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usually the most important - people give because
they expect to receive. Next is
repute
; having a
reputation for being knowledgeable can lead to
greater reciprocity, job security, and other indirect
benefits. Finally, there is
altruism,
where people
don't care about immediate benefits; this may
depend on organizational culture. Figallo and
Rhine (2002, p. 217) identify four categories of
incentives. Some are purely
personal
, such as a
desire to help, learn, or achieve respect. Others
are
cultural
, based on organizational norms. A
third group of incentives are
goal-oriented
, such
as a desire to get work done faster or to save
money. Finally, some are
compensatory
; people
may receive salary or bonuses for participating,
or when their contributions benefit others.
At both SalesCom and EnginCom, many
users are both sellers and buyers, so reciprocity
and repute are key incentives. At EnginCom, the
system is organized as a set of largely separate
wikis for individual groups, so that each group
can effectively edit its own content. Conversely,
SalesCom has one system for the entire sales
organization, so that standards are most difficult
to establish, and over time there is likely to be a
greater need for editors. This is a clear problem
on public wikis used for technical support - there
can be multiple pages chronicling attempts to
answer similar questions, making it more difficult
for users to find the best answers efficiently. Note
that compensatory incentives must be chosen
carefully, however; SalesCom offered a bonus for
employees who made the most contributions to
a new KM system; as a result, some employees
uploaded large collections of documents without
really considering or appreciating how useful they
would be for others.
opment methodologies; it is probably the most
important advice for any new project. Try the
simplest thing that seems likely to work, check to
see how well it works, and then decide what to do
next. More structured “waterfall”-style processes
may be necessary when deploying large enterprise
systems, but wikis are so flexible that a more agile,
iterative approach is generally more successful.
Problems can be detected and correctly quickly,
and once a few groups are using the system suc-
cessfully, they provide good models for other
groups to follow.
At SalesCom, search capabilities were en-
hanced using this approach. Initially, searching the
system produced a list of all pages that matched
the search string, listed alphabetically. People
quickly noticed (and complained) when results
near the top of the list were less useful than results
further down. The search system was modified to
count the number of matches, and display pages
with the most matches first. This was a clear im-
provement, but some users suggested that pages
which had the search term in the title or section
headings should appear earlier in the list, prompt-
ing more changes.
Mapping or Capture?
Decide whether the goal is to
map
the location of
knowledge that exists in people, organizations, or
other IT system, or to
capture
knowledge in the
system where other people can access it. Hansen,
Nohria, and Tierney (1999) review approaches
to KM, and conclude that organizations need to
decide strategically whether to emphasize explicit
or tacit knowledge, because this decision has
far-reaching implications. Those that emphasize
explicit knowledge should try to capture knowl-
edge in materials that can easily be reused or
customized for different purposes; this requires a
larger investment for infrastructure, creating, and
disseminating, but once materials are developed
they can be reused very efficiently. On the other
hand, organizations that emphasize tacit knowl-
Project Factors
Test Fast, Fail Fast, Adjust Fast
This slogan is attributed to Tom Peters, and rapid
iteration is also central to many software devel-
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