Agility inKM

Agility is a term mentioned a lot nowadays. We hear of agile methods, agile strategies, agile organizations and so on. Some of the reasons agility is so important especially in projects control are being able to build and run project teams easier and more efficiently, keep up with the stakeholders’ requirements and also involve them in the project as well. (Gilb 2004, CCPace 2009)

Since agility can be such a supportive factor in a project’s development maybe it can be proved valuable for the development of knowledge management (KM) projects as well. To begin with, it seems that as far as KM is concerned there aren’t many frameworks or guidelines as to how to manage a KM project as oppose to other fields. For example for software development there are many system development life cycles to follow.

One good example of a knowledge management system development approach is proposed by Moteleb and Woodman (2009). The proposed KMSD approach which is based to their involvement and experiences with the industry suggests three major steps; Realizing the current situation and envisioning an ideal situation to reach, designing the KMS and finally investigating various technological solutions to support the KMS. Another example of a KMS framework is proposed by Hahn and Subramani (2000). In contrast with the aforementioned framework, there is no clear guidance but it rather provides indications on how to proceed according to what are the issues the knowledge management system attempts to solve.

Even though the two examples that were just mentioned are very different in philosophy but both can be used to develop a KMS, I believe that they could be enhanced by including the aspect of agility into their nature. Agility can be very beneficial in project management and knowledge management projects can certainly profit by agility as well.

Figure 1 – An agile approach to KM

The following diagram was conceived based on the EVO method that was developed by Tom Gilb. The diagram shows how the user (stakeholder) is involved through all the stages of the system’s development. Also each phase of the development is a cycle and not linear. This shows that the development of each phase should be flexible and if required it can be repeated until it meets the user’s needs and/or standards. In the end of the implementation the development team smoothly departs and the system is passed on to the users.

Of course this is not a complete knowledge management system development framework but it can be incorporated in other KMSDs. For example the framework proposed by Moteleb and Woodman (2009) can include the user into the framework’s development stages. This agility can fully or partially address a lot of problems such as;

· Requirements changes

· Support after implementation

· User training

· Change management

· System monitoring

All of the listed issues and possibly even more can be addressed since the stakeholders will be involved in the development. For example, if the users are involved throughout the development of the system they will be more familiar with it once it is completed and less training is required. Also, the development team might benefit from this since they will not have to spend a lot of time with the organization after the system is implemented. In conclusion, agility is an important factor that could save money, time and energy for all the parties involved in building a KM system.

References

Ccpace. Agile Project Management. 2009. http://www.ccpace.com/Resources/documents/AgileProjectManagement.pdf (accessed March 22, 2009).

Gilb, T. (2004). Adding Stakeholder Metrics to Agile Projects. Cutter IT journal. 17, (7).

Gilb, T.

Hahn, J. & Subramani, M. (2000). “A Framework of Knowledge Management Systems:Issues and Challenges for Theory and Practice”. 21st International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2000). Brisbane, Australia.

Moteleb, A. & Woodman, M. (2009). ‘Uncovering a KMSD Approach from Practice’. Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management (eJKM). [Accepted – to be published 2009]

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