Knowledge Management In A Service Organisation
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Lucid IT has grown from a small consulting firm to a leading IT management organization over 8 years. They implemented a knowledge management system incrementally as the company grew to address the costs of not capturing knowledge and risks of inconsistent practices. Their current system includes communities of practice, knowledge managers, and tools like Groove and SharePoint to facilitate knowledge sharing across a dispersed workforce. Going forward, Lucid IT aims to extend knowledge management to customers and partners and better measure its impact.
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Knowledge Management In A Service Organisation
- 1. Knowledge Management in a Service Organisation Patrick Keogh Knowledge and Innovation Manager, Lucid IT © Copyright 2009 Lucid IT. All rights reserved
- 2. Agenda Some background Where we have been What we did Where we are going Some lessons
- 3. Background In eight years Lucid IT has grown from nothing to being a leading IT Management consulting and training organisation. From the very beginning we knew the value of KM and have incrementally improved our approach. It has grown as we have grown!
- 4. Why Do Knowledge Management? The Lucid IT KM value proposition Costs of not doing KM Risks from not doing KM Benefits of KM Costs of KM
- 5. Costs of not doing KM Bringing new employees up to speed Reinventing the wheel in consulting engagements Errors leading to rework Reduced customer satisfaction
- 6. Risks of not doing KM Risk of inconsistent style and quality Reduced efficiency could make our services uncompetitive Harder to adapt our service catalogue to changing requirements
- 7. Benefits of KM Enable more rapid growth and change Capitalise the experience of our best people and use it to develop all our people Support our distributed workforce More efficient service delivery Increased staff retention (they can see the value)
- 8. Costs of doing KM Time to lead and manage Tools Time to learn and contribute
- 9. THE JOURNEY SO FAR
- 10. The early days Handful of experienced consultants You knew what everybody was doing You knew the individual strengths of everybody We could all meet around a kitchen table – and we did! KM through stories No formal process or tools Starting to accumulate valuable IP but not managing it Big win #1
- 11. We started to grow and to disperse Knew the value of the “Lucid IT family” Continued to meet face to face Knew the value of our IP Developed a project-based repository for IP Knew the value of KM Each consultant’s compensation has a part for KM But cracks started to appear… Release management for our training materials Consultants not aware of existing IP from other locations Lesson: Our earlier intuitive approach was not going to be sufficient as we grew further – we needed level 2 maturity.
- 12. … so we responded Acquired tools to make sharing of IP easier, and moved to a subject matter based repository Acquired a mobile phone service where calls to each other are “free” Implemented a teleconferencing facility and encouraged its use Ensured that all employees had internet access Instituted regular location meetings with a semi-social emphasis Formalised our face-to-face meetings as “knowledge days”
- 13. Our #1 tool Groove (now part of Microsoft Office) On each consultant’s laptop All of the “must have” IP such as training materials Paid for itself many times over Big win #2
- 14. Groove Strengths Automatic peer to peer replication – Internet-savvy Always available (workspaces automatically updated on each user’s laptop) Centralised backup Secure Rich toolset (file repository, discussion groups, simple project management, IM…) Great for ad-hoc and unstructured Weaknesses NO searching NO management reporting
- 15. We did some things right in implementation “ No Work Zone” non threatening introduction to the tool social discussion, family photos etc. It is compulsory (eg. you have to open Groove to teach ITIL Foundation Certificate) Gave individuals control: What information they can see Ability to create workspaces for ad-hoc sharing, projects etc.
- 16. Lucid IT Knowledge Days Twice a year for two days Bring ALL employees together Balance of formal and informal sessions Social events Dinners, drinks and lots of fun Lots of story telling Defines in part who we are Capture information for later sharing Costs real money but we understand the value
- 17. … and then we grew some more More people, more locations, more diverse portfolio: Expansion in IT Governance, PPM, ITSM, IT Strategy… nobody knows it all Expansion into Asia and New Zealand ITIL V3 Showed up deficiencies in our tools and process Process ownership a “spare time” role Lots of IP but hard to extract the best bits Even finding the “expert” became hard Difficult to measure and reward the right behaviours Conflict between short term and long term Lesson: Time for some formalism – we needed level 3 maturity
- 18. … so once again we have responded! Reinforced importance of KM to leadership and defined our vision and strategy Appointed Knowledge and Innovation Manager Established Communities of Practice Updated toolset and IP lifecycle processes Starting to integrate KM with other key processes Service Delivery Service Portfolio Management
- 19. Knowledge and Innovation Manager 50% job role >1% of our workforce Process owner for Knowledge Management process Process owner for Service Portfolio Management process
- 20. Communities of Practice Examples IT Service design, transition and operation IT Strategy and governance Project and programme management Each COP has a leader (a part time role)
- 21. The COP Leaders Genuine expert on the subject Focal point for management of IP “ The person you ask” Responsible for creating and maintaining knowledge Driving internal awareness, contributing to training Identifying gaps Explicitly measured, goaled and rewarded on KM performance
- 22. Updated toolset Implemented SharePoint to complement Groove Most useful for large amounts of fairly static IP Good searching and adequate document management Could replace Groove in future Using SharePoint workflows for document lifecycle Better reporting on IP creation and use
- 23. What’s next? Extend KM to our customers and partners Disintermediate access to our knowledge where appropriate Use “Web 2.0” concepts (we already have a presence in LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, Wikis, Second Life, Twitter, Skype and others) Integrate knowledge from our customers and partners Extend our Communities of Practice Get better at capturing implicit knowledge (webinars, video and audio capture etc.) More extensive use of metadata to build knowledge around our IP Better measurement of the process
- 24. Lessons KM always WIP 4Ps (not really a lesson) Management commitment (not really a lesson) Don’t be afraid to try things … some things that we have tried didn’t work Plenty of cheap or free tools out there, the trick is to find the ones that fit your organisation KM can make a critical difference to the organisation