Description
KM efforts have a long history, to include on-the-job discussions, formal apprenticeship, discussion forums, corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programs.
THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AS A 3RD YEAR PROJECT FOR A NATIONAL IT CONSULTING COMPANY André P. Calitz and Janine Nel Department of Computer Science and Information Systems University of Port Elizabeth
{e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]}
ABSTRACT Organisations are recognising the fact that in order to remain competitive and successful, they have to depend heavily on the creativity and innovative ability of their personnel. This has led to increased focus on the practise of Knowledge Management (KM). Companies have been purchasing and implementing Knowledge Management Systems to capture and manage the knowledge in the business. A number of South African companies have purchased and implemented Knowledge Management Systems at high costs. The purpose of this paper is to describe a case study of a South African consulting company defining and implementing a cost-effective Knowledge Management System, by making use of 3rd year Computer Science & Information Systems (CS&IS) students to develop the system. The business requirements for a Knowledge Management System are provided and the design of the system is provided. The experiences in implementing a leading edge KM project, using 3 rd year CS&IS students for a national company, are discussed. Problems dealing with vague and initial ambiguous requirements and different implementation platforms are described. The paper further focuses on the importance of knowledge management and what CS&IS departments can do to initiate and implement a knowledge management project. 1. INTRODUCTION In recent years, increasing attention has been focussed on knowledge management as a strategy to survive in today’s turbulent business environment. Organisations are recognising the fact that in order to remain competitive and successful, they have to depend heavily on the creativity and innovative ability of their personnel. The attention in proactive companies is to increasingly focus on intangible assets and the management of ‘human capital’. This has led to an increase in interest in the field of Knowledge Management (KM). International companies have been purchasing and implementing Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) to capture and manage the knowledge in the business. In order to remain competitive and survive, many organisations are striving to recognise and manage their human resources as knowledgeable specialists [2]. Consulting companies have recognised this a few years ago and started investing heavily in knowledge management projects. Today many are competing on a basis of their intellectual capital, and have developed strategies and methods to capitalise on the knowledge of their employees. The past few years have been characterised by an increased focus on knowledge and knowledge management as a critical resource for fast adaptation to the changing business environment [5]. In order to understand precisely what knowledge is, it is important to distinguish between two types of knowledge: • Tacit knowledge – the knowledge that a person possesses, which is difficult to formulate and difficult to communicate to others. This may be a combination of technical skills such as those of a craftsman, and general know-how derived from experience; and
1
• Explicit knowledge – formally expressed and systematic knowledge such as new product specifications, or a documented business process [8]. Many different forms of both tacit and explicit knowledge exist in organisations. The aim of knowledge management is to harness both, and to facilitate the transfer of tacit to tacit/explicit and vice versa, thereby creating new knowledge [8]. Knowledge management currently still defies precise definition [3]. However, different authors have proposed a number of definitions: • “Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organisational adaptation, survival and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change. Essentially it embodies organisational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information-processing capacity, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings” [6]. • “Knowledge Management is concerned with constantly creating new knowledge, disseminating it widely throughout the organisation and quickly embodying it in new technologies and products” [8]. • “Knowledge Management is the process by which the organisation generates wealth from its intellectual or knowledge-based assets” [1]. It is clear, from the definitions above, that knowledge management cannot simply be addressed by a technical solution, but that there are many other factors that play a role. The purpose of this research is to describe a case study of a South African consulting company defining and implementing a costeffective Knowledge Management System, by making use of 3rd year Computer Science and Information Systems (CS&IS) students at the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE). The business requirements for a Knowledge Management System are provided and the design of the system is presented. The experiences in implementing a leading edge KM project, using 3rd year CS&IS students for a national company, are discussed. Problems dealing with vague and initial ambiguous requirements and different implementation platforms are described. 2. STRATEGIES FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT In the literature, various strategies and techniques for knowledge management have been proposed. Large consulting companies such as Deloitte&Touche, Accenture and Ernst &Young have already embraced and implemented these strategies and techniques [7, 9, 10, 11]. A summary of the guidelines and lessons learnt by these companies include the following: i. Drive knowledge management with commitment from the top; ii. Put into pla ce organisational structures to support knowledge creation; iii. Build a technological infrastructure to support knowledge management; iv. Measure and incentivise knowledge sharing; v. Build cross-functional teams; and vi. Recruit & attract the best brains in the industry. The development of a KMS forms part of the technological infrastructure to support knowledge management. The hardware must be purchased and the software purchased or developed. A consulting company decided that they would like to collaborate with UPE Department of CS&IS and develop a KMS for the company, as a 3rd year project.
2
3. THE CDE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY Comparex Design Engineers (CDE) is a South African founded IT and business consulting company with a successful track record in the field of ERP (SAP R/3) software implementations. The company was founded approximately 6 years ago by 5 individuals and has since grown to its current size of over 120 consultants. CDE has a unique culture in that employees share knowledge freely amongst each other, mainly on an informal basis. The opportunities for converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge are very good, however the technological platform for supporting knowledge sharing was lacking. Often business models or templa tes are reinvented because the knowledge of their existence is not prevalent. It is sometimes difficult to locate the correct expert and requires multiple telephone calls. The identification of the correct resources for the staffing of projects was further a problem, as many different consultants possess a diverse amount of specialised knowledge. The knowledge possessed by consultants is recorded in their CVs, which are stored on a network. However, in order to find the correct person for a particular assignment, the central resourcing manager has to access individual files. To worsen the situation, the CV’s are not updated on a regular basis, so the skills reflected are not always accurate. CDE approached UPE’s Department of CS&IS and a project was launched in 2001 to develop a prototype KMS for CDE. The specific requirements that were incorporated into the technological infrastructure and the knowledge management system were: • The capturing of explicit knowledge. A facility for submitting documents, articles, templates and project reports to a knowledge base. During submission, the system would guide the user through a series of questions/screens, which will allow the knowledge base to classify the item for later retrieval. Typical questions are as to the nature of the article, the keywords, the author, etc; • A facility to push available information to interested parties. In an information-overload society, only relevant information should be pushed. For this reason, the KMS is to provide a subscription facility to Special Interest Groups (SIG). CDE employees can indicate their areas of interest and subscribe to SIGs. When a new item arrives, the system will check the subscription lists and send a notification to all subscribers; • Capturing the skills of CDE’s consultants. The purpose of this was to ease the task of finding the correct persons for particular projects. To ensure that this information stays current, a CV update program would generate e-mail messages to consultants to remind them to update their CV’s if they have not yet done so on a periodic basis; • The appointment of a knowledge administrator in the company. With the implementation of the knowledge management system, it is intended to also employ a knowledge officer or “cybrarian”, who will assist in the sourcing of information in the knowledge base and in relevant other sources such as trade publications, the Internet, etc; • The development of measurement criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of a KMS; • A facility to gauge how valuable contributions to the knowledge base are, by counting the number of times a particular item has been retrieved from the knowledge base; and • Ensuring that knowledge remains up to date. For example, the capturing of project reviews and reports after each project is completed.
3
4. THE CS&IS 3rd YEAR PROJECTS The 3rd year CS&IS project course at UPE entails the analysis, design and implementation of an information system by teams of students. Each project team comprises of two members, each member of the team being responsible for a specified subsection of the project. The teams are then allocated to a project supervisor who will guide them through the development of the system. The implementation of the project is usually done using MS-Access 2000 and Visual Basic. The students are allowed to make use of other implementation platforms if properly motivated and supported. CS&IS departments at universities in South Africa encourage 3rd year students to design and implement industry related IT projects [4]. In 2001, CDE provided the 3rd year students at UPE with the opportunity to develop a cutting edge knowledge management solution as well as enabling them to work with “real” users. CDE consultants were involved with the specification of requirements for the proposed knowledge management system. The CDE project was divided into two subsections: • The Consultant Administration System This subsystem provides functionality to Maintain Employee information, Update CVs, Skills, Courses attended / presented, Maintain Information Categories and Information Resources (articles) and View specific information documents. • The Project Management System This subsystem provides functionality to Maintain Project Information, Review Project Status, View Project Reports, Maintain Project Proposal Documents, Assigning Employees to a Project, View Skills information and Maintain Company (client) Information. The CDE project was divided into phases, using the SDLC, with required deliverables at the end of each phase. The project phases were: • Requirements phase This phase entails the investigation into the problem area. CDE provided the students with a problem description and source documents (formats of CVs, ideas from consultants), which they were required to study. The students then compile d a list of requirements questions, which were discussed during a workshop with some of the CDE consultants. This gave them the opportunity to clarify any questions relating to the specific needs of the users. The deliverable for this phase was a Requirements Document detailing the problem, setting out the requirements for each subsection and describing a proposed solution to the problem. • Analysis phase During this phase the students were required to draw up the Entity Relationship Dia gram (ERD) of the system as well as the Data Flow Diagram (DFD). • Design phase The Design phase entails the design of the database tables and provisional screen prototypes. The students compiled their own ERD during the analysis phase, however, later in the year; project groups were given a model ERD that enabled all the teams to continue working from the same standard. They were however given the choice to make use of the model ERD or their own ERD. • Implementation phase The implementation phase was done over 15 weeks. During this phase the CDE consultants visited the project teams on a couple of occasions to provide feedback on how screens looked and to
4
answer questions relating to required functionality. Most of the teams implemented using MS Access 2000 with only a couple of teams choosing other implementation platforms i.e. SQL Server, ASP and HTML. During the course of the project the students were also required to do presentations on each of the project phases. They had to discuss their proposed solutions, show prototypes of screens and discuss the implementation issues. The CDE consultants attended these presentations and provided feedback on related matters. At the end of the year the top six teams were invited to demonstrate their solution to a panel of CDE consultants and management at the CDE branch office at Port Elizabeth. The panel then selected the top three teams and awarded generous prizes to each team member. All six teams were awarded certificates of excellence for creating outstanding solutions. 5. PRACTICAL FINDINGS The majority of IT projects experience problems and managing the problems, experienced by students rd on a 3 year project, are a challenge. During the development of the CDE project the following difficulties had to be overcome: • Project Scope Due to the time constraints on the students and supervisors and the credit value of the course, the project had to be carefully scoped to ensure that the students were not overloaded. Minimum functionality was identified and the students were required to implement the specified requirements. Functionality over and above the minimum, for example notifying subscribers in SIGs of new items in the knowledge base and developing the system with a web browser interface; were labelled as Initiative. The students that opted to implement the additional requirements were awarded an initiative mark at the end of the year. • Vague requirements Specifying a Knowledge Management System is still a new research area and specifying the requirements for a KM solution tend to be a challenging task. Lack of existing KM systems to study, as well as insufficient knowledge on KM posed a problem for the CDE consultants, who assisted with the requirements. As a result, the initial requirements given to the students were fairly vague. The students, at this stage in their academic career, were accustomed to clear and specific systems requirements. Inconsistencies between the project supervisors understanding of system requirements contributed to the frustration. A solution to this was the setting up of Model Requirements by CDE consultants and lecturers, detailing the minimum functionality and explaining exactly what was required. A specifications document was compiled and made available to all students. A workshop was also organised with the students, supervisors and consultants were the topic of knowledge management and detailed system requirements were discussed. • Consultants ’ time Consultants’ time is valuable and finding time to visit the students posed to be a somewhat difficult task. Due to this, the students did not have the opportunity to work closely with their users. On the occasions when the consultants could not visit the students, all questions and ideas were communicated via e-mail to CDE and feedback received were placed on the course homepage on the CS&IS Intranet. • Implementation platforms It was suggested, by supervisors, that the development platform should be MS Access 2000. There were however a number of teams that opted to implement the system, using implementation platforms such as SQL Server, ASP and HTML, using their own hardware. An additional feature
5
CDE requested was that the system could be accessed via CDE’s Intranet. Teams implementing this feature could not make use of the facilities in the CS&IS 3 rd year laboratories, as the software required was not available. This posed some problems to the supervisors allocated to those teams, as it was difficult to track their progress, assist them with problems and provide feedback and support. Evaluating these projects required that the students had to transport their own hardware to UPE for evaluation purposes. 6. SUMMARY Knowledge management is the management of a company’s intellectual capital. A number of companies have increasingly focused their attention on knowledge management in order to adapt to the ever-changing business environment. Strategies for knowledge management have been proposed and implemented by international companies. This paper describes the efforts toward implementing a knowledge management IT system within a South African consulting company by making use of 3rd year CS&IS students. As the company already has a very unique culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration, this project focused on the technology and infrastructure components. CDE consultants assisted with the requirements and specifications for the proposed KMS and provided input to the students during the development process. Problems were encountered, such as project scope growth, vague requirements, time constraints from consultants and challenging implementation platforms. These problems were however successfully addressed and solved. Although there were some problems experienced during the development of the project, it was a great learning experience for the students, supervisors and CDE consultants involved in the project. It enabled the students to get a glimpse of how it would be to work with real users on a cutting edge solution with requirements that were not clear and understandable at first. Evaluating how well the system is utilised by the consultants and administrative staff will be ongoing research and whether it is feasible to improve the system. REFERENCES [1] Bukowitz, W. R. and Williams, R. L., The Knowledge Management Fieldbook, Prentice Hall, 1999. [2] Drucker, P. F., The Coming of the New Organization, Harvard Review on Knowledge Management, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, 1998. [3] Housel, T. and Bell, A. H., Measuring and Managing Knowledge, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, New York, 2001. [4] Le Roux, G. and Joubert, P. Teaching Informatics with Collaborative Learning and Team Work, SACLA 2001 Proceedings, Bronkhorstspruit, S.A., 27-29 June 2001. [5] Malhotra, Y., Knowledge Management for the New World of Business, Asian Strategy Leadership Institute Review, Vol. 6, 1998. [6] Malhotra, Y., Knowledge Management for E-Business Performance: Advancing Information Stragety to ‘Internet Time’, Information Strategy: The Executive’s Journal, Vol. 16(4), 2000. [7] McLean, D., Building and Leveraging Knowledge Capital: Ernst &Young Case Study, Knowledge Capital: Accounting for Intangible Assets in the New Economy , B2B Conference, Centurion Lake, 29-31 May, 2001. [8] Nonaka, I., The Knowledge-Creating Company, Harvard Review on Knowledge Management, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, 1998. [9] Quinn, J. B., Anderson, P. and Finkelstein, S., Managing Professional Intellect, Harvard Review on Knowledge Management, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, 1998. [10] Schwikkard, D., Knowledge Management and Learning in a Professional Service Firm,
6
Knowledge Capital: Accounting for Intangible Assets in the New Economy, B2B Conference, Centurion Lake, 29-31 May, 2001. [11] Temkin, L., Intellectual Capital Assets – Can you make them relevant to the Bottom Line, Knowledge Capital: Accounting for Intangible Assets in the New Economy, B2B Conference, Centurion Lake, 29-31 May, 2001.
7
doc_760739273.pdf
KM efforts have a long history, to include on-the-job discussions, formal apprenticeship, discussion forums, corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programs.
THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AS A 3RD YEAR PROJECT FOR A NATIONAL IT CONSULTING COMPANY André P. Calitz and Janine Nel Department of Computer Science and Information Systems University of Port Elizabeth
{e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]}
ABSTRACT Organisations are recognising the fact that in order to remain competitive and successful, they have to depend heavily on the creativity and innovative ability of their personnel. This has led to increased focus on the practise of Knowledge Management (KM). Companies have been purchasing and implementing Knowledge Management Systems to capture and manage the knowledge in the business. A number of South African companies have purchased and implemented Knowledge Management Systems at high costs. The purpose of this paper is to describe a case study of a South African consulting company defining and implementing a cost-effective Knowledge Management System, by making use of 3rd year Computer Science & Information Systems (CS&IS) students to develop the system. The business requirements for a Knowledge Management System are provided and the design of the system is provided. The experiences in implementing a leading edge KM project, using 3 rd year CS&IS students for a national company, are discussed. Problems dealing with vague and initial ambiguous requirements and different implementation platforms are described. The paper further focuses on the importance of knowledge management and what CS&IS departments can do to initiate and implement a knowledge management project. 1. INTRODUCTION In recent years, increasing attention has been focussed on knowledge management as a strategy to survive in today’s turbulent business environment. Organisations are recognising the fact that in order to remain competitive and successful, they have to depend heavily on the creativity and innovative ability of their personnel. The attention in proactive companies is to increasingly focus on intangible assets and the management of ‘human capital’. This has led to an increase in interest in the field of Knowledge Management (KM). International companies have been purchasing and implementing Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) to capture and manage the knowledge in the business. In order to remain competitive and survive, many organisations are striving to recognise and manage their human resources as knowledgeable specialists [2]. Consulting companies have recognised this a few years ago and started investing heavily in knowledge management projects. Today many are competing on a basis of their intellectual capital, and have developed strategies and methods to capitalise on the knowledge of their employees. The past few years have been characterised by an increased focus on knowledge and knowledge management as a critical resource for fast adaptation to the changing business environment [5]. In order to understand precisely what knowledge is, it is important to distinguish between two types of knowledge: • Tacit knowledge – the knowledge that a person possesses, which is difficult to formulate and difficult to communicate to others. This may be a combination of technical skills such as those of a craftsman, and general know-how derived from experience; and
1
• Explicit knowledge – formally expressed and systematic knowledge such as new product specifications, or a documented business process [8]. Many different forms of both tacit and explicit knowledge exist in organisations. The aim of knowledge management is to harness both, and to facilitate the transfer of tacit to tacit/explicit and vice versa, thereby creating new knowledge [8]. Knowledge management currently still defies precise definition [3]. However, different authors have proposed a number of definitions: • “Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organisational adaptation, survival and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change. Essentially it embodies organisational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information-processing capacity, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings” [6]. • “Knowledge Management is concerned with constantly creating new knowledge, disseminating it widely throughout the organisation and quickly embodying it in new technologies and products” [8]. • “Knowledge Management is the process by which the organisation generates wealth from its intellectual or knowledge-based assets” [1]. It is clear, from the definitions above, that knowledge management cannot simply be addressed by a technical solution, but that there are many other factors that play a role. The purpose of this research is to describe a case study of a South African consulting company defining and implementing a costeffective Knowledge Management System, by making use of 3rd year Computer Science and Information Systems (CS&IS) students at the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE). The business requirements for a Knowledge Management System are provided and the design of the system is presented. The experiences in implementing a leading edge KM project, using 3rd year CS&IS students for a national company, are discussed. Problems dealing with vague and initial ambiguous requirements and different implementation platforms are described. 2. STRATEGIES FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT In the literature, various strategies and techniques for knowledge management have been proposed. Large consulting companies such as Deloitte&Touche, Accenture and Ernst &Young have already embraced and implemented these strategies and techniques [7, 9, 10, 11]. A summary of the guidelines and lessons learnt by these companies include the following: i. Drive knowledge management with commitment from the top; ii. Put into pla ce organisational structures to support knowledge creation; iii. Build a technological infrastructure to support knowledge management; iv. Measure and incentivise knowledge sharing; v. Build cross-functional teams; and vi. Recruit & attract the best brains in the industry. The development of a KMS forms part of the technological infrastructure to support knowledge management. The hardware must be purchased and the software purchased or developed. A consulting company decided that they would like to collaborate with UPE Department of CS&IS and develop a KMS for the company, as a 3rd year project.
2
3. THE CDE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY Comparex Design Engineers (CDE) is a South African founded IT and business consulting company with a successful track record in the field of ERP (SAP R/3) software implementations. The company was founded approximately 6 years ago by 5 individuals and has since grown to its current size of over 120 consultants. CDE has a unique culture in that employees share knowledge freely amongst each other, mainly on an informal basis. The opportunities for converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge are very good, however the technological platform for supporting knowledge sharing was lacking. Often business models or templa tes are reinvented because the knowledge of their existence is not prevalent. It is sometimes difficult to locate the correct expert and requires multiple telephone calls. The identification of the correct resources for the staffing of projects was further a problem, as many different consultants possess a diverse amount of specialised knowledge. The knowledge possessed by consultants is recorded in their CVs, which are stored on a network. However, in order to find the correct person for a particular assignment, the central resourcing manager has to access individual files. To worsen the situation, the CV’s are not updated on a regular basis, so the skills reflected are not always accurate. CDE approached UPE’s Department of CS&IS and a project was launched in 2001 to develop a prototype KMS for CDE. The specific requirements that were incorporated into the technological infrastructure and the knowledge management system were: • The capturing of explicit knowledge. A facility for submitting documents, articles, templates and project reports to a knowledge base. During submission, the system would guide the user through a series of questions/screens, which will allow the knowledge base to classify the item for later retrieval. Typical questions are as to the nature of the article, the keywords, the author, etc; • A facility to push available information to interested parties. In an information-overload society, only relevant information should be pushed. For this reason, the KMS is to provide a subscription facility to Special Interest Groups (SIG). CDE employees can indicate their areas of interest and subscribe to SIGs. When a new item arrives, the system will check the subscription lists and send a notification to all subscribers; • Capturing the skills of CDE’s consultants. The purpose of this was to ease the task of finding the correct persons for particular projects. To ensure that this information stays current, a CV update program would generate e-mail messages to consultants to remind them to update their CV’s if they have not yet done so on a periodic basis; • The appointment of a knowledge administrator in the company. With the implementation of the knowledge management system, it is intended to also employ a knowledge officer or “cybrarian”, who will assist in the sourcing of information in the knowledge base and in relevant other sources such as trade publications, the Internet, etc; • The development of measurement criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of a KMS; • A facility to gauge how valuable contributions to the knowledge base are, by counting the number of times a particular item has been retrieved from the knowledge base; and • Ensuring that knowledge remains up to date. For example, the capturing of project reviews and reports after each project is completed.
3
4. THE CS&IS 3rd YEAR PROJECTS The 3rd year CS&IS project course at UPE entails the analysis, design and implementation of an information system by teams of students. Each project team comprises of two members, each member of the team being responsible for a specified subsection of the project. The teams are then allocated to a project supervisor who will guide them through the development of the system. The implementation of the project is usually done using MS-Access 2000 and Visual Basic. The students are allowed to make use of other implementation platforms if properly motivated and supported. CS&IS departments at universities in South Africa encourage 3rd year students to design and implement industry related IT projects [4]. In 2001, CDE provided the 3rd year students at UPE with the opportunity to develop a cutting edge knowledge management solution as well as enabling them to work with “real” users. CDE consultants were involved with the specification of requirements for the proposed knowledge management system. The CDE project was divided into two subsections: • The Consultant Administration System This subsystem provides functionality to Maintain Employee information, Update CVs, Skills, Courses attended / presented, Maintain Information Categories and Information Resources (articles) and View specific information documents. • The Project Management System This subsystem provides functionality to Maintain Project Information, Review Project Status, View Project Reports, Maintain Project Proposal Documents, Assigning Employees to a Project, View Skills information and Maintain Company (client) Information. The CDE project was divided into phases, using the SDLC, with required deliverables at the end of each phase. The project phases were: • Requirements phase This phase entails the investigation into the problem area. CDE provided the students with a problem description and source documents (formats of CVs, ideas from consultants), which they were required to study. The students then compile d a list of requirements questions, which were discussed during a workshop with some of the CDE consultants. This gave them the opportunity to clarify any questions relating to the specific needs of the users. The deliverable for this phase was a Requirements Document detailing the problem, setting out the requirements for each subsection and describing a proposed solution to the problem. • Analysis phase During this phase the students were required to draw up the Entity Relationship Dia gram (ERD) of the system as well as the Data Flow Diagram (DFD). • Design phase The Design phase entails the design of the database tables and provisional screen prototypes. The students compiled their own ERD during the analysis phase, however, later in the year; project groups were given a model ERD that enabled all the teams to continue working from the same standard. They were however given the choice to make use of the model ERD or their own ERD. • Implementation phase The implementation phase was done over 15 weeks. During this phase the CDE consultants visited the project teams on a couple of occasions to provide feedback on how screens looked and to
4
answer questions relating to required functionality. Most of the teams implemented using MS Access 2000 with only a couple of teams choosing other implementation platforms i.e. SQL Server, ASP and HTML. During the course of the project the students were also required to do presentations on each of the project phases. They had to discuss their proposed solutions, show prototypes of screens and discuss the implementation issues. The CDE consultants attended these presentations and provided feedback on related matters. At the end of the year the top six teams were invited to demonstrate their solution to a panel of CDE consultants and management at the CDE branch office at Port Elizabeth. The panel then selected the top three teams and awarded generous prizes to each team member. All six teams were awarded certificates of excellence for creating outstanding solutions. 5. PRACTICAL FINDINGS The majority of IT projects experience problems and managing the problems, experienced by students rd on a 3 year project, are a challenge. During the development of the CDE project the following difficulties had to be overcome: • Project Scope Due to the time constraints on the students and supervisors and the credit value of the course, the project had to be carefully scoped to ensure that the students were not overloaded. Minimum functionality was identified and the students were required to implement the specified requirements. Functionality over and above the minimum, for example notifying subscribers in SIGs of new items in the knowledge base and developing the system with a web browser interface; were labelled as Initiative. The students that opted to implement the additional requirements were awarded an initiative mark at the end of the year. • Vague requirements Specifying a Knowledge Management System is still a new research area and specifying the requirements for a KM solution tend to be a challenging task. Lack of existing KM systems to study, as well as insufficient knowledge on KM posed a problem for the CDE consultants, who assisted with the requirements. As a result, the initial requirements given to the students were fairly vague. The students, at this stage in their academic career, were accustomed to clear and specific systems requirements. Inconsistencies between the project supervisors understanding of system requirements contributed to the frustration. A solution to this was the setting up of Model Requirements by CDE consultants and lecturers, detailing the minimum functionality and explaining exactly what was required. A specifications document was compiled and made available to all students. A workshop was also organised with the students, supervisors and consultants were the topic of knowledge management and detailed system requirements were discussed. • Consultants ’ time Consultants’ time is valuable and finding time to visit the students posed to be a somewhat difficult task. Due to this, the students did not have the opportunity to work closely with their users. On the occasions when the consultants could not visit the students, all questions and ideas were communicated via e-mail to CDE and feedback received were placed on the course homepage on the CS&IS Intranet. • Implementation platforms It was suggested, by supervisors, that the development platform should be MS Access 2000. There were however a number of teams that opted to implement the system, using implementation platforms such as SQL Server, ASP and HTML, using their own hardware. An additional feature
5
CDE requested was that the system could be accessed via CDE’s Intranet. Teams implementing this feature could not make use of the facilities in the CS&IS 3 rd year laboratories, as the software required was not available. This posed some problems to the supervisors allocated to those teams, as it was difficult to track their progress, assist them with problems and provide feedback and support. Evaluating these projects required that the students had to transport their own hardware to UPE for evaluation purposes. 6. SUMMARY Knowledge management is the management of a company’s intellectual capital. A number of companies have increasingly focused their attention on knowledge management in order to adapt to the ever-changing business environment. Strategies for knowledge management have been proposed and implemented by international companies. This paper describes the efforts toward implementing a knowledge management IT system within a South African consulting company by making use of 3rd year CS&IS students. As the company already has a very unique culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration, this project focused on the technology and infrastructure components. CDE consultants assisted with the requirements and specifications for the proposed KMS and provided input to the students during the development process. Problems were encountered, such as project scope growth, vague requirements, time constraints from consultants and challenging implementation platforms. These problems were however successfully addressed and solved. Although there were some problems experienced during the development of the project, it was a great learning experience for the students, supervisors and CDE consultants involved in the project. It enabled the students to get a glimpse of how it would be to work with real users on a cutting edge solution with requirements that were not clear and understandable at first. Evaluating how well the system is utilised by the consultants and administrative staff will be ongoing research and whether it is feasible to improve the system. REFERENCES [1] Bukowitz, W. R. and Williams, R. L., The Knowledge Management Fieldbook, Prentice Hall, 1999. [2] Drucker, P. F., The Coming of the New Organization, Harvard Review on Knowledge Management, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, 1998. [3] Housel, T. and Bell, A. H., Measuring and Managing Knowledge, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, New York, 2001. [4] Le Roux, G. and Joubert, P. Teaching Informatics with Collaborative Learning and Team Work, SACLA 2001 Proceedings, Bronkhorstspruit, S.A., 27-29 June 2001. [5] Malhotra, Y., Knowledge Management for the New World of Business, Asian Strategy Leadership Institute Review, Vol. 6, 1998. [6] Malhotra, Y., Knowledge Management for E-Business Performance: Advancing Information Stragety to ‘Internet Time’, Information Strategy: The Executive’s Journal, Vol. 16(4), 2000. [7] McLean, D., Building and Leveraging Knowledge Capital: Ernst &Young Case Study, Knowledge Capital: Accounting for Intangible Assets in the New Economy , B2B Conference, Centurion Lake, 29-31 May, 2001. [8] Nonaka, I., The Knowledge-Creating Company, Harvard Review on Knowledge Management, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, 1998. [9] Quinn, J. B., Anderson, P. and Finkelstein, S., Managing Professional Intellect, Harvard Review on Knowledge Management, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, 1998. [10] Schwikkard, D., Knowledge Management and Learning in a Professional Service Firm,
6
Knowledge Capital: Accounting for Intangible Assets in the New Economy, B2B Conference, Centurion Lake, 29-31 May, 2001. [11] Temkin, L., Intellectual Capital Assets – Can you make them relevant to the Bottom Line, Knowledge Capital: Accounting for Intangible Assets in the New Economy, B2B Conference, Centurion Lake, 29-31 May, 2001.
7
doc_760739273.pdf