Engineering Management Field Project The Interactive Knowledge Library: Capturing, Sharing and Synthesizing Tacit Knowledge in Engineering By Craig M. Eaton Fall Semester, 2006 An EMGT Field Project report submitted to the Engineering Management Program and the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master’s of Science ____________________________ Charles Keller Committee Chairperson ____________________________ Craig Connell Committee Member ____________________________ Tim Wilcoxon Committee Member Date accepted:____________________________ Acknowledgements I wish to thank Ron Wood for the initial idea of looking into capturing knowledge for my project. Thanks to my sister Janette Savage for providing some useful references. Also thanks to Rich Perkins, Jan Sindt and Nitin Sanghi for the discussions on Knowledge Management. Most of all thanks to my committee, Chick Keller, Craig Connell and Tim Wilcoxon and particularly to Chick for introducing Wikis to me in a previous class. Last but not least thanks to my wife Lisa for the moral support and making me cups of rooibos tea while I worked on this. i Executive Summary The Interactive Knowledge Library is a place to capture, share and synthesize tacit and explicit knowledge. While explicit knowledge (or ‘know what’) is useful, it is tacit knowledge (or ‘know how’) that is the quintessence of knowledge, from which there is the most to be gained by sharing. The Interactive Knowledge Library provides a medium through which knowledge is expressed by enabling data and information to be set into context. A Wiki environment (e.g. www.wikipedia.org) is the best information technology solution currently available in order to enable the Interactive Knowledge Library concept. Capturing and sharing knowledge is achieved within the same tool, without any dedicated knowledge management organization. Contributions can be made, knowledge refined, corrections made and issues discussed anytime from any network location. The contributions can be iteratively improved and added to as users gain more knowledge. This collaborative conversational approach to knowledge management has the potential to enable better than linear knowledge growth. The Interactive Knowledge Library is not intended to replace other knowledge management initiatives but to complement them. The library will provide a major step forward in knowledge management by enabling open exchanges of knowledge to be recorded in an organized framework, allowing any user to easily retrieve this knowledge in the future on an ad-hoc basis, using minimal resources. ii Table of Contents PAGE Chapter One - Introduction 1 Chapter Two - Literature Review 3 Knowledge Management and Tacit Knowledge 3 Wikis and Wikis for Knowledge Management 7 Organizing and Maintaining a Wiki 11 Chapter Three - Why Capture Tacit Knowledge? 12 Traditional Engineering Knowledge Management 12 The Need for Improved Knowledge Management 14 Knowledge Capture Concepts 18 Chapter Four - Capturing and Sharing Knowledge in a Wiki-based Environment 22 Wiki as a Knowledge Management Solution 22 Information Technology Solutions for Knowledge Management 22 What is a Wiki? 24 What are the features of a Wiki, enabling use as an Interactive Knowledge Library 25 Knowledge Management with a Wiki 27 Knowledge Retrieval and Capture 27 The Knowledge Spiral and Conversational Knowledge Management in Wikis 29 Communities of Practice within the Knowledge Library 31 Wiki Software 32 Different Flavors of Wiki Software 32 Free and Open-Source Software versus Commercial Software 33 Which Wiki Features are most important for a Practical Interactive Knowledge Library 34 iii Table of Contents (continued) PAGE Chapter Five - Factors for Successful Implementation of the Interactive Knowledge Library 37 Management and Organizational Support 37 Culture and Management Support 38 Incentives and Measurements of Value Contribution 38 Organizational Infrastructure 40 Successful Wiki Implementation 41 Structuring and Maintaining Wiki Content 43 Wiki Structure 43 Guidelines and Templates 46 Site Maintenance 47 Suggestions for Further Work 48 References 50 Appendices Appendix A – Wikimatrix Comparison of Popular Wiki Software 53 Appendix B – Suggested Editing Guidelines for the Interactive 63 Knowledge Library Appendix C – Suggested Template Headers for System Design Pages 65 Appendix D – Suggested Template Headers for Specification Pages 66 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 – The Knowledge Spiral 14 Figure 2 – Conversational Technology Overview 23 Figure 3 – An Example of a Treemap 29 Figure 4 – Generic Wiki Site Structure 44 Figure 5 - High Level Interactive Knowledge Library Structure 45 v Chapter One INTRODUCTION The initial idea for this paper came about as a result of a conversation the author had with the former president of a division of a major engineering company. When asked what would be a good Engineering Management project, his response was simply ‘If only we had some way to capture all our knowledge.’ Following this conversation got the author thinking about capturing knowledge and the field of knowledge management. At this time the author was preparing proposals for the latest generation of coal fired power plants. Very few coal fired power plants were built in the United States between the late 1980’s through to the early 2000’s. While it is true some were designed for the international market, the market resurgence has still revealed a gap in the knowledge of today’s engineers especially in the expectations of utilities which are still somewhat set by the plants built in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The author has found that although the engineers who were around at the time of the previous generation of plants remember the big picture issues, the knowledge behind many of the finer points are lost and are having to be recreated. Even though the project documents for the projects in years gone by still exist, they do not tell you, at least in any easily retrievable form, any of the background as to why the solutions used were selected. Increasingly the author looked at current problems along with past solutions in his daily work and found that while the knowledge was in most cases there to be found, it could take considerable time and require networking with multiple sources to piece it together. 1 Initial thoughts of solutions were along the lines of discussion boards, however the concept of a Wiki was introduced in a class taught by the project committee chair. While this was not quite a Eureka moment, the authors concept of discussion boards evolved into using Wikis in order to allow collaboration on meaningful texts to transfer knowledge, rather than the fragments of knowledge likely to be exchanged in a discussion board forum. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), the internet’s largest Wiki site and ‘a Web-based free-content multilingual encyclopedia project (Wikipedia 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia )’ is after all fundamentally a vast knowledge sharing tool. In discussion with the staff of the Chief Information Officer’s department at the author’s company the discussions regarding knowledge management introduced the author to the concept of tacit knowledge, which the author identified as exactly the type of knowledge that is most inadequately recorded by current engineering records and practices. This paper will discuss the concept of tacit knowledge, it’s significance to engineering knowledge management and why it is so essential to capture it. The concept of using a Wiki as a tool for both capturing knowledge and sharing it will be examined. The final part of the paper will examine the organization required to successfully develop and maintain an ordered data structure. Many texts on knowledge management are very theoretical (bordering on crossing into psychology), here the intent is to stay very much with practical concepts. The ultimate aim of this paper is to reveal the potential and demonstrate the feasibility of using a Wiki as a practical engineering knowledge management tool at the corporate level. 2 Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW Knowledge Management and Tacit Knowledge From the Merriam Webster Online dictionary (www.m-w.com accessed 16th Sep 06) knowledge is defined as: 2 a (1) : the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (2) : acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique Knowledge Management makes definitive distinctions between knowledge, information and data. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) compare knowledge and information as follows:- • Knowledge unlike information is about beliefs and commitment, a function of a particular stance, perspective, or intention. • Knowledge unlike information is about action. It is always knowledge “to some end.” • Knowledge like information is about meaning. It is context-specific and relational. Data is yet lower in the hierarchy and can be defined as ‘Quantities, descriptions, identifiers, words or other representations without context or meaning’ (Voeller 2002). In simplistic terms, information is data with context and knowledge is information complete with understanding of its meaning and implications. The practice of managing knowledge has been going on for centuries or even millennia, although not referred to as knowledge management as such. The skills of hunter gatherers and later farmers were passed from generation to generation. Through the centuries apprentices in a broad spectrum