The Course

Knowledge management projects have seen a resurgence in many organizations. However, KM initiatives are much more grounded, with a focus on tangible benefits and bottom line results. Organizations recognize the need to capture knowledge as it is created, vet, edit and approve knowledge objects and make them available to knowledge consumers in a variety of roles, engaging in a multitude of tasks and with varying contexts.

For example, a piece of explicit knowledge for a software firm might be in the form of a support document. That document might be appropriate for customers who are trying to troubleshoot a problem by searching a publicly available knowledge base. The same content might be useful for a technical field consultant installing the software. It might also be provided as a tech bulletin, or subscription based “tips and tricks” document. It might also have value to a business analyst scoping a project or developing a project plan. It may have applicability to specific products or a products used in a particular configuration.

The challenge of KM is one of context - understanding the user’s frame of reference, mental model, problem solving approach and stage of process in their work task. We also need to know something about how they describe the things that they need and their understanding of labels that are placed on documents.

All of this points to the need for terminology that is consistent and multiple facets that can be used to describe all of these various attributes of content. We need knowledge taxonomy.

But knowledge is messy and language is imprecise. The landscape of organizational knowledge and expertise is constantly shifting. People are continually processing explicit knowledge, combining it with tacit judgment and expertise and applying it to create, communicate, and apply new knowledge.

A few years ago, KM lost credibility when the term was hijacked by technology firms or abstracted to theory disconnected from practical application. But now, organizations are recognizing the chaos that Web sites, intranets, document management tools, portals, collaborative workspaces, email, discussion forums, and other technologies are creating. Managers are starting to recognize the need for organizing principles that can extend across silos, span the enterprise, and connect disparate systems and repositories.

A well-conceived taxonomy is the foundation for any project involving search, navigation, enterprise integration, content management, portals, compliance, records management, and collaboration.

This session will review how taxonomy projects are essential to knowledge management initiatives and how to apply thesaurus structures to improve the search, navigation, and findability of explicit knowledge as well as the ability to locate and leverage tacit expertise.

We will focus on the need to define context and process and ways to apply taxonomies to effectively support KM and solve business problems that impact the bottom line.

Targeted Learners

Business managers, librarians, information architects, application developers, intranet managers, content managers, people responsible for search and for application integration.

Critical Questions

• How can taxonomy support knowledge processes?
• How can facets be derived and applied?
• What are the ways that taxonomies need to be integrated with search, expertise location, and personalization?
• How can structured and unstructured processes be better managed through use of enterprise taxonomies?
• How can processes be mapped to useful terms in a taxonomy?

Related Reading
"To Keep KM Current, Pay Attention to Context Changes." Seth Earley,  Information Outlook April 2006.

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