Matt Moore’s got a short but insightful presentation on demonstrating the value of knowledge management (found via Bill Ives’ post), — and surprise, it’s not about the amount of documents your user base downloads or how many community members you have.
I think Matt’s point is a good one. While it’s important to demonstrate the value of your projects, it’s also important to be selective in what metrics and measures you use to describe that value.
However, I think the value of knowledge management in a specific organization is often dependent of what that organization is looking to get out of KM. In one organization, it may be a better quality of work than previously existed, whereas in another organization, it may be cost savings.
Nailing down what you really want to get out of KM (just like you would for any endeavour) is one of the keys in making you get what you want out of it in the end. The “we just want to do everything better than we do now” approach is always going to fail.
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May 6th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Lucas - Glad you liked the presentation.
“However, I think the value of knowledge management in a specific organization is often dependent of what that organization is looking to get out of KM. In one organization”
Absolutely agree with this - it’s all about local context.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:04 am
I certainly did enjoy the presentation Matt — again, great job on that.
Context is certainly an important part of not just knowledge management as an endeavour, but is an important part of any project. Not having a clear direction from the outset is always going to lead to disappointed stakeholders, who may have had much different expectations from the project’s performers.
Thanks for your comment.