Capture
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Contents
Definition
Capture is The knowledge process that brings data, information, or knowledge into the organizational knowledge base. A process of capturing the knowledge available within an organization and making it available.
Summary
Knowledge capture may refer to be either explicit or tacit knowledge. While capturing explicit knowledge is rather straightforward, usually inserting information into a document management system, the process of capturing tacit knowledge is more involved. An efficient way of capturing tacit knowledge is integration into day-to-day work processes. Capturing of specific knowledge, e.g. when a risk of losing knowledge is identified, may require targeted measures and tailored tools.
Description
Knowledge capturing refers to collecting all information available in the organization, and making it retrievable in the knowledge base of the organization. While capturing explicit knowledge is quite straightforward, the capturing of tacit knowledge usually is more involved, and may require specific provisions by the organization.
Capturing explicit knowledge
Customarily, documented knowledge is stored in a document management system. Such systems are able to handle of a wide range of media and formats, and usually offer a rich set of features for managing all document related processes. The capturing of tacit knowledge results ultimately in documents which are stored in the document management system, and thus made available to everybody having access rights to the documents.
Capturing tacit knowledge
Integrating knowledge capture in everyday work
A very efficient way of capturing tacit knowledge consist in integrate knowledge capturing into work processes. Indeed, much tacit knowledge is captured by documentation as an inherent part of many work activities. However, more effort may be requested in order to capture the knowledge generated in work processes in a systematic way. Appropriate methods are well established by now, and include capturing personal experience (debriefing), collections of process of project experiences (lessons learned), and distillation of good experiences (best practices). If the work process is well defined and appropriate procedures are specified in the workflow, the capturing process will not be seen as causing additional work load, but will be acknowledge as an inherent part of the work process
Debriefing
Lessons learned
Best practice
Capturing specific knowledge
In cases where risks of losing critical knowledge have been identified, such as key people retiring or leaving, or reliance on a single expert, targeted measures and tailored tools may be required to support a facilitated process of knowledge capture.
In the case of capturing specific knowledge, the extent of the knowledge to be externalized, the knowledge holders and the circle of recipients are usually well known. Therefore, the capturing process may be specified more precisely, often in form of a project. This will start from choosing appropriate methods and tools, and may include appointing a facilitator, scheduling a series of face-to-face sessions, and determining and inviting attendants of the sessions (one or more experts, facilitator, recipients). As a result, the knowledge should be available in the document management system in a form best suited to the needs of knowledge recipients.
Techniques and tools for tacit knowledge capturing
Example: Sellafield practices
In Sellafield, the capture of expert knowledge is organised by the ROCK (retention of critical knowledge) process, which consists of a risk assessment, followed by the implementation of an action plan, in which a ROCK facilitator works with the expert and knowledge recipients to both capture and transfer relevant expertise. The capture results are stored in a Sharepoint expertise library. The capture tools are described in a Sharepoint ROCK resource centre.
References
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