Building better teams

Kimball Fisher and Mareen Duncan Fisher write about Wellness Practices for Teams. They outline nine key approaches to building and maintaining effective teams:

1. Create a team charter
2. Set goals and measure results
3. Develop operating guidelines
4. Define team member roles and responsibilities
5. Develop feedback skills
6. Learn to manage conflict
7. Develop good group decision-making processes
8. Integrate new team members effectively
9. Develop a team training discipline

Posted by jamesr at 11:48 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Call centre measures

Melissa Solomon has written a very brief article on the call centre measures used by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. While this article doesn't really explore the topic, it is always interesting to see what metrics are being used in various settings.

Posted by jamesr at 11:43 AM | Permalink
Categories: Metrics & ROI

Subject Matter Experts

Learning Circuits has posted an article on Getting the Most from Your SMEs, which talks about how to manage the use of subject matter experts. While this is written from an e-learning perspective, I think it applies equally well to a range of content and knowledge management projects.

It certainly matches with my experiences in the project we did for the RTA. This involved two leading SMEs, who had taken voluntary retirement, but offered to help us out before they left. We involved them as equal members of the team, and they provided us with a huge amount of information and insight.

Posted by jamesr at 11:34 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

History of a health intranet

Just got back from the initial meeting with the Area Health Service. I spent most of the day finding out more about the history of their intranet, the challenges of their culture, and their future plans.

Overall, I was very impressed with how far they had managed to get, considering that they have had essentially no budget, and the intranet is just one year old (next week).

The intranet was initially created by a single person within Public Affairs, and there are now just two staff dedicated to managing the entire system. They have implemented a simple distributed approach, with each department or group using Dreamweaver to create and publish their pages.

This in itself is far from exciting. What really caught my attention was their recognition of the non-technical aspects of the intranet. This is a small selection of the what they have implemented:

• Built interest in the intranet in a low-key way, through presentations and talks.
• Trained users in how to use a web browser, and provided extensive phone support.
• Trained authors in how to create pages.
• Encouraged everyone to contact them directly if they had any questions or problems.
• Built a momentum, so that departments are now approaching the team asking to be added to the intranet.
• Sent out a "what's new on the intranet" e-mail every two weeks.
• Ensured that that there are frequent references to the intranet in the various newsletters that are published.
• In short, marketed the intranet extensively.
• Developed a "contributor's kit" to help new departments get up to speed. This includes a corporate style guide, detailed instructions on how to use the authoring tools, and guidelines for good writing style.
• Publicised the intranet via corporate letterheads, newsletters, e-mails and groups.
• Encouraged each department to conduct similar marketing efforts for their own subsites.
• Established a "web interest group" of all the various contributors and webmasters. This is a "community of practice", where they share best practice, obtain feedback on new designs, and learn techniques.
• Developed a standard template, structure and appearance across the entire intranet. Enforced this, despite the decentralised manual authoring.

And this is just the selection of their activities that springs to mind. They have done amazing things to turn around a very change-resistant culture, and to develop a large and structured intranet.

Of course, there are plenty of issues outstanding, and that is what we will be exploring during the next month.

Posted by jamesr at 09:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Area Health Service project, Intranets, Knowledge management

Tutorial preparations finished

Phew! Just finished all the preparations for my half-day tutorial session on online usability techniques. I had a flash of inspiration on Saturday, and I think I've come up with something that is both useful and interesting.

The idea is to have the participants focus on their own websites, and in pairs, work out (amongst other things):

• business goals for the site
• sample user persona
• usability testing tasks
• stakeholders for the site

That way, at the end of the day, they can go home (hopefully) enthused about usability, with a list of starting points on how to apply it to their own site.

It's not too late to attend, so you might want to visit the Open Publish 2002 site.

Tomorrow, I'm off to the first meeting on a new project. This is with an area health service, evaluating their current intranet and corporate websites. This is a huge organisation (9000 staff; 15 hospitals; 62 health centres; plus more), and it looks to be an interesting project.

We'll be determining business goals, doing usability reviews, conducting usability tests, holding stakeholder interviews, and doing some information architecture work (card sorting). I'll try and post something when I return tomorrow night.

Posted by jamesr at 06:17 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Weblogs for journalists

Steve Outing has written a pretty in-depth article on how to put weblogs to work in your newsroom. This presents weblogs from a journalist's viewpoint, and describes how they can be used to enhance the news media, and to make more money (of course).

I particularly like the breakdown of weblogs into the following categories:

• The basic weblog
• The group weblog
• Family and friends weblogs
• Collaborative weblogs
• Photo weblogs, video, audio, and cartoon weblogs
• Community weblogs
• Business/corporate/advertising weblogs
• Knowledge base weblogs or 'k-logs' (intranets)

Posted by jamesr at 04:52 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

KM Asia 2002 Report

Maish Nichani from elearningpost writes an excellent report on his views on the recent KM Asia 2002 conference.

Unfortunately, I couldn't make this conference, but it is always great to read articles like this one that give a sense of the event, and on the broad directions in the industry.

Posted by jamesr at 04:42 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Phone directory first; CMS second

When in Canberra this week, we talked about CMS implementation issues. The same problem arose that has existed for all my other clients, with the potential to make the CMS very difficult to implement.

Here's the issue:

Before starting to develop a CMS solution, you need to deploy a fully-functional staff phone directory ("whitepages"). This should have the following features:

• Provides standard contact information: name, phone number, e-mail address, etc.
• Records which department and team each staff person belongs to.
• Identifies each staff person's job role.
• Records the relationships between staff (such as "reports to", or "managed by", etc)
• Accurate and up-to-date.
• Maintained by the HR department, or in-sync with their database.
• Ideally allows users to update their own details.
• Details are sourced from an open repository (such as LDAP).

Why is this a requirement for a content management system? A workable enterprise-wide CMS must provide functionality such as:

• Always accurate user profile information (who can login).
• Comprehensive security records (what they can do).
• Workflow system that automatically routes to the relevant manager.
• Personalisation for end users.
• Role-based (not person-based) ownership of pages.
• Ability to route feedback message to the relevant role or group.
• Single sign-on, across authoring, administration and viewing interfaces.

All of this assumes that there is a single source of accurate staff information within the organisation. Thus the requirement for a staff whitepages.

Unfortunately, very few organisations have taken the time to implement such a solution, typically due to organisational politics, or system incompatibilities.

My statement remains: don't start a CMS until you've got a proper staff whitepages. Without this in place, you will find it very hard to create a complete, and workable CMS solution.

Posted by jamesr at 06:27 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

Personas and scenarios

Donna Maurer has written a very practical blog entry on using personas and scenarios. To quote Donna:

These were so powerful! It is amazing how much extra information stories can give. With a requirements list, I knew we would end up arguing about why particular things were important. However, once it is in story form, it is simple to see why a requirement is important, because the requirements, user skills and goals are all wrapped neatly together.

Posted by jamesr at 11:39 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Authoring options

Following on from my work with the government department yesterday, I've just sent through my summary of the day, and my recommendations.

Looking at the options for authoring, these were my high-level recommendations:

• Develop a range of authoring tools, matched to the specific needs of the content, audience and authors.
• No single authoring tool will meet all needs, without considerably compromising the quality and maintainability of the intraweb.
• A long list of potential document types have already been identified. Examine each of these in turn, against the following criteria:

  nature of the content
  (length; degree of structure; formatting and layout needs; etc)

  usage
  (who are the readers; how will it be searched; publishing formats; etc)

  authors
  (number of authors; level of skill; writing ability; etc)

• When the criteria have been identified for each document type, determine an appropriate authoring tool.
• Follow these general guidelines:

  Capture only as much structure as will be needed.

  The greater the number of authors, the simpler the authoring tool.

  Ensure the authoring environments are in sync with the information architecture of the site.

• Looking at some of the common content types, the following recommendations can be made:

  News, FAQs --- develop a simple online form-based authoring tool, with limited (if any) formatting capability.

  Most web pages --- custom develop a more powerful form-based authoring tool, incorporating a ‘rich’ editing environment that supports paragraph styles, and limited formatting.

  Complex web pages --- it may be simplest to directly create the HTML for these.

  Business documents (agenda, minutes, etc) --- implement either an import facility, or store the Word documents directly in an online repository.

  Complex manuals (policies & procedures, etc) --- use an XML editor (such as XMetal) to capture the full structure of the content.

Hmm, I sense the beginning of another whitepaper here. What are your thoughts on these recommendations?

Posted by jamesr at 03:45 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Ontologies

Deborah L. McGuinness has written a very thorough article on ontologies, in relation to building the current, and next, generation of websites.

I haven't had time to do more than glance at the paper, but it would seem to cover everything you might want to know, and more.

Posted by jamesr at 03:30 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Simple HTML prototyping

I've stumbled across a lovely little paper which outlines Using HTML for Early UI Prototyping. This consists of five distinct steps:

1. Address Issues of Provided Functionality and Content
2. Break Content into Screens
3. Address Issues of Screen Flow
4. Address Issues of Presentation
5. Gather Metrics and Feedback from More Evaluators

I think I'll give this a try on my next project...

Posted by jamesr at 03:20 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Indexing websites

Fred Leise has written an article titled Improving Usability with a Website Index. It walks through what an online index actually is, and gives some points on how to create one.

In both the NRMA and RTA projects, we created an online "back-of-the-book" index. At the NRMA in particular, this is the primary way users find the required information.

It's not an easy design task, particularly when there are 20,000 pages of information to index. I can't say we've found the perfect solution, but the RTA project gave us the chance to further refine the design, which was good.

All in all, I would strongly recommend that every content repository have an index interface, in addition to full-text search. Train your users on how to use it, and they will love you for it.

[Thanks to the ia/ weblog.]

Posted by jamesr at 12:35 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Walking before running

I've just spent the day in Canberra, doing some consultancy work for one of the government departments. With the plane flight there and back, it makes for a long day, but well worth the effort.

The organisation currently has an intranet, of sorts. It has grown organically, and is developed using Frontpage. Each group has been trained to use Frontpage, and has gone away and created themselves a little subsite. Every section of the intranet looks completely different, and all changes are made directly to the live version.

A scary system all round. Needless to say, they are looking at implementing a real content management solution. Luckily, the team working on the project is very enlightened, skilled, and understands the importance of people, processes, information design, etc.

There is a huge amount of work to do. They are so far from a functional system, and the culture is not one of information sharing. This leaves them with a lot of activities ahead of them, such as:

• Determing user and business goals
• Content analysis and audits
• Information architecture
• Interface design
• Usability testing
• Content migration
• Technical design, implementation and deployment
• Change management
• Training

And that's just the brief list.

Now, this is a pretty common story, and I think few readers will find it surprising. What I find interesting, though, is looking at this in the context of my recent KM experiences.

Now, I've been reading a lot of material, and heard a lot of talks. These have covered KM approaches such as: communities of practice, KM-centric organisations, knowledge sharing, knowledge cultures, etc. All good stuff.

However, in organisations such as the one I was working with today, they are miles away from being ready for these sorts of approaches. This is not a matter of "walking before running", more "crawling before walking"...

Before attempting to implement broad KM initiatives, it is necessary to have in place basic foundations, like a functioning intranet. Now, none of the organisations that I have worked with in the last year even have this.

So I ask: am I just dealing with backward organisations, or is there a lot of work to be done before we are ready for advanced KM approaches?

Posted by jamesr at 09:20 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

Technology Confined Collaboration?

Michael Helfrich writes that many IT collaboration systems are confining the natural human collaborative process.

I guess the answer is to both improve the technology, and recognise the importance of the actual people, and the communication process.

[Thanks to the High Context weblog.]

Posted by jamesr at 11:31 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

About the users

Donna Maurer has posted her experiences in conducting user research. Her top two "rediscoveries":

1. People don't like using the Internet
2. People don't know when one site ends and another begins.

I love these sorts of weblog entries: direct diaries of actual work, written just after the fact. It gives you some sense of actually being involved in the project itself.

Posted by jamesr at 11:12 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

More metrics in call centres

By lucky coincidence, Joel Spolsky is also talking about metrics in call centres. He gives the examples of Amazon and Gateway, and introduces the concept of "measurement disfunction".

[Thanks to Steven Vore's weblog.]

Posted by jamesr at 10:48 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

The TAO of Topic Maps

Steve Pepper has written a succinct introduction to topic maps, titled The TAO of Topic Maps. To quote Steve:

Topic maps are a new ISO standard for describing knowledge structures and associating them with information resources. As such they constitute an enabling technology for knowledge management. Dubbed “the GPS of the information universe”, topic maps are also destined to provide powerful new ways of navigating large and interconnected corpora.

I've printed off a copy, and I'm taking it home for some bed-time reading.

[Thanks to the Curiouser and curiouser! weblog.]

Posted by jamesr at 05:22 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Tog on call centers

Bruce Tognazzini (aka "Tog") has written an excellent piece about How Call Centers can Make or Break Companies. This talks about the value that a call centre call can add to the business as a whole.

Interestingly, this is exactly what I wrote yesterday, when finalising the Powerpoint presentation for my talk at IIM 2002 on "Knowledge management for call centres".

For the record, these are the six advanced KM for call centres points at the end of my presentation:

• Building 'communities of practice' within call centres
• Developing relationships between customers and the organisation
• Call centres as a strategic corporate asset
• Call centres as a source of innovation
• Incorporating call centre expertise into research and development teams
• Integrating training, usability testing and knowledge management

(For more on this topic, see my full article.)

Posted by jamesr at 03:26 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Creating reusable content

Michael Feldstein highlights that writing reusable information (content that can be written once, and used in multiple contexts) is not easy or cheap. So while it has many benefits, it needs to be approached realistically. To quote Michael:

I find it interesting that, with all the current buzz about "reusable learning objects," nobody seems to be talking about why you would want your learning to come in the form of reusable objects in the first place. I guess reusability sounds like such a good idea at first blush that, like lower taxes or prescription health benefits for the elderly, it's hard to imagine being against it.

You can find his article featured on the hompage of elearn magazine, although I don't know how much longer it will remain there.

Better yet, he has written a whole in-depth tutorial on how to write reusable content. Excellent!

Posted by jamesr at 05:06 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

What is information architecture?

Thomas Myer from IBM presents an overview of what information architecture is, and what an architect does.

This explains some misconceptions, draws a line between IA and design, and offers some practical tools. The only complaint I have about the article is that "usability" isn't mentioned anywhere. Which is odd, considering that the article is categorised under usability on the IBM site.

Posted by jamesr at 04:54 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Usability and evolution

John S. Rhodes has written a brief article that draws parallels between Evolution, Usability, and Web Design. His summary:

• Diversity is good. Encourage creative thinking. Don't let usability limit your thinking.
• Generate a lot of ideas as early as possible. Encourage competition between many designs.
• Kill off the bad ideas. Keep only the best. Let your ideas have sex; you want offspring.
• There is nothing wrong with 1% success. A high level of failure is inevitable.

Posted by jamesr at 04:41 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Users In The Development Cycle

Salvatore Palmisano talks about involving users in the development cycle. While this shouldn't be news for anyone with an interest in user-centred design, Salvatore offers some practical tips and approaches that should be useful.

Posted by jamesr at 01:39 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Getting information retrieval right

Marcia J. Bates clearly writes from considerable experience when she talks about Getting Web Information Retrieval Right This Time. Looking back on the "dot-com" mania, and the obsession with reinventing the wheel, she makes the following suggestions:

1. Use faceted classifications, rather than hierarchical.
2. Develop an understanding of what distinguishes information classifications and vocabularies from the physical-world equivalents, and stop using the misleading term "ontology."
3. Use the many vocabularies specifically designed for information retrieval, rather than general English language vocabularies.
4. Understand and work with the underlying statistical characteristics of information in designing information retrieval. Failing to understand these factors simply leads to sub-optimal systems.
5. Recognize that systems of information description are extremely size-sensitive. Design for all anticipated database size ranges from the beginning.
6. Be kind to your indexers: Design a targeted indexing-support system specifically for your human staff, and you will save much staff time.
7. If you develop a site with any information retrieval component at all, then hire information expertise.

Posted by jamesr at 01:24 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Cutting through the jargon

Gerry McGovern has written a marvelous article on demystifying content management. This exposes the needless jargon and hype in the field, and brings it back to the very simple concept of "publishing".

I'm a big fan of this approach. I don't use acronyms, and I try not to use jargon (although it can be hard to avoid). My goal is to actually communicate with my clients, not confuse them...

Posted by jamesr at 01:04 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Searching from the home page

The Sydney Morning Herald has published a story discussing the value of having a search form on the home page of a large website.

The SMH has a nasty habit of expiring articles, so in case the link stops working, here's one of the best bits:

Dr Hawking related the story of an Australian financial institution that invited Internet surfers to type a query word such as "investment" in the search- engine box. "You typed `investment' into the query box and it said `Sorry, no results found'," he says. "I think that's really bad advertising."

A recent CSIRO survey showed that about 84 per cent of university sites, 61 per cent of Federal Government agency sites, 36 per cent of IT company sites and only 20 per cent of sites for public companies provided a direct search engine link or form on their homepage.

(Side note: I live in Sydney, and I regularly read the SMH online. Pretty much every day, in fact. Yet, I somehow missed this article, and it took a reference in a US e-mail list for me to find it. The power of the internet in action...)

Posted by jamesr at 04:39 PM | Permalink
Categories: Interface design

Thanks to webword

This week, there seemed to be less interesting news happening, but I couldn't quite work out why. Well, I've just realised the cause.

John Rhodes has been on holiday this week, and WebWord has therefore been silent.

This is a peerless source of news and articles in the fields of usability, IA and web design. I find the daily e-mail version particularly useful.

Thanks John!

Posted by jamesr at 04:29 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Requirements documents as assets

Richard Salit, Ken Brown and Peter Soldwedel present the case that functional requirements documents are valuable intellectual assets. This is an interesting view, which looks at the cost of developing requirements, and the tendency for them to lose value over time.

Some good strategies are also proposed for maintaining the value of these documents, and how they can be leveraged in future projects.

[Thanks to WebWord for the link]

Posted by jamesr at 04:22 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Effective user interviews

Conducting one-on-one interviews are a standard part of many methodologies, whether it be as part of interface design, information architecture, or knowledge management. Mike Kuniavsky outlines a technique called nondirected interviews, which basically comes down to asking non-leading, open questions.

Despite the simplicity of the concept, this article presents a number of practical examples which made me think more about my interviewing skills.

[Thanks to WebWord for the link]

Posted by jamesr at 03:42 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Blogs as disruptive technology

John Hiler has written a solid article highlighting the impact that weblogs are starting to have on low-end content management systems. He uses the phrase disruptive technology. To quote John:

I realized that Content Management was starting to wrestle with what Clayton Christensen calls The Innovator's Dilemma: the inability of successful companies to adapt to a new, disruptive technology.

A thought-provoking essay, that will make the CMS vendors have second thoughts about their business models.

[Thanks to the High Context weblog]

Posted by jamesr at 11:05 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

KM seminars (Australia)

Standards Australia is running a series of seminars in Australia from July to December. There are two different half-day topics:

• Knowledge management - introductory seminar

  Introduces the terminology and principles of knowledge management, and explores the basics of a KM intiative.

• Knowledge management - advanced seminar

  Discuses advanced KM models, including communities of practice, use of narrative, social capital and complexity theory.

More information can be found on the Standards Australia site.

Posted by jamesr at 03:41 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Supreme court weblog

I've just come across a weblog for Summaries of recently issued WV Supreme Court opinions. This is the power of weblogging in action.

Why is this so exciting? Well, weblogging provides a simple mechanism for a court clerk to publish summaries, using an off-the-shelf software package (Radio), requiring little (if any) technical knowledge.

More importantly, it provides RSS feed, which would allow a (say) a law firm to trivially track new posts, and to syndicate the contents to the lawyers throughout the firm. All for only a few hundred dollars.

[Thanks to Jim McGee's weblog]

Posted by jamesr at 11:46 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

ROI not of value

The Register has released a story stating that ROI is faulty as measurement of IT success. This is based on a survey of 400 IT and financial directors in the UK.

I think this applies equally to KM projects, and further spurs me on to do some research into better metrics for knowledge management.

Posted by jamesr at 11:33 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Central site for KM weblogs

High context has just setup a simple little site which tracks who is posting what to their KM weblogs. This is called KMPings.

Unfortunately, I have to upgrade my copy of Movable Type before I can add myself to this site, but once that's done, I'll definitely be including myself in this excellent initiative.

Posted by jamesr at 11:29 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Project sponsors

My belief has always been that the single largest success factor for a project (KM or otherwise) is "project sponsorship". That is, having an appropriately senior manager actively supporting the project, and communicating the goals to the business. Without this, the project will fail.

Darlene Varaleau has written a brief article on this titled How Effective are Your Project Sponsors?. While there's not a lot of detail in this article, there is a pretty diagram, and a useful survey.

Posted by jamesr at 11:20 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Another good viewpoint on accessbility

Jeffrey Zeldman writes eloquently in his weblog on why accessbility doesn't mean ugly.

Posted by jamesr at 12:06 PM | Permalink
Categories: Web development

Accessbility weblog

Mark Pilgrim is in the middle of a 30-day exploration of website accessbility on his weblog. There is a lot of very good stuff in here, all extremely practical.

A must for all web designers.

Posted by jamesr at 11:59 AM | Permalink
Categories: Web development

Complexity weblog

Thanks to a comment from Marc Pierson, I now know about his weblog on complexity theory and knowledge management. It also sounds like he's doing some really interesting stuff, so I'll have to chat to him more about that...

Posted by jamesr at 10:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Knowledge management mistakes

Johanna Ambrosio has written an article in Computerworld, outlining top Knowledge management mistakes.

This lists five main mistakes:

1. Failing to coordinate efforts between information technology and human resources.
2. Starting with a low-profile project.
3. Not changing the compensation scheme to reward teamwork.
4. Building the grand database in the sky to house all your company's knowledge.
5. Assuming someone else will lead the charge.

Posted by jamesr at 10:37 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Local events in August

KM and CM events in, and around, Australia:

• Sydney, Australia
  Knowledge management site visits
  6-7 August 2002
• Sydney, Australia
  Storytelling Masterclass 2002
  26-27 August 2002

If I've missed any, please add a Comment.

Posted by jamesr at 06:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Local events in July

I've been very frustrated with the difficulty of finding out about events that are happening in Australia (and nearby). I believe there is a lot of interest in attending these events, if only we heard about them.

In a small attempt to resolve this problem, I'm going to be publicising all the events that are happening locally. So watch this space.

Events in July:

• Singapore
  KM Asia 2002
  16-18 July 2002
• Melbourne, Australia
  Knowledge Management Intranet Site Visits
  25-26 July 2002
• Sydney, Australia
  Open Publish 2002
  29-31 July 2002
• Brisbane, Australia
  IIM 2002
  29-31 July 2002

Please add a Comment if I have missed an event, and I'll add it to my weblog.

Posted by jamesr at 06:12 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Applying XML from a business perspective

Michael Gorman has published an article titled And where do XML tags come from?. In this, he presents two different approaches for defining XML schema:

1. Application focused: individual implementers create XML to meet technical requirements
2. Data focused: the organisation as a whole determined information needs, and build XML schema to match

Michael briefly outlines each of these approaches, and then publishes the thoughts and feedback of a range of readers.

Needless to say, knowledge management encourages the use of the second approach, if business goals are to be met.

Posted by jamesr at 06:02 PM | Permalink
Categories: XML

Complexity theory (III)

Having spent the last few hours reading about complexity theory, I think I can summarise it as follows:

Complexity theory applies to systems that are made of many parts, which interract to form large-scale patterns and behaviours. This is the study of real-word behaviours, whether it is the development of storms, or stock-market crashes.

How does this relate to knowledge management? It's fairly easy to draw parallels to the behaviour of people within organisations, and talk about their complex behaviour and interractions.

How is this applied in practice? This I don't know. It's not enough just to talk about "complexity theory and knowledge management". If it is to have meaning, there must be practical approaches, and testable results. (This is what science is all about, otherwise it is just philosophy.)

I will continue reading, and endeavour to report back tomorrow on my final conclusions.

In the meantime, can anyone point me in the direction of some good resources on this, or share their thoughts? (Feel free to use the Comments link at the bottom of this article.)

Posted by jamesr at 05:55 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Complexity theory (II)

Trawling through the site previously-mentioned, this is what I have found out so far:

Complexity theory attempts to tackle complex, interrelated systems by looking at the whole of the sytem, not just the component parts. As a broad field, it encompasses specific approaches such as:

• artificial life (simulating natural systems on a PC)
• cellular automata (models the interaction of very simple units to form complex results; think cells in the human body)
• fractals (these mimic the forms of nature, such as the shape of a coastline, or the leaves on a tree)
• genetic algorithms (applies the principles of evolution to determine the "best" solutions to complex problems)
• neural networks (an artificial-intelligence approach which uses a simple version of the human brain to learn patterns, and make decisions)
• non-linear systems (almost every natural phenomena is "non-linear", from turbulent flow in a pipe to clouds in the sky)

So far, so good. I understand most of these fields, having done my 4th-year thesis on the topic "Breeding a better neural network: genetic algorithms in the optimisation of neural network design". It's interesting that "information theory" doesn't rate a mention, although I would've thought it would be of relevance.

Complex systems are often defined by a number of identifying characteristics:

• self-organisation (feedback mechanisms tend to move the system back to a stable, organised state)
• non-linearity (small changes can lead to big effects; weather systems are an example)
• chaotic dynamics (even when the rules are known, it is very hard to predict the future of chaotic systems)
• emergent properties (higher-level outcomes can occur in even simple systems)

This is a good definition for complexity science:

The study of emergent behaviour exhibited by interacting systems operating at the threshold of stability and chaos. (William H. Roetzheim)

This book review starts to give an idea of how complexity theory might apply to businesses, and knowledge management. A quote:

Complexity thinking replaces such closed views with open, adaptive and distributed control systems (Complex Adaptive Systems or CAS) that can encourage the emergence of new solutions, at a cost of abandoning those outdated abstractions inherent in conventional thought. Recognition that the market always adapts unexpectedly to company activity, allows a co-evolutionary, nonlinear paradigm to supersede linear and rigid models, replacing clear, static targets with ambiguous, moving ones, and going beyond a single dimensional measure of 'profit' to include other, more relevant, values.

There is also a link to the journal Emergence, which publishes "articles of a qualitative nature relating complex systems, sensemaking, psychology, philosophy, semiotics, and cognitive science to the management of organizations both public and private".

Some further resources on complexity theory and organisational change/knowledge management:

• Brint.com (provides an excellent annotated bibliography of sites and articles)
• Simple yet complex (CIO magazine)
• What if ... ? (Computerworld)

Posted by jamesr at 05:37 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

CMSs in summary

I've just come across another site provding a tabular listing of content management systems and their features. This brings the total to:

• Content Management Systems (CMS) Directory (Clueful Consulting)
• Links to Content Management System Software and ASP Hosting Vendors (Allen.com)
• Web Content Management (Hartman Communicatie BV)
• c m s I n f o . o r g (community site)
• CMS Product Matrix (Laura L. Carlson, University of Minnesota)

Unfortunately, with the rapidly-changing market, none of these lists are entirely complete or up-to-date. They are, however, a very good start for anyone looking for a new CMS solution.

Does anyone know of other sites listing CMS vendors?

Posted by jamesr at 12:27 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Complexity theory

Complexity theory is something that seems to keep surfacing in the area of knowledge management, but not as much more than a buzz word. On occasion, I have expressed frustration with this glib usage, and have been foolish enough to mention that I am a mathematition by training (Applied Maths).

Invariably, it is then suggested that I go away, learn more, and come back with a useful summary. Fair enough.

Well, today I came across a link to a massive compexity theory site. So, I'm going to try and put my money where my mouth is. I'll do my best to read through it all over the weekend, and report back by next week on what it all means, and how it might be applied to KM. Wish me luck...

Posted by jamesr at 04:03 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Followup on KM Forum

Another successful NSW KM Forum evening last night. As usual, I'll try to give a sense of what was missed by those who couldn't make it.

Aseem Prakash

Aseem started by talking (quite proudly) about his three failed attempts to create a community of practice, and the many lessons that he learnt along the way. It was certainly interesting to hear from someone who surfed the wave of the "dot com" and "e-business" waves.

He also stated that "push strategies work, not pull, folks", and pointed to the comparative success of e-mail versus online discussion groups.

Aseem's current activity is E-Hubs Asia, an online community of practice. What I found most interesting is that out of the 2600 current members, Aseem has personally spoken (in person or via phone) with 80% of them! He sees this as critical to building a real community... interesting stuff.

The best thing about Aseem's talk was his total lack of Powerpoint slides. Instead, he established a dialogue with the audience, which brought out some really good comments from people who have normally stayed very quiet. Communities of practice in action!

Cai Kjaer

Within CSC, Cai has been involved in a number of knowledge management projects, and he talked about the key lessons he has learnt. Like Aseem, Cai was able to use his stories of failure to very effectively highlight "what not to do".

Or as he put it: "when you are ignorant, life is beautiful; when you know things, life becomes so complex". He also suggested that "it's not about the technology, but about change management", and that this view sometimes made him a bit unpopular in a technology-focused company such as CSC...

The one point that jumped out the most for me was his suggestion of developing "business plans for communities of practice". These would outline the specific goals and benefits of a CoP, before actually establishing one.

I think the floodgates of audience participation had been well-and-truly opened by Aseem, and this continued into Cai's talk. He only managed to get through half of his (5) slides, but he took it in good humour, and was able to interract with the audience in a very relaxed way.

Another excellent talk, and all went away satisfied.

Posted by jamesr at 11:52 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Designing a flash interface (II)

I've just found out that the interface I designed yesterday will be used in Brazil, requiring the whole thing to be translated into Portuguese...

So now, on top of the usual design challenges, we have to deal with both language and cultural barriers. Yet again, I strongly advised them to do some testing with real (Brazillian) users before going live...

Posted by jamesr at 04:06 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Interface design patterns

Martijn van Welie has published a site listing Interaction design patterns. These are his take on interface creation, from the perspective of object-oriented design.

The principle is that the major archetypes are specified, thereby standardising the elements that make up a user interface. It's a good idea, even if it needs a bit more work, and a lot more peer review.

Posted by jamesr at 03:31 PM | Permalink
Categories: Web development

It's a tough life being a consultant

George Olsen talks about the challenges facing consultants, in his article titled (Over)simple Answers for Simple Minds. He outlines the pressure on consultants to have "The Answer", even when no simple answer exists, and makes a few suggestions about how consultants should deal with this.

As a consultant, I am keenly aware of this, and the fact that I never have as much experience as I would like. My answer is to be upfront with my clients about what I know, what I can do, and to constantly learn (particularly from the clients themselves).

Posted by jamesr at 03:25 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Sensible use of JavaScript in forms

Jeff Howden has written a step-by-step tutorial on Forms & JavaScript Living Together in Harmony. This helps a web designer build web pages that still work, even when JavaScript is turned off.

Posted by jamesr at 03:17 PM | Permalink
Categories: Web development

Usability in a hurry

I confess, I prefer case-studies over any other form of article. In the project presented by Allison Tynan, they developed a methodology for applying usability techniques to deadline-driven projects. This is a small and practical project, and Allison outlines how they went about meeting customer goals in only a matter of weeks.

As a side note, the article makes reference to the ISO Standard Human Centred Design for Interactive Systems, which is news to me. Guess I should go off and read this ...

Posted by jamesr at 03:07 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Records management on the intranet

Martin White has posted a link to the UK standard on records management.

While this doesn't all that exciting (to me at least), but I would strongly encourage you to read the PDF titled Management of electronic records on websites and intranets: an ERM toolkit. I was very impressed with this document on my first glance, and I've now printed it off for later reading in-depth. Well written, to the point, and thoughtful. It's even pretty to look at.

Posted by jamesr at 12:52 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

KM Forum: tonight! (Sydney, Australia)

The NSW KM Forum evening is tonight, and I hope to see you all there. (You can find details about the event in my earlier post.)

Posted by jamesr at 10:03 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Automated usability questionnaires

Gary Perlman has built a Perl script for automatically generating usability surveys. You basically supply a few small details, and it creates a web page according to one of the standard survey structures (you choose which one).

Seems to work well, I'll definitely consider using it in my next project.

Posted by jamesr at 06:06 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Results from a survey of web prototyping tools usage

guuui.com have just posted the results of their survey of web prototyping tools usage.

Their key findings:

• There is currently no distinct consensus on what is the best tool to use for web prototyping
• HTML and diagramming tools are the most commonly type of tools used for web prototyping
• Macromedia Dreamveawer and Microsoft Visio are the most widely used tools
• Respondents feel that the tools they use fall short on some high priority criteria, such as laying out and making changes to pages
• Few seem to be perfectly happy with the tools they are using though users of HTML tools are strikingly more content than users of diagramming tools

Posted by jamesr at 05:55 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Unstructured content

Martin Butler has written a brief and to-the-point article highlighting that 80% of the content in an organisation is "unstructured", and that we need to start finding ways of better managing it.

Posted by jamesr at 03:36 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

The relationship in CRM?

Susan Fournier has published an article entitled It's Time to Reinstall the 'R' in Your Customer Relationship Management Programs. To quote the introductory paragraph:

Customer relationship management (CRM) programs have become too much about the technology, not enough about the customer relationship, argues HBS professor Susan Fournier. Here is how to restore the proper balance.

As you know, I'm big into the "wise use of IT", so I'm always encouraged to read articles such as this one. I also see this as coming back to the broader knowledge management issues around CRM.

Posted by jamesr at 12:35 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Designing a touchscreen interface

I've just finished the interface design work for a system to control a dozen big remote-controlled fire-fighting hoses on a huge oil tanker. An interesting project on many fronts:

• touchscreen interface
• implemented using Flash
• run on an imbedded Linux operating system

While I'm not doing the actual development work, the design process has been fascinating. Needless to say, considering the safety-critical nature of the interface, I've strongly recommended that my clients have the system usability tested with actual users, both at the draft and final design stages. (If I'm very lucky, I might score a visit to the tanker itself, to do the final testing there.)

As a final note, the usability folk on the U-TEST list came up with a few very helpful links:

• Interaction Design Guide for Touchscreen Applications
• A Review of User-Interface Design Guidelines for Public Information Kiosk Systems
• Department of the Army Weapon Systems: Human Computer Interface Style Guide

(Thanks to Karla Saari Kitalong, Tara Qavi and Larry Avery for these links.)

Posted by jamesr at 12:24 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Intranet stats

Martin White has just posted some interesting stats on intranet and extranet usage in the UK.

A summary of organisations with intranets:

What really surprises me about intranets is that, while so many organisations have them, there is so little discussion about tools, best practice, etc on the web. (For example: I am not aware of a single active mailing list on intranets...)

Posted by jamesr at 12:17 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

Gurteen Knowledge-Log

David Gurteen has just setup his own weblog on knowledge management.

Beyond this, he is aiming to establish a KM community of weblogs. As he puts in:

The concept is simple. The community is a group of bloggers - people who have their own weblogs and are blogging on KM related topics.

What I like about this is that the community software and content are distributed - members can leave at any time or join other communities and still keep their own weblog - it is theirs. Also anyone with a weblog - whatever the technology can join the community.

Hmm. I think I'll join up...

Posted by jamesr at 11:48 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Act-KM evening (Canberra, Australia)

It's all happening this week. From the Act-KM list, notification about their regular get-together, tonight:

Date: Tuesday 2 July 2002
Time: 5:30- 7pm
Location: Fourth Floor National Library of Australia
Donation: $4 towards Wine and Cheese

Topic: Storytelling and KM
Come along to a storytelling class, Catherine from the ACT Storytelling Guild is going to teach us how to construct a story and then tell it. There will also be time to discuss using storytelling as a KM tool in your organisations.

Posted by jamesr at 10:47 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

NSW KM Forum evening (Sydney, Australia)

We've just sorted out the next NSW KM Forum evening, which is this Thursday. Details as follows:

When
Thursday 4th July (this coming Thursday)
5:30pm (talks start at 6pm)
Finishes at 7pm, and then down the road for drinks and chats
If you arrive after 5:30pm, ring me on 0416 054 213, and I'll organise someone to come down and let you in.

Where
Standards Australia
Level 6
286 Sussex St
(Corner of Bathurst St)

Who

Speaker 1:
Aseem Prakash
E-Hubs Asia Community of Practice Leader
Aseem has been cultivating E-Hubs Asia since May, 2000. It is a global community of practice focusing on e-business, organizational designs and social capital issues. He also founded Interactive Knowledge On-Line (www.ebusinessknowledge.com) in July, 1995. Asseem will lead a conversation and dialogue around cultivating and managing a community of practice.

Speaker 2:
Cai Kjaer
Senior Consultant, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)
Cai will be talking about his very practical experiences with implementing knowledge management projects, and will outline a range of success factors he has identified.

How much
Absolutely free!

I hope to see you all there, as it promises to be a very interesting and enjoyable evening. (I've been to every evening so far.)

Posted by jamesr at 04:19 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Benefits of a KM framework

I've just published a new article, as part of my regular monthly KM Column:

Benefits of a KM framework
There are considerable benefits to be obtained from the various knowledge management frameworks, for both the KM community and businesses.

Don't forget, you can sign up to our announce-list, to be the first to find out when new papers are released.

Happy reading, and feedback always appreciated.

Posted by jamesr at 02:31 PM | Permalink
Categories: James' articles, Knowledge management

Metrics for KM?

As a result of the various KM conferences and talks that I've been to, my current focus in knowledge management is on metrics. These are the practical measurement techniques that allow:

• the success of a KM project to be assessed
• ROI to be estimated
• alternate KM methods to be evaluated and compared

I believe that metrics are the key to the long-term growth of KM. The trouble is, metrics are hard, so this is my research focus at the moment.

Can anyone point me to some good articles, books, etc on KM metrics?

Posted by jamesr at 11:14 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

IA cocktail hour (Canberra, Australia)

I received the following from Donna Maurer:

Announcing....the first Canberra (Australia) IA cocktail hour.

Wednesday 3 July, 5pm
King O'Malley's Irish Bar
City Walk, Civic

I have booked the library, which is directly behind the main bar - nice and quiet so we can talk.

The topic for this first meeting will be fairly casual. I'd like to talk about what type of IA we each do, what we are good at and what we struggle with (so come prepared!). From this, we can identify sometopics for discussion for other nights.

More details on the IAwiki. Email Donna with questions or RSVPs

Posted by jamesr at 10:18 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design