Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management - the "why"

When I teach, I like to talk about knowledge and wisdom and the value that they bring to the organizational table. A lot of the time people give me a quizzical look, Knowledge? Wisdom? Where is this conversation going? I ask people how they capture the knowledge or do they even capture the knowledge that is gained when they develop a new service, application or when some new technology is introduced into their live environment.

Although what we deliver can sometimes be intangible (availability, capacity, security) it is very complex and can take years to build up the know-how on how to deliver these elements and continually meet the changing needs of our customers. However you need knowledge, born from experience, to solve problems, to always improve, to use your wisdom to answer the question of why should we make one choice over another?

Like any other organization we must brand the product we deliver. This brand will then garner a reputation; the reputation will be built on the knowledge that is gathered from the designers, engineers and support staff. Knowledge must be stored, protected and shared to create a culture of quality among the staff of your organization.

Many people think you can deliver this quality by compartmentalizing the different components in the delivery chain, siloing the different processes and technologies. Continual service improvement isn’t about putting a bunch of smart people in a room and designing some new infrastructure or service. It requires skills that are difficult to attain. It’s about people being immersed in the day to day activities of the entire organization and utilizing and sharing the knowledge that is developed by these processes and functions. In some future discussions we will talk about the methods and best practices on how to we can capture and share our knowledge to continually meet our customers changing needs.

Comments

The Four Ps of Service Design - It’s not all about Technology

People ask me why I think that many designs and projects often fail. The most common answer is from a lack of preparation and management. Many IT organizations just think about the technology (product) implementation and fail to understand the risks of not planning for the effective and efficient use of the four Ps: People, Process, Products (services, technology and tools) and Partners (suppliers, manufacturers and vendors). A holistic approach should be adopted for all Service Design aspects and areas to ensure consistency and integration within all activities and processes across the entire IT environment, providing end to end business-related functionality and quality. (SD 2.4.2) People: Have to have proper skills and possess the necessary competencies in order to get involved in the provision of IT services. The right skills, the right knowledge, the right level of experience must be kept current and aligned to the business needs. Products: These are the technology managem

What Is A Service Offering?

The ITIL4 Best Practice Guidance defines a “Service Offering” as a description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a target customer or group . As a service provider, we can’t stop there! We must know what the contracts of our service offering are and be able to put them into context as required by the customer. Let’s explore the three elements that comprise a Service Offering. A “Service Offering” may include: Goods, Access to Resources, and Service Actions Goods – When we think of “Goods” within a service offering these are the items where ownership is transferred to the consumer and the consumer takes responsibility for the future use of these goods. Example of goods that are being provided in the offering – If this is a hotel service then toiletries or chocolates are yours to take with you. You the consumer own these and they are yours to take with you. Note: Goods may not always be provided for every Service Offe

What is the difference between Process Owner, Process Manager and Process Practitioner?

I was recently asked to clarify the roles of the Process Owner, Process Manager and Process Practitioner and wanted to share this with you. Roles and Responsibilities: Process Owner – this individual is “Accountable” for the process. They are the goto person and represent this process across the entire organization. They will ensure that the process is clearly defined, designed and documented. They will ensure that the process has a set of Policies for governance. Example: The process owner for Incident management will ensure that all of the activities to Identify, Record, Categorize, Investigate, … all the way to closing the incident are defined and documented with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, handoffs, and deliverables. An example of a policy in could be… “All Incidents must be logged”. Policies are rules that govern the process. Process Owner ensures that all Process activities, (what to do), Procedures (details on how to perform the activity) and the

Search