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Definition

Implementation of a KM system is Installing a Knowledge Management System within an organization Source: [[]]

Summary

Description

A road map for successful implementation

Like any other initiative within an organization, successful implementation of a KM project requires proactive management through a number of development stages. For KM projects, a five -stage process is applicable as depicted by Fig. 1 below. Each of the five stages is described in the paras that follow.

Stage 1 — Orientation

Orientation involves the understanding of basic KM concepts and the understanding of how KM can help drive change and increase organizational performance. The IAEA has done much to assist in this area and have produced significant reference material to help the initiation and education of managers and practitioners at all levels. In addition to the documentation listed in the References section of this publication, the IAEA has undertaken other initiatives to help with the understanding of KM concepts and the application of best practice. Such initiatives include:

• School of Nuclear Knowledge Management (currently held every year in Trieste, Italy);
• IAEA KM Assist Visits (these are described in more detail in Section 9 of this publication).

It is extremely important that managers and sponsors understand what KM actually is, understand how benefits can be achieved and have a basic understanding of the techniques that can be used to facilitate improvement. Orientation may take several months to organize and deliver. A useful exercise at this stage is to benchmark the current KM maturity of the organization. The IAEA maturity tool discussed in Appendix provides a means of achieving this.

Stage 2 — Strategy formulation

During this stage the organization begins to make plans on how to utilize KM approaches to help deliver the intended improvements or change. A good starting point here is to put together a KM policy or set of policies that will underpin future activities. This is similar to the approach that organizations use to implement formal quality management systems; in fact some organizations extend the existing quality assurance (QA) or human resources (HR) policies to address KM issues. Alternatively, a stand-alone KM policy can be prepared. Both approaches are equally valid and have their own merits. The main aim of this policy stage is to:

• Consolidate initial ideas;
• Communicate these ideas to others in the organization;
• Gain commitment from senior managers;
• Prepare the ground for stage 3 and future stages.

The policy document(s) contain top-level ideas and organizational beliefs but more detail is needed for the overall strategy and approach to be viable. This is best described by the creation of a separate strategy document or business plan that can be used as a means to guide a particular project or a series of future initiatives. This publication will usually be established by a group of senior managers responsible for the initiative and will involve many detailed discussions, meetings and workshops aimed to capture ideas from the main decision makers in the organization. The typical contents of a business plan or strategy document required to ‘kick-start’ a KM initiative or project may comprise:

1. Executive summary;
   • Brief, one page summary of the initiative.
2. Introduction;
   • Describes what the initiative is, why it is needed and why/how applying KM concepts can help the organization. KM terminology should be introduced and explained here.
3. Business opportunity and benefits;
   • Outlines the quantitative and qualitative benefits to be gained from the implementation.
4. Resources;
   • Describes what resources i.e. people, equipment, money, will be needed for the initiative.
5. Outline implementation plan;
   • Describes the approach, methodologies, technical solutions, team responsibilities, external assistance, timescales etc. for implementation.
6. Risk analysis;
   • Considers the main risks of implementation and the mitigation actions needed to address these risks.
7. Appendices;
   • Information required supporting where necessary.

Once available in draft form it is necessary to distribute the document to all participants involved in the process to gain as much support as possible before the KM project launch process begins.

Stage 3 — Design and launch

A successful KM implementation requires a number of prerequisites to be in place at the start of a project. These include, but are not limited to:

• Does the project align with organizational needs?
• Is the purpose of the project clearly defined?
• Are the benefits understood and well communicated?
• Is there top-level management support/commitment?
• Is there a senior management sponsor?
• Is a project manager assigned?
• Are resources made available?
• Is there sufficient ‘know how’ in the project team?
• Is the knowledge sharing culture of the organization understood and receptive to the needs of the project?

Much of the above should have already been discussed and agreed during phase 2, however, there may have been changes or a significant delay in starting the project since phase 2 and some of these aspects may need to be revisited. A project specific plan should be developed which describes the project aims and objectives together with a timed plan of tasks and details of resource requirements. The template discussed in para 7.1.2 can be developed and used for this purpose. The project should be run as an internal change initiative requiring buy-in and support from top-level management. The exact details of the plan will vary from project to project but will need to reflect the benefits sought and the KM tools and methodologies to be used. Many initiatives at this stage involve the concept of a pilot project, i.e. a project with limited scope used to test the tools and methodologies before a full roll out commences.

Stage 4 — Expand and support

Stage 4, ‘Expand and support’, builds on the project launch in Stage 3 and continues with the further implementation of KM in the organization. If a pilot project is adopted in Stage 3, then lessons learned from this project are important inputs to this stage. Expanding the KM capability of the organization can be done in a number of different ways, e.g.:

• Roll out of the tools and methodologies used in Stage 3 into other, additional areas or departments of the R&D organization;
• Extension of the KM tools and methodologies;
• Implementation of new or additional KM tools and methodologies.

This expansion of functionality will invariably lead to the requirement for additional budget and resources. Further support from senior management will also be needed to ensure that the initiative is correctly focused and does not falter. If there are multiple KM initiatives to deliver in parallel it may be necessary to consider the adoption of a ‘programme management’ approach. This considers the cross project links between the various initiatives and addresses aspects such as interdependencies and priorities. Programme management is a topic in its own right and is outside the scope of this publication.

Stage 5 — Institutionalize knowledge management

This stage is reached when multiple KM projects have been realized after many years of effort. KM techniques and approaches become a normal part of organizational activities and can be found, for example, integrated into the QA system (see Section 8). Cultural issues that may have existed following the introduction of KM projects will have been resolved and the organization will have a positive view of KM and its benefits. To reach this stage is not the end for KM in the organization but rather the beginning as with any other process; KM becomes part of the integrated management system and needs to be maintained within the cycle of continuous improvement.

Governance and project reporting structures

Governance for a KM project relates to consistent management, implementing cohesive policies, establishing appropriate methods/tools and providing the means of empowerment for a given area of responsibility. These should be derived and communicated via the strategy documents and project plans described above in stages 2 and 3.

The set up and reporting aspects for a KM project are very important and also relate to governance issues. Figure 1 shows the typical reporting structure that might apply to any kind of R&D organization looking to implement a KM project. The project sponsor is a key member of top management with decision making powers inherent in his or her main role.

The IT development team and Process development team typically come from the IT Department and QA Department respectively (but this need not be the case). Process development is an important aspect as most KM projects will result in a new way of working for many employees.

The Implementation team should come from the area(s) of the organization where the project is to be implemented. This could be department, group or location based. This is a very important representative group as the project success or failure will dependent on how well the recipient group implement and derive benefit from the initiative.

A Phase review team is an independent team of senior managers who scrutinize the project and ensure alignment with the R&D business. They meet on a regular basis (perhaps 3–4 times during the duration of the project).

Some KM projects may also require specialist input from other departments such as Human Resources, Training, and Administration etc. It is important to select the most appropriate team structure and individuals to meet each project’s specific needs.

Avoiding common pitfalls

Insufficient management commitment

Incorrect business alignment

Underestimating resource requirements

Failing to address cultural issues

Poor communication

Underestimating implementation timescales

Source: Knowledge Management for Nuclear Research and Development Organizations

Description

To talk more detailed about the specifics for different type of organizations refer to 2.3.) To define roles and responsibilities in KM (different ways: one org unit, or not) Specific approach depends on the type of Organization and national culture, the tools can be tailored, make a self-assessment, try to translate the sheet into something meaningful to your organization, ( if you are just starting, to have some external expert in the team may be useful, you may ask for an assist visit to the Agency ) Based on your Self-Assessment, identify Strengths and Weaknesses, Develop Project plans, Try to focus on the deficiencies, prioritize, make a pilot project, ………….

The chapter provides guidelines in designing and implementing NKM strategies. The approach will depend on the type of organization; this may call for tailoring the tools such as the assessment sheets to specific needs (language, organizational culture), or/and assistance from outside experts. The suggested approach starts from a self-assessment to identify the strengths and weaknesses of KM in the organizations. According to the outcome of that assessment, pilot projects can be developed and started, involving key personnel in management and subject experts.

Each type of organization requires a specific approach. These approaches are outlined for:

1. Nuclear power plants (NPP)
2. Radioactive waste management organisations (RWM)
3. Research and development (R&D) and technical support (TSO) organisations
4. Regulatory bodies
5. Academic organisations

The guideline for each of these organizations will concentrate on specific challenges, the key elements required, and a road map for the implementation of the KM strategies. This chapter provides guidelines in designing and implementing NKM strategies in nuclear organizations. Specific guidelines are outlined for NPPs, radioactive waste management, R&D, TSOs, regulatory bodies and academic organizations. Tailored approaches and tools are used to address differences in applications, organizational and national culture, language, and other variations.

The guidelines for each of these organizations concentrate on specific challenges, the key elements required, and a road map for the implementation of the NKM strategies. The suggested approach includes a self-assessment to identify the strengths and weaknesses of knowledge management in the organization. Based on the results of the self-assessment (identified gaps), pilot projects can be developed and started involving key personnel in management and subject experts.

The level of information technology sophistication and complexity may vary considerably from one facility to another. The suggestions and recommendations for each type of facility must therefore likely be adapted to the facility’s current and anticipated IT infrastructure and technology deployments. In this case, the facility must consider this requirement, as well as the particular organization and culture of the facility.

Nuclear power plants (NPP)

NKM for radioactive waste management organisations (RWM)

Research and development (R&D) and technical support (TSO) organisations

Regulatory bodies

Academic organisations

Source: Guide on nuclear knowledge management

Description

This section does not attempt to describe a complete nuclear facility Information technology programme, but rather serves to review the specific requirements of NPP information technology solutions to support a process-oriented NKM programme.

Needs

Before any information technology solutions may be considered, the terms and definitions of the basic elements into which information occurs must be understood.

Data

Information

Review and apply definitions of data, information, and knowledge

The acquisition of data and information, and the resulting knowledge that these two entities may produce is greatly influenced by the facility that the enterprise has with regard to information technology. IT systems cannot be relied upon to capture or create knowledge, but they often accumulate a great store of data and information coincident to the daily work and operation of the NPP. The degree and proficiency to which the NPP utilizes technology for design information and work management may determine the quality of information for knowledge management which can be acquired. In addition to coincidental information and data and implementation of specific knowledge management software and ‘expert systems’ is another way to acquire and evaluate data and information for knowledge management.

Identify required NKM software functionality

This section describes some of the functionality and general characteristics which should be considered when selecting process-oriented NKM software solutions. The specific functionality for knowledge management software depends on two criteria: the required functions and features for the software to fulfil, and specific organization needs and work culture considerations. Software designed for knowledge management emphasizes the ability to capture information from users as an integral part of daily work, without significant additional effort on the part of the worker.

• Connection — the solution should routinely and seamlessly connect all affected users. Accessibility is particularly important for knowledge management applications to ensure the widest possible audience of users and to help minimize lost opportunities.
• Repository — the way that information is stored by the NKM system is very important for later compatibility and usability, both from a technical perspective and by organization of the raw data. The repository may not be the final storage location for the information.
• Validation — the solution should be able to apply elementary data validation and NKM business rules to validate input immediately upon entry, as well as be able to apply more sophisticated rules during data post-processing.
• Integration — the ultimate goal of knowledge gathered for an NKM programme from processes is evaluation of diverse information with other related information, as well as overall analysis in the context of the facility. Integration is thus a key element of NKM technology, with major License holders’ other IT applications not only referring to technical issues, such as data formats and IT infrastructure, but also including user interfaces, context, templates and format of results. Successful integration depends heavily on software and data compatibility, discussed below.
• Mechanisms — the processes by which people are brought together with machines for the purpose of capturing and transferring knowledge must be carefully matched to the software, but also the work culture and techniques for capture of legacy knowledge. For example, handling senior staff members will require different processes and likely a different level of computer literacy than capturing newer information from young staff members.
• Software compatibility — the widest possible compatibility potential should be included in the criteria for any dedicated NKM software, as the ultimate repository for most facility knowledge will be someplace else. Industry standards with low ‘footprint’, such as open standards like XML and other metadata-based architectures generally have the highest compatibility and are preferred if available.
• Knowledge templates — software solutions for NKM should feature ‘templates’, or standard guides, for different types of activities that can be a source of technical and process knowledge.

Identify IT Project sponsors and responsibilities

A successful NKM programme will require the identification and development of one or more project sponsors. These sponsors should have sufficient authority and influence in the enterprise to be able to support the facility in NKM requirements for setting up programmes, acquiring technology and affecting procedural and process requirements to ensure that NKM goals and objectives are met.

Statutory responsibilities

The nuclear facility has statutory requirements for capture and management of data and information produced coincident to facility processes. These originate from regulator, industry standard and best practice and they are usually contained in the facility Quality Assurance plan, facility programmes and procedures, as well as owner or corporate directives concerning management of data and information technology.

Programmatic requirements

An NKM programme should be developed and approved by top-level management in the enterprise or facility. Ideally, the NKM programme should also be identified in mandating facility documents such as QA Plan and Facility Programmes, as well as supporting procedures. In addition, related facility procedures should be reviewed for enhancements or additions to support NKM. The programme should also describe, if only in general terms, the functions and features to be expected in a technology solution for NKM, and how best to utilize technology to support NKM.

Appointments

License holder management should appoint key NKM sponsors and staff, and facility and operating appoint positions to be filled to execute key NKM programme roles, such as coordinators, facilitators, training, etc.

Identify user community and needs

In order to develop the best technology solution to support NKM, the following questions should be considered and evaluated for design, selection or development of an NKM technology:

• Who: Conceivably, everybody in the facility or enterprise can contribute to collecting information for NKM and may therefore become part of the user community.
• When: Knowledge is best collected as it is created. Thus, knowledge from management is best gained during an organization change, knowledge from engineering during a design change, knowledge from operations during operating incidents.
• What: A large volume of knowledge may potentially be acquired from any process from within the POKM system.
• Where: Knowledge potentially exists anywhere facility work has been performed, and may or may not have been documented and evaluated. Much of it may still be resident in worker’s minds and must be transferred to a technology platform, or risk permanent loss.
• Which: Technology support for the capture, processing, and evaluation of data and information, and converting it into ‘knowledge’, is a key strategy of the POKM approach.
• How: By combining the factors discussed above, the POKM IT approach is developed to implement ‘how’ POKM is executed by the technology system.

Existing IT infrastructure

Existing IT strategy and plans

The Information Technology organization in the nuclear facility will have an IT strategy, Target architecture and the facility Information management system (IMS), which form the overall path forward for facility technology projects and deployments. This strategy affects most every aspect of technology and computing in the facility, and may be decided by the facility itself or may be mandated by the facility license holder, owner or corporate interest.

Because of this, the NKM technologies that are selected or created for the facility must be able to be deployed within the facilities IT architecture. The key constraints in this selection are usually two: which hardware Central Processing Unit (CPU) technology is selected (the ‘platform’), and which Operating System is selected for implementation on the platform. These two choices will strongly govern all subsequent possibilities and choices for networks, application software and even data formats which can be used on the system. Table 2 Figure xx below shows some of the relationships of typical nuclear facility software applications.

Before finalizing the specifications, the NKM software concepts and project plan should be presented to the facility IT organization. The decision should be made of whether to ‘buy or build’, and budget and economic plans should be reviewed with IT management. If it is decided to purchase software, or outsource the development, the vendor selected may be controlled not only by reputation, quality, past products or size alone, but may also be subject to an approved vendor’s list or other criteria for selection as a facility vendor. Since compatibility is particularly important for NKM functionality, the IT organization will evaluate the selected solution(s) with the facility’s current IT applications inventory.

IT techniques for acquiring external and contractor data

The facility license holder likely has quality procedures for interfacing with contractors and vendors for the purpose of exchanging information in the course of engineering design, procurement or other operational services. The IT organization is sometimes involved in this process for technical purposes. To implement the knowledge management programme, procedural and technical requirements must be developed and implemented in external vendor contracts to support delivery of data and information created from outside of the facility. Contracts with vendors should include:

• Ensure requirements for sharing of data, information and knowledge are included in vendor contracts. This includes work process milestones and ‘hold points’ where data is to be captured and published back the facility.
• Make sure external contractors have a connection to the system. For active, real-time (PLM) systems, this connection must be continuous and reliable.
• Make sure contractors understand what is required from them, in terms of source, type, format, content and delivery time for data and information.

Legacy facilities, life cycle and paper dependency

Nuclear facilities must evaluate knowledge management strategy and planning in terms of what stage in the facility lifecycle they are currently in. For example, a legacy facility nearing the end of service life having the bulk of its knowledge residing on paper-based documentation and a very senior, long-term working staff, may wish to adopt a different approach to NKM than a new facility which is still in the design stage, completely technology-driven information systems and just beginning to hire new staff members.

Older, legacy facilities are a particularly important source of knowledge from a transferability standpoint (e.g. for decommissioning, use at other similar facilities, etc.). They represent thousands of man-years of operating experience and offer a great amount of history and lessons learned for new facilities. The following list describes those knowledge management technology pre-requisites that are the most applicable to older facilities. In order for paper, microfilm or other physical legacy record media and documents will require optical scanning and digitizing (creating electronic image) and reading through optical character conversion (OCR). The information may then be processed through technology solutions for content, relationships and context in an NKM environment. The NKM project must review these records and may wish to grade or filter by importance, age or relevance.

Processing of old/obsolete IT systems and storage Media usually have large amounts of data and information stored in older technologies which may prove difficult to extract or even read data. These can include data and information stored on media that can longer be read, reading devices no longer supported by contemporary computers, and even software and file formats that are no longer supported. The usual life span for a storage technology solution (hardware platform, operating system, application and read/write mechanism together) is nominally ten years (five for magnetic tape). Records stored exclusively on electronic or optical media to be refreshed at some interval.

Capture of Latent legacy knowledge requires identification of Latent knowledge that is not written or digitized, so it is the hardest to identify, measure and ultimately collect. This also makes it the difficult to quantify cost, return on investment and real benefit.

NKM technology project planning and scheduling

A project to develop and implement a technology-based NKM programme will require a plan and schedule to coordinate the process with most facility activities and organizations. The process will include not only the selection and deployment of technology solutions, but procedural and organizational changes impacting the facility and its work.

Define schedule and milestones

The overall schedule and start/end points of the project must be determined, as goals for completion. This schedule loading is based on the project scope, or activities to be completed, within the time frame. If the end point is not satisfactory, additional resources may be added, the scope and/or work effort reduced, or a combination of these. The project should also have definite milestones, where project progress is reviewed, interim results evaluated, and some increment or portion of the system is completed and may be tested and deployed before moving forward or general quality hold points to verify system operability and satisfaction of the system requirements. Milestones may also be tied to financial events such as payments or user acceptance of the system. Milestones that are tied to system demonstrations or visible deliverables also increase management and user confidence in the viability and success of the system.

Define acceptable risk

Like all projects involving the expenditure of time, money, and other resources, there is risk to be calculated for each phase of the project as well as the NKM programme as a whole. The risk calculation process includes defining risk for all possible approaches and outcomes, including the ‘null set’ of risk resulting from doing nothing. A risk assessment should then be conducted and reviewed by management, with the intent of using this as a basis for approval of project phases and the particular approach and plan to be followed. Risk can be expressed in terms of safety, cost, technology life, collateral benefits, public relations, regulator and state, or client, investor and owner relations, as well as other factors.

Finding practical solutions

When considering the requirements, needs and risks for the development of an NKM Programme and project, the most practical solutions offering the best economies and results for a given cost should be sought using the strategies described in Section 3.

Evaluate industry and facility/License holder best practices

The NKM programme should investigate and research industry best practices very early on in the programme planning process. In addition to technology selection, industry practices such as graded approaches, criteria for critical knowledge and handling of legacy information should be reviewed and applied to the facility NKM programme as they apply or can contribute to the Programme Consider joining industry focus groups and CoP’s to review and ask questions about technologies and how they were utilized in NKM programmes.

Measuring results

During the development of the NKM technology solution, certain benchmarks and standards should be utilized to determine if results are meeting original goals and expectations of the programme and software solutions. Assessment approaches are presented in Section 6.

Evaluate cost/benefit and return on investment

When preparing the NKM Project proposal and plan to present to management and the facility IT organization, the feasibility review should include a quantification of the cost/benefit and estimated return on investment, like would be required of any significant capital project undertaken by the facility or owner.

Quantification of short-term benefits for a knowledge-based system that may require years to demonstrate a tangible benefit requires a strong understanding of the concepts of NKM by management and investors, as well as commitment on the part of the facility owner. In addition, the use of milestones, progress demonstrations and other tangible results can greatly reassure management that progress is being made and money is well-spent toward the goal of meeting the technology requirements for NKM. Some of the elements of this evaluation are described below.

Fitness-for-purpose

NKM technology solutions should be carefully evaluated for fitness-for-purpose. A true understanding of the intention of the NKM solution to be selected, and the true expectations for the technology, will greatly improve the ability to select the correct solution for the task.

The user interface (UI)

This should be a serious consideration in selection of solutions. This aspect of the software is so important to overall relevance and success of the technology solution that, if a suitable interface cannot be identified for an otherwise best-in-breed solution, a ‘front-end’ interface may be considered to be developed in-house and utilized in lieu of the original.

Evaluate available commercial solutions

The ‘Buy or Build’ decision will be affected by software availability, but may be more influenced by the IT organization’s culture and management mandates. Some facility IT organizations have very strong and active software programming teams while other IT organizations routinely purchase or outsource the development of software, and consist mainly of analysts and systems staff to support application design and manage infrastructure.

Customization

In the course of reviewing approaches and alternatives for technology solutions, the decision to purchase or develop software in-house (‘build or buy’) should be explored. If commercial software is considered, the degree to which the software must be customized (if at all) must be evaluated in terms of the facility NKM project, integration and functionality requirements. It should also be considered the effect that customization will have on future license terms and ability to apply periodic version upgrades or updates for the software from the manufacturer.

Total cost of ownership

Most hardware, software and technology solutions are evaluated on the basis of total cost of ownership (TCO), which includes not only purchase cost but periodic maintenance and annual service contracts, as well as version upgrades and other software lifecycle events. TCO consideration also considers an estimate of the total service life of the software before obsolescence.

New technology and simplification of IT and networks

Information technology is changing and improving daily, and capabilities not possible only a few years (or even months) ago are available now. Because of this, it is paramount for the NKM programme to work closely with the facility IT organization, not only to ensure the latest technologies and products are considered, but to also evaluate some new technology that, while promising, may be too new, untested, or just not quite ready for ‘prime time’. To support this, the following should be considered:

• Improvements in knowledge capture and publication;
• Integration strategy for candidate solution(s) and known limits;
• Strategy and plans for user acceptance;
• Front work and publicity user involvement;
• Training;
• User feedback;
• Pilot project and prototyping;
• Access and security.

ANNEX EXAMPLES

Refer to Annexes IV, V, VIII AND IX VII and VIII ????Annex for Sample KM technology scenarios (mini KM portals) (Frantisek Siegel) for example IT Solutions, Portals and Tools case studies.

Source: Process oriented knowledge management

References

[1]

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