Defining Roles & Responsibilities for KM & IT #roles
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Fellow KMers,
I am a Knowledge Manager in a company that has just recently begun to embrace the value of KM. With that being said, we are still a heavily siloed organization and we are working to establish the working relationships between the KM Department and the various other departments, especially IT where there is a very heavy overlap in the work. I'm wondering if anyone out there has had any experience in delineating the different roles and responsibilities for the work that KM & IT share? How do you delineate these roles & responsibilities in your organization? As some more background: Our current Knowledge Repository is integrated into our company intranet which is built on Sharepoint. Frequent discussions have been had about the which department owns enhancements to search. As there are many factors that go into how search functions from specific Sharepoint & Microsoft settings to the way that content is structured and tagged there is a lot of discussion around who carries the responsibility for each of the various aspects that affect search. This is just one example. Thank you, all, for your support! Sincerely, Matthew Morrow |
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Hi Matthew
I feel your struggle. I was the CKO for a mid-cap consulting firm in DC for 5 years. We had a CIO and then I was hired as the CKO.
There is a lot to share, way more than I care to write here…so please call me directly if you wish and I am glad to share my context and what worked and didn’t to create the collaboration long term between the CKO and the CIO.
Available later today and Friday PST.
Best
Bill
Learn more about the solutions and value we provide at www.workingknowledge-csp.com
From: SIKM@groups.io <SIKM@groups.io> On Behalf Of
Matthew Morrow via Groups.Io
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2020 12:53 To: SIKM@groups.io Subject: [SIKM] Defining Roles & Responsibilities for KM & IT #discussion-starter
Fellow KMers, |
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Barbara Fillip
Hi Matthew, I have been working through this for the past year since I took on a position as director of knowledge management. A couple of key initiatives that had previously been led by the IT function were shifted to me and the KM office. Those were the digital library or corporate memory repository, which needed to be more closely tied to project management and other business processes, and the Yammer platform, which needed some KM thinking behind it to try to make it a real knowledge sharing platform for communities of practice. The KM office became the business owner for these two initiatives, with governance documents being put in place to clearly articulate roles and responsibilities, including responsibilities of the IT department. The communications between KM and IT regarding theses two initiatives occur daily, but with the governance in place, the decision-making is a little clearer. I don't have IT-savvy staff on the KM team. We work with the IT department to figure things out and since things evolve quite fast in the technology area, it's an ongoing process. Best, Barbara Fillip Director, Knowledge Management Chemonics International On Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 3:53 PM Matthew Morrow <matthew.morrow@...> wrote: Fellow KMers, |
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Hi Bill, I think that experience would help us a lot, would you mind sharing it on this channel?IEO. Sandra Maria Lopez Muriel. PhD telecomunicaciones Conscious Business Coach Consultora Gestión del conocimiento y soluciones en Sharepoint Docente investigador Gestión del conocimiento
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El jue., 27 feb. 2020 a las 16:03, Bill Kaplan (<bill@...>) escribió:
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Hi Matthew,
This is certainly one of the greatest challenges for KM. There's no simple answer but here are a few thoughts to consider. First, an assessment of the relationship and the context along three lines. 1. Across the organization, do the silos actually still work together in both a strategic and tactical way or does each just largely do their own thing? 2. What was the impetus for creation of the KM organization? Was it a strategic decision from senior management, and is there something of a vision or a mandate already established? 3.Is there antagonism or resentment from IT or are they amenable to accepting the organizational changes and working together? The answers to these (and numerous other related questions) would certainly help understand the context and lead to possible first steps forward. Second, some general thoughts about roles and responsibilities versus relationships. You mention discussions about ownership of search enhancements. While R&Rs are usually important, especially in siloed organizations or those with less-than-ideal working relationships, they often don't help in cultivating the true sense of partnership so necessary for successful incorporation of KM principles and practices. Here's where the soft skills can reach their zenith in impact. This is not only true for working with IT, it's equally important for working with business managers and all other 'support' functions, such as HR, L&D, Comms, IM, Libraries, etc. The frequent initial response of existing support functions is something along the line of suspicion or distrust or worse, and one of your most important early objectives is to show by example and practice that you are going to support them as well, rather than reduce their responsibilities. One simple way to help with this might be to organize either working sessions (sometimes called 'bull-pit' or 'tiger' group sessions) or a working group/committee drawn from the business lines and these groups to provide guidance and input on addressing specific business issues. Third, I haven't said anything really specific yet about addressing specific business issues because it seems so obvious, but it is absolutely essential for KM to be able to achieve its full value. One of the most important early and regular actions is to consult with business line managers with four objectives: first, to understand their business and their issues; second, to establish your purpose is to support them and cultivate that relationship; third, to identify and assess the low hanging fruit and the 'missing pieces' that KM can uniquely bring to the current environment; and fourth, to identify areas where the support groups could help in a partnership context and so you can show your willingness to support these support groups and their success as well. I know this all seems somewhat motherhood and every situation has its own unique set of factors and issues so adaptability to the context and the specific characters is essential. I've often said that it's not so much a 'tool' issue as it is a 'craftsman' issue. Best wishes Paul Paul McDowall
Know How Works
Ottawa, Canada
Cell: 613-796-7257
Email: KnowHowWorks@...
Web: www.knowhowworks.com |
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Nirmala Palaniappan
Here are two examples from the experiences I've had. Hope it is of use to you. 1. In one of the organisations I worked with, the IT team interacted only with us, the KM team, and was answerable only to us (as opposed to the end users). KM was responsible for the features, search, user experience and everything else. However, we had small subset of members comprising of both IT and KM to carry out research, analysis and put together a design for new features and modules. 2. In another organisation, IT simply project managed requirements from KM and participated in technology discussions in the capacity of a consultant with expertise in architecture, product roadmaps and server administration. Regards Nirmala On Fri, 28 Feb 2020, 02:23 Matthew Morrow, <matthew.morrow@...> wrote: Fellow KMers, |
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Marc Bramoulle
Hi Matthew,
I'm KM director at Ubisoft (videogame company). We are working closely with IT. Here are KM roles & responsabilities: - Product owners in charge of maintaining the different collaboration tools we support (sharepoint Online, confluence, MS teams, many custom tools). They define the product vision (digital workplace positioning), the governance, write user stories (for custom dev), monitor evolutions (for office365 & atlassian), write training material, promote adoption, follow KPIs and tool usage. - Business analysts who receive all the requests from end users to create confluence, sharrepoint sites, and Teams. We create around 350 sites per year, and created 2000 teams in 2019. All the requests come to us, so that we can assess the need, provide best practices (information architecture, content governance), merge with existing sites or teams if possible, provide training. They are based in many different locations all over the world to be closer to employees and better assess their needs and workflows this way. - Program manager to define the future of our digital workplace and KM tools. They assess new technologies to enrich digital experience (we are currently replacing our LMS, introducing a Digital experience platform --> Wordpress VIP). They go through Request for proposal & proof of concept to select the right piece of technology. It's waterfall process. - UXers. 2 people in conception and 1 in user research. They're identifying the needs, mapping the user journey, designing the mockup, testing them with end users. Their focus is mainly on the custom tools we develop. On IT side, they have - 7/8 developers dedicated to KM, working in agile (2 weeks per sprint). We have a scrum master managing all the ceremonies with the product owners. - Admins - some specialized on O365, others on Atlassian products, and other on custom devs. - Helpdesk - all the outage, and bugs are directly going through a team of support. So, in KM side our mission is to organize ubisoft content (information, documentation & assets), to expose key knowledge and facilitate collaboration. We're in charge of digital workplace vision & content strategy. IT is mainly here to support all this from a dev or infrastructure point of view. This way, we don't have any techhnology lobby. KM ensure we have a consistent, and harmonized digitial workplace. We also collaborate from time to time with BI and security teams. As for the search, I have SEO specialist in the team defining ranking model, filters strategy, maintaining the sponsored links, cleaning the content, defining custom scopes. Again, IT is mainly here in support, to make it this happen in the search technology (currently Sharepoint search and soon Lucidworks fusion). Since everything is done in agile mode (with the Agile mindset), IT can challenge us on the need, share technical challenges, and we find compromises together. Hope this helps. Best. Thanks Marc |
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One point: The ease or friction with which IT, IM, and KM interact and collaborate to deliver the organization mission will depend importantly on where in the organization (level) these roles reside.
Bill
Learn more about the solutions and value we provide at www.workingknowledge-csp.com
From: SIKM@groups.io <SIKM@groups.io> On Behalf Of
Nirmala Palaniappan via Groups.Io
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2020 09:30 To: SIKM@groups.io Subject: Re: [SIKM] Defining Roles & Responsibilities for KM & IT #discussion-starter
Here are two examples from the experiences I've had. Hope it is of use to you.
1. In one of the organisations I worked with, the IT team interacted only with us, the KM team, and was answerable only to us (as opposed to the end users). KM was responsible for the features, search, user experience and everything else. However, we had small subset of members comprising of both IT and KM to carry out research, analysis and put together a design for new features and modules. 2. In another organisation, IT simply project managed requirements from KM and participated in technology discussions in the capacity of a consultant with expertise in architecture, product roadmaps and server administration.
Regards Nirmala
On Fri, 28 Feb 2020, 02:23 Matthew Morrow, <matthew.morrow@...> wrote:
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