Knowledge management tools

Preface

In 1999, Ron Shevlin, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, told a conference audience that Knowledge Management (KM) was the hottest thing since reengineering. However, a Forrester Research study had just reported that six out of seven companies investing in Knowledge Management were doing so on faith—not even trying to measure the return. At the same time, British Petroleum’s Knowledge Management team, led by Kent Greenes, published the fact that their Knowledge Management program had delivered documented savings of $260 million in a single year, and that $400 million more was possible but not yet delivered. Hearing this, Tom Stewart (Fortune, 1999)1 asked, “Nearly $700 million. How’d they do it?” Stewart’s question will be answered in this book.

We present a framework and model that any organization can adapt to increase performance through learning by using Knowledge Management tools and processes. We describe lessons from the application of this and similar frameworks in a variety of organizational settings, from large global financial and professional services firms to multinational oil and mining companies, to a small charity in the voluntary sector. We also describe lessons that the BP Knowledge Management team learned, and suggest a role for human resources (HR) professionals in implementing successful Knowledge Management initiatives.

The BP Knowledge Management team had several important advantages, one of them being commitment right from the very top of the organization. Lord John Browne, CEO of British Petroleum, recognized the need to improve performance by sharing good practices, reusing knowledge, and accelerating learning; and in 1997 he took a key step toward using learning to improve performance by commissioning the BP KM program. Since that time, companies all over the world in every industry have embarked on Knowledge Management implementation projects. Few have had the benefit of support at the CEO level of Lord John Browne;2 some have applied “stealth techniques” at the grassroots level. The intervening years have shown an upsurge in KM activity—innumerable books and Web sites have been published, a KM conference circuit is in place, and every major consulting firm has established a KM practice. But what are the measurable results? Stewart’s question continues to be relevant: “How do you do it?” How do you deliver measurable performance improvement through the management of knowledge? And even more fundamentally, how can you manage knowledge in the first place?

What Is Knowledge Management?
At the beginning of a seminar, conference, or training session, when participants are asked to define Knowledge Management, they often respond that it is the “latest management fad.” Many say that Knowledge Management is an oxymoron. Numerous people believe that knowledge, by definition, cannot be managed. On the other hand, most people agree that all work involves a knowledge component, and that any team uses knowledge, experience, and know-how as a resource in the process of completing any task or project. Students in an executive management program in 2002 at the Graduate School of Business (GSB) at the University of Cape Town in South Africa responded to the question “What does Knowledge Management mean to you?” Their answers are similar to statements heard in other programs in corporate and academic settings around the world. Knowledge Management is:

• What the company knows about competitors, processes.
• Learning from experience.
• Electronic libraries and databases.
• A systematic way of disseminating information and best practices.
• What we need to know, finding it, and using it to add value and get to a higher level of productivity.
• Energizing peoples’ experiences and thoughts to make the organization grow.
• Formulating strategies and implementing them to integrate knowledge or information.
• Effective use of skills and expertise in the organization.
• Exchanging new and old ideas for the growth of the company.
• An enabler to drive continuous improvement in the organization.
• Obtaining external information, customer information, and competitive information
• Communication technology.

It’s clear that there is a range of perceptions about what Knowledge Management is and what it can deliver. What we would like to share with you in this book is our understanding, based on many years of working in this field, our perception of what is distinctive, and how and where it can add real business value. At its heart, Knowledge Management is the systems, procedures, approaches, and culture you put in place to manage one of your more valuable corporate assets— namely, your knowledge (and by knowledge we refer to the knowhow, experience, insight, and capability that allow your teams and individuals to make correct and rapid decisions in support of strategy). Knowledge is a difficult asset to manage, being intangible, fluid, personal, elusive, invisible, immeasurable, and ever evolving. However, many of the other intangible corporate assets—such as safety, brand, reputation, customer loyalty, and so on—are already being actively managed, with positive results. Why not knowledge? Even if the intangible nature of knowledge means it cannot be directly controlled, you can at least manage the systems, cultures, and pathways through which knowledge flows around the organization.

This paper exposes initially the motivations for developing and releasing a TRL online calculator by AEB (Brazilian Space Agency). Such motivations demands the tool to be a way not only to assess the readiness degree of past space missions and systems, but also as a method of evaluating and sharing new proposals with technological content. The TRL methodology and its relation to risk management is discussed. The development phases of the 'IMATEC Lite' application are described with emphasis to the data handling structure capable of storing the user product model. A result of technology assessment using the software is then detailed by presenting the PBS of the SERPENS 1 mission nanosatellite. The prospects of using the tool for judging the acceptability of new missions and projects are discussed as well as some of the encountered difficulties.

Nowadays the information is being used as leading phase for development. Information is generating from almost every sector of our society but, every society are not that much of developed. Some societies are very well developed, some developing and some are lagging in comparison to others. The secret behind the well-developed societies is information. They are the much producers, seekers, managers and users of information. This journey started from the very beginning concept data. After processing the data it became information. Now we are in the age of knowledge. The societal development is also changing from agrarian to information society and now knowledge society. In the role of the development of any society, library performs the pro-vital role. Various types of libraries are serving various types of users. The 21 st-century technologies proceed libraries to the sky level of providing tremendous services to the end users. This paper deals with the modern technologies used for proving services to the modern users. Modern users very need bases. They want much-pinpointed resources rather than a full document. So libraries are also becoming modern information centres. The internet made this job very easy for the professionals for providing the on campus as well as from outside for accessing the resources. Various tools are using for these purposes. DSpace is considered one of the KM tools.

Decisions on which management tools will be used in order to accomplish project objectives in the
most efficient way are contingent upon specific project features such as objectives, resources, and
context. One of the most challenging features is the project’s complexity. The objective of this
study is to contribute to the knowledge on the concept of project complexity, and on the
relationships between project complexity and the use of specific project management tools. A
questionnaire was submitted to 313 project managers. The data analysis indicated that the
complexity of projects managed by the participants is generated by the criticality of the goals and
can influence the frequency of use of processes and techniques related to project planning and
people management.

This paper exposes initially the motivations for developing a TRL online calculator by AEB (Brazilian Space Agency; in Portuguese, Agencia Espacial Brasileira). Such motivations demand the tool to be a way not only to assess the TRL condition of operational space missions and systems, but also as a method of evaluating and sharing proposals with new technological content. The TRL methodology and its relation to risk management are discussed. The development phases of the IMATEC Lite application are then described, with emphasis to the data handling structure capable of storing the user product model. A result of technology assessment using the software is detailed by presenting the PBS of the SERPENS 1 mission nanosatellite. The prospects of using the tool for judging the acceptability of new missions and projects are discussed, as well as some of the encountered difficulties.

As defined by Greco, Media Accessibility is the research area dealing with the “theories, practices, services, technologies and instruments that provide access to media products, services, and environments for people that cannot, or cannot properly, access that content in its original form” (Greco 2016). Ever since the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006, media accessibility has become a key issue in the worldwide agenda on social and cultural inclusion policies, practices and research. Many national and international institutions have been drafting or approving specific legislation, recommendations and guidelines. Social organisations have been lobbying and raising awareness about this issue, the industry has been developing new technical solutions, researchers have been testing access services, carrying out reception studies, suggesting new approaches to accessibility studies, and providing training in the various modalities linked to media accessibility. 
All this has produced a massive amount of information on media accessibility that is constantly increasing at a fast rate. Unfortunately, most of this information cannot be easily found and accessed because it is fragmented in different repositories and languages. The existence of a vast and expanding set of unorganised knowledge about MA may give rise to various issues of knowledge management (KM), which in turn is having a negative impact on the development of a unified research and policy agenda that can tackle the challenges of a global inclusive society (HBB4ALL 2014). The Media Accessibility Platform (MAP - www.mapaccess.org) has been designed and created specifically to rise to this challenge. MAP is the first collaborative online platform that provides a unified atlas charting the worldwide landscape of media accessibility through the creation of a structured corpus of the history and the state-of-the-art of: research, policies, training and practices in this field. It provides institutions, industry, organisations, researchers and users with organised and systematic information regarding international, national and local legislation, accessibility media services, success cases, research projects and publications, accessibility by country, information about technologies, work-in-progress, academic and professional training, etc. MAP adopts a holistic approach in which media accessibility tackles not only sensorial barriers but also linguistic ones, thus including audio description, audio subtitling, accessible filmmaking, dubbing, media interpreting, respeaking, revoicing, Sign Language interpreting, subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing, subtitling, surtitling and voice-over (Orero and Matamala 2007, Romero-Fresco 2013).
MAP is organised into six main sections - Research, Training, Events, Stakeholders, Modalities and Accessometer – each one organised in sub-sections. Research contains information about past and current research projects, publications and conference presentations. Training contains information about university courses, MOOCs and professional training courses. Events contains information about past, current and future conferences, seminars, workshops and so forth. Stakeholders groups pages with detailed information about companies and organisations, such as user associations. Modalities groups all the data contained in MAP and displays it according to the different areas included within media accessibility (subtitling  for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, audio description, voice over, etc.). The Accessometer is MAP’s most distinctive feature. It provides an actual map of all the legislation, standards and guidelines on media accessibility at both international and national levels, organised by countries. All the information is uploaded, managed and checked via the threefold structure Contributor-Editor-Administrator. MAP aims to provide a coherent and unified environment to promote global coordination of efforts at different levels related to media accessibility. MAP will foster academic research as well as technological developments, and in the long run support social change.

References
G. M. Greco (2016), ‘On Accessibility as a Human Right, with an application to  Media Accessibility’, in A. Matamala and P. Orero (eds.), Researching Audio Description. New Approaches, Palgrave, London, pp. 11-33.

HBB4ALL (2014), D2.6.1 – Quality Metrics for TV Access http://www.hbb4all.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/D2.6.1-Quality-metrics-for-TV-access.pdf.

P. Orero and A. Matamala (2007), ‘Accessible opera: overcoming linguistic and sensorial barriers’. Perspectives. Studies in Translatology, 15(4), pp. 262-277.

P. Romero-Fresco (2013), ‘Accessible filmmaking: Joining the dots between audiovisual translation, accessibility and filmmaking’, Jostrans - The Journal of Specialised Translation, 20, pp. 201–223.

Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Part I: Overview The Knowledge Management Mandate: Performance through learning A framework for performance Going Deeper: Elements of Knowledge for Action to produce results Putting theory into practice: Sensemaking levers create a culture for learning Putting theory into practice: Structuring levers that support learning actions The bottom-line: Measuring knowledge management initiatives Part 2: Case studies British Petroleum's KM Journey: A decade of change KM in the Aid & Development Sector: A case study in implementation at Tearfund KM in Business Performance at BP Well engineering Implementing KM within DeBeers Knowledge Fuel of fighting fires: Knowledge Capture at Ukuvuka, a Government, Business & Community Partnership Where did we start? Building our own Knowledge Park at Old Mutual Generating capabilities in communities of practice: The Clarica story Building a membership firm through Practice communities at Arthur Andersen Piloting KM: L...

ABSTRACT
This study aimed to assess the reaction-based satisfaction level of Kuwait University’s students regarding the
utilization of some PKM tools in their academic studies and its influence on managing their knowledge. A total
of 100 undergraduate students from the College of Education participated in this research. Regardless of
students being not aware at all about KM, PKM, and PKM tools. Yet, the fact is that the results showed a
significantly positive, affirmative, and encouraging feelings, attitudes, and perceptions with respect to using
PKM tools for academia and personal life as well (i.e., yielded an agreement ratio about 95 percent). The
majority of the participants did consider PKM tools as being appropriate and useful to their work/study. They
also did believe that PKM tools are important constituents for success in the global knowledge society. Thus,
most of the participants were highly satisfied with PKM tools and, accordingly, their reaction-based satisfaction
level was positive and significantly high among all subgroups.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management Tools,
Personal Knowledge Management Tools, Education.