosses
organizational boundaries.

6. Gather policy documents, organizational charts, and

process documentation.

7. Focus on formal and informal gatherings,

communication and activities.

Results and Reporting:

Compile Expertise Directory

1. Register of boundary objects, templates, promising
heuristics and best practices.

2. Construct proto-ontology, explore re-use opportunities,

look for learning points, and identify natural knowledge
stewards, gatekeepers, isolated islands, narrow
communication channels and informal communities.
Knowledge Map
3. Map flows, sequences, dependencies, and personal
relationships.

4. Check for network patterns, critical nodes, high traffic,

and highly valuable information.

Performance Measures
5. Measures and metrics need to be developed to track
the validity and effectiveness of the knowledge map
by:
 a. Number of hits/hits per knowledge node site.

b. Number of requests or queries to a knowledge

node.

Other Information

Knowledge Mapping A CoP needs to understand not only who and where
within a CoP experts are, but also how knowledge typically flows
through human channels in the organization. A CoP should
consider performing knowledge mapping or social
networking analysis to understand the flow, bottlenecks,
and critical roles that enable the communication and
knowledge exchange processes (e.g., boundary spanner,
broker). A CoP should then organize business processes
and KM solutions around this natural knowledge flow.
KM Activity: Knowledge Capture

Background: This is a process of capturing tacit knowledge at its source,

usually one’s head, and disseminated to those who will be
interested and affected by this knowledge.

In order to have a meaningful sharing of knowledge

captured, there has to be a interview or discussion that will
extract the provider’s tacit knowledge and converts it in
one that becomes explicit.

Effective knowledge acquisition or capturing project may

also require taking experts off the job for short time periods,
allowing non-experts to understand the knowledge, and
allow knowledge to be collated from different experts.

Resources Needed: Leadership Support, IT Support, Knowledge Provider,

Facilitator, Content Managers/Coordinators,
Recorder/Reporters

Suggested Procedure:
1. Identify Knowledge Provider with the aid of knowledge
mapping

2. Define roles and responsibilities of the Facilitator,

Knowledge Provider and other participants.
Capturing the Content
3. Conduct an initial interview with the provider in order
to:

a. Scope what knowledge needs to be acquired.

b. Determine what purpose the knowledge is to

be put.

c. Gain some understanding of key terminology.

d. Build a rapport with the provider.

e. This interview (as with all sessions with provider)

should be recorded on video-type format.

4. Transcribe the initial interview and analyze the resulting

protocol.

5. Develop a framework of how the knowledge

acquisition should proceed prior to formally engaging
the provider.

a. Create a concept ladder of the resulting

knowledge to provide a broad representation
of the knowledge that might be available.
 b. Use the ladder to produce a set of questions
which cover the essential issues across the
domain and which serve the goals of the
knowledge acquisition project.

c. Consider engaging peers of the provider to vet

these sets of questions to be posed to the
provider.

d. Conduct a semi-structured interview with the

provider using the pre-prepared questions to
provide structure and focus.
Creating the Content
6. Transcribe the semi-structured interview and analyze
the resulting protocol for the knowledge types present -
these would be concepts, attributes, values,
relationships, tasks and rules.

7. Represent these knowledge elements using the most

appropriate knowledge models, e.g. ladders, grids,
network diagrams, hypertext, etc.

8. Document anecdotes, illustrations and explanations in

a structured manner.

9. Allow the provider to modify and expand on the

knowledge already captured by utilizing the most
appropriate knowledge models.

10. Repeat the analysis, model building and acquisition

sessions until the provider and the facilitator and other
stakeholders are content that the goals of the
knowledge capture have been realized.

11. Validate the knowledge acquired with other experts,

and make modifications where necessary.

Results and Reporting:

12. Determine what content and elements of knowledge
captured should be catalogued.

a. Catalogue contents and elements with

summaries, titles, background etc.

13. Consult with IT Support and develop method of

disseminating captured content via Intranet sites or
other medium for ease of retrieval.
Performance Measures

14. Measures and metrics need to be developed to track

the validity and effectiveness of the knowledge map
by:

a. Number of hits/hits per knowledge node site.

b. Number of requests or queries to a knowledge

node.

c. Time saved in product development/regulatory

process by utilizing captured knowledge.

Other Information: This re-use of knowledge is the essence of making the

knowledge acquisition process as efficient and effective as
possible. This is an evolving process. Hence, as more
knowledge is gathered and abstracted to produce
generic knowledge, the whole process becomes more
efficient.

It is important to be aware of potential issues that might be

encountered during interviewing:
1. Response bias.

2. Inconsistency.

3. Problem with communication.

4. Hostile attitude.

5. Standardizing the questions.

6. Setting the length of the interview.

7. Process of ending the interview.

8. The end of the session should be carefully planned.

The facilitator can halt the questioning a few minutes

before the scheduled ending time, and to summarize the
key points of the session. This allows the expert to comment
a schedule a future session. Many verbal/nonverbal cues
can be used for ending the interview.
KM Activity: Process Documentation

Background: This is a tool that helps understand prescribed actions and

identify the set of expedited efforts needed to establish
organization standards such as policies, processes,
standard operating procedures, templates, checklists and
guidelines.

Documenting and understanding of a process, related

controls, and key roles and responsibilities can be
achieved through process narratives and flow charts.

Resources Needed: Leadership Support, IT Support, Facilitator, Coordinators,

Recorder/Reporters

Suggested Procedure:
1. Reviewing policy and procedure manuals.

222... Discussing the process with key employees through

inquiry.

333... Performing a process walk through of sub-processes

using samples, etc.

444... Consider key inputs and outputs to a process.

555... Lines of responsibility for individual employee and how it

fits into departmental roles.

666... Develop a mechanism to check that required

documentation is done such as a checklist.

Results and Reporting:

Documentation
777... Organize, describe, and graphically depict the results
obtained.

a. Develop process narratives and flow diagrams to

accurately represent how work is actually
performed.

b. Process flowcharts should be designed to assist the

analysis of processing risks and related controls.

i. Is there a defined start symbol (either start or

connector from another map)?

ii. Does the map have a legend that describes

the various shapes in the map?

iii. Does each shape (process) describe:

 • Who is performing the action?

• What action are they performing?

• When are they performing the

action?

• Where is the action being

performed?

iv. Does the map indicate inputs, outputs for

each activity?

v. Is the input/output specifically identified?

vi. Does the process end at the end of the

map?

• Is there a defined end symbol?

• Is the next process connector on

the map instead of an end
symbol?

c. Are there any estimates or assumptions in the

process?

d. Is the methodology explained/documented in the

narrative?

e. Have controls been documented where they

occur?
Performance Measures
888... Develop measures of process documentation quality
and usefulness:

a. Obtain feedback from organizational unit of

perception of usefulness of documents used.

b. Develop tracking of documentation errors and

problem reports to solutions.

Other Information: These documentation techniques do not test the

effectiveness of controls and content of the flowchart, it
should promote an agreed framework of how a process is
performed, who performs specific duties (roles and
responsibilities), and assertions about control activities.
Process Improvement measures can be undertaken with
the aid of other tools such as Malcolm Baldridge self
assessment etc.