How IT Product Companies can Benefit From Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management (KM), the science of managing organizational knowledge, has been practiced quite extensively for several decades. Most major corporations, especially in traditional industries like manufacturing, have strong KM practices. IT product companies, however, have been slow in adopting KM. One key reason for this could be perception. Most IT product companies are relatively "young" and tend to have a healthy aversion to processes. Traditional KM tends to be very process-centric and IT product companies perceive it as a bottleneck.

Knowledge management is not esoteric or cumbersome as it's practitioners and detractors make it out to be. Let's try to understand it with this simple example. Every year, most of us hire tax consultants to file our tax returns. We do this because we don't readily possess the knowledge required to file our returns. So, the consultant applies her knowledge of tax laws to solve our problem. This is a classic example of good knowledge management where the consultant's knowledge is effectively used to solve a problem. Therefore, the service rendered by the consultant is a manifestation of her knowledge. Now, if this consultant were to develop a software for filing returns, wouldn't that software be a manifestation of her knowledge as well? It would. Therefore, products and services developed and delivered by an organization represent organizational knowledge.

Understanding Knowledge Flow - The Knowledge Stack

An effective KM practice is one that ensures efficient knowledge transfer from organization to customer and between functions within the organization. Let's revisit the example of the tax consultant. Does your tax consultant tell you to memorize tax laws before you meet her? She does not. In fact, she'd go out of business if she did that. Customers expect to get their job done without having to do any homework. Why then, do we force our users to read whitepapers, solution briefs, deployment guides, and manuals to use our products? If all the organizational knowledge has been distilled into our products, why do our users need customer support and documentation? To explain this, let me show you the knowledge stack, a pictorial representation of how organizations store, process, and share knowledge.

Fig 1 - The Knowledge Stack

The knowledge stack has three layers:

• Interfaces - This layer represents products and services that the end user interacts with. These include product interfaces like GUIs, CLIs, and APIs, customer support staff, product documentation, websites, marketing collateral, etc. A customer's perception of the product and the organization is based on her interaction with these interfaces. 
• Processes and Tools - This layer represents processes and tools that the organization uses to transform knowledge into a useful solution. The solution could be a product, service, or both. Without this important layer, all knowledge would remain tacit and mostly untapped. This layer includes important processes like trainings, code reviews, cross-functional team meetings, etc. It also includes tools like version control systems, bug databases, content management systems, Wikis, etc. 
• People - This layer represents organizational knowledge and knowledge workers. Most organizational knowledge is tacit in nature, i.e. it resides in people's minds. Organizational knowledge is like an iceberg with just a small fraction of it available in the form of content for immediate reuse. Knowledge workers could be subject matter experts or content developers. Subject matter experts possess tacit knowledge. Content developers interact with subject matter experts and transform some of their knowledge into content.

Fig 2 - Knowledge vs. Content

The knowledge stack clearly shows that not all organizational knowledge makes it into the product - that's not even practical. Some of it has to be transferred to the user as content or through customer support personnel. However, organizations need to understand that there needs to be a healthy balance between usability and content. If the product is not designed well, the organization will need to employ more support staff and develop more content to explain it.

Fig 3 - Common Knowledge Management Scenarios

So, knowledge management can ensure that the product is easy to use and thus can actually contribute to the "adoptability" of a product.

Fig 4 - Effective KM can Help you Cross the Chasm

Conclusion

Knowledge management has often been misunderstood as a HR function. It is associated with training and personnel development. Now, that may be true for industries like manufacturing but not hi-tech - especially IT. Being highly knowledge intensive, IT companies need to practice KM at every level. The KM team can play an important role in facilitating knowledge sharing both within the organization and between the organization and it's customers. Communities, WIKIs, and social networks can be used to develop efficient and effective KM solutions. Think KM think adoptability!