|
Knowledge
The sharing of human experience expressed in a medium of communication and organized in a way to share the value of that experience with others.
Collaboration
The capability of a group of people to contribute dynamically and interactively on a professional or creative endeavor.
Why Focus on Knowledge Collaboration?
Who can assign a value to knowledge that is sitting static in a repository? However, the minute a worker is seeking knowledge, as soon as two workers are sharing knowledge, whenever several workers are debating and presenting; knowledge quickly attains value. Therefore, we see that the crucial element to defining value in knowledge is when it is in action, used by people. We see the value magnified when it can be utilized by a group in dynamic ways. This is what we would call collaboration.
Why Focus on the Project Group?
The most important work takes place at the level of the project group. By a project group, we mean an interactive group from 3 to 6 at the small end to 20 to 30 at the high end. Notice we are not using the term "team". This is because "team" normally implies a role, responsibility and placement in a larger organizational structure. The project groups we are talking about may be defined within a department, division, and corporation or may span multiple corporations.
The Landscape of Knowledge and Collaboration
There are actually numerous landscapes within which knowledge and collaboration appears. We can talk about them in several ways, starting with historical "problems" and their "solutions":
Problems:
- Too much information.
- People can't get the information they need.
- People can't find an "expert"
- Explosion of new media.
Tools for creating, organizing and publishing content most constantly adapt to these new media types.
Solutions:
Numerous solutions have appeared for the knowledge "problems" workers have encountered. Please realize that neither the "problems" nor the solutions always fall into precise categories. These categories have emerged out of dialog between vendors, customers and industry analysts. They are useful for discussing similarities and differences among these various solutions and for determining the suitability of a product in a specific setting.
We're focusing more on "knowledge collaboration", which we'll define for the purposes of this paper.
Solutions ? Examined more Closely:
Document Management
Founding Idea
Large organizations needed to keep track of large numbers of documents. Document management should not be confused with creating a shared drive to hold documents. The revisions and versions of documents have high-stake consequences, organizations needed to be able to distinguish between revisions, and to be able manage updates. Access should be controlled by user permissions, yet be facilitated via directories, keywords, and perhaps summary abstracts.
Strengths
Does a very good job within its defined scope (see above).
Weaknesses
It becomes more of a library or archival function and is thus removed from the key location of knowledge creation and sharing.
Project Management and Life-Cycle Tools
Founding Idea
Large organizations need to keep track of complex interdependencies among a large number of tasks, with staff resources and resulting deadlines. Project management tools could also identify "critical path" tasks and could present charts showing the project plan. These tools also identified deviations from plan. With the advent of powerful desktop systems, these tools became affordable and prevalent. Life-cycle management tools acknowledge the adherence of many organizations to procedures for managing a project through different life-cycle phases.
Strengths
These are methods that derive their value by guiding workers through a highly defined sequence and procedure to produce predictable and reliable results.
Weaknesses
These tools offer little support for the flow of knowledge in and around the project.
Collaboration Tools
Founding Idea
Organizations wanted to improve the productivity where multiple contributors are creating, organizing, and publishing content in an individual, or group of documents or other information objects. The toolset may include the capability for online discussion with "threads" or response "trees".
Strengths
These tools do a great job of managing the contributions of multiple authors, editors, etc. They can support complex collaboration projects and protect against one author "stepping" on the work of another ? at a cost.
|
