Make Knowledge and Assets Reusable

The final principle of BTM, to make knowledge and assets reusable, encompasses two concepts that are well-known to both business and technology audiences. The first of these is knowledge management, where companies capture, codify, and communicate knowledge to improve decision-making. The second is a repository that stores templates and previously designed models to encourage project teams to reuse the unique knowledge captured in models.

Knowledge Management

The first component of knowledge and asset reusability is knowledge managementan idea that first rose to prominence nearly a decade ago. Not surprisingly, knowledge management first caught on in businesses where knowledge is a key component of the value proposition: "There's too many terms that have been overused recently," Scott Hayward, a Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase and Company explains, "but knowledge management has already become a reality in industries like financial services and consulting, where knowledge is your main product."

At the simplest level, knowledge management includes three sequential steps:

• Acquisition: Enterprise knowledge frequently exists in intangible forms such as individual expertise and shared culture. To disperse this knowledge throughout the corporation it first must be captured in a concrete form such as a document, knowledge bit, or contact information for a subject-matter expert.

• Interpretation: Once knowledge has been captured it must be analyzed and codified so that individuals and intelligent systems can use this context to push relevant knowledge to team members .

• Delivery: The final step is delivering codified knowledge to the point of decision. This delivery can be either passive (such as documents that reside in a searchable database or team members who wait to be contacted about their specific experiences and recommendations) or active (such as software designed to alert individuals regarding applicable knowledge bits).

This seems to be a simple process, but the hit-or- miss experiences with knowledge management during the last decade betray the danger lurking behind the facade. To avoid the mistakes made in past projects, companies need to appreciate what it is that makes the outwardly simple theory of reusable knowledge anything but simple to implement in real life.

Two pervasive myths are largely responsible for companies' inability to harness the power of shared knowledge. The first is based on the assumption that employees will automatically use an IT-based knowledge management system if it is in place. This misconception stems from the early view that knowledge management was considered purely an IT project. But companies found that building technology to support knowledge management is the easy partand overcoming cultural and political obstacles to sharing knowledge is much more difficult.

The second myth about knowledge management is that technology will replace face-to-face knowledge transfer. Some early adopters assumed that in the new, virtual office, all interaction would be mediated by IT. The truth is that people are far more likely to share ideas when they're face-to-face with their colleagues, and IT-based knowledge management should be considered a supplement to rather than a replacement for traditional, non-IT-based knowledge exchange.

Two Types of Reusable Knowledge: Documents and Relationships

Knowledge management links people with two types of information: documents (which include pre-built process flows, existing market research, network topologies, and other supporting information); and relationships, (which means referring to subject-matter expertsbusiness unit managers, network architects , and IT team leaders for exampledirectly).

In keeping with knowledge management's IT-focused history, most of the attention given to reusability centers upon collecting, indexing, and distributing electronic documents. For this to work, of course, knowledge must first be captured and saved in document form and then given context through associations with pre-defined subjects. When employees search for knowledge, they either perform a direct search (in which case context is provided by their search terms), or they browse the subjects until they find something that might apply, and then view the documents that are associated with that subject. This type of knowledge management works best for information that is static, data-driven, and meant to have a long shelf life: metrics, research reports , and basic documentation such as corporate policies, for example.

But sometimes sharing knowledge requires two employees to collaborate directly to adapt their unique experiences to a new context. In these cases, document management systemsthe traditional cornerstones of knowledge managementdon't work so well. Instead, companies need a mechanism for linking people directly with other team members or experts. When employees look up information, they are directed not to a static document, but instead to the appropriate contact person.

Reusable Asset Repository

The second crucial component of knowledge and asset reusability is a repository that stores models developed during BTM. The concept of a reusable asset repository is closely related to the knowledge management ideal of recycling enterprise knowledge. It differs from knowledge management, however, in that the knowledge being reused is captured in a structured model rather than static documents or contact information for subject-matter experts.

Reusable asset repositories are familiar to component and object developers, who have long used repositories to encourage developers to recycle existing code rather than writing from scratch. Component and object repositories act like a centralized warehouse of pre-developed software that codifies the objects according to the functionality that they implement. Developers search the repository to find a piece of code that does what they need, and reuse it to decrease the development time for their project.

A useful analogy illustrating the advantages of a reusable repository is to the manufacturing innovations realized during the industrial revolution. By using standardized components as building blocks for creating new products, innovative entrepreneurs such as Eli Whitney incited a productivity revolution that led to assembly line manufacturing, the transition from inefficient artisans to moderately skilled line workers, and ultimately to the rise of mass production and inexpensive consumer goods.

Proponents of reusable repositories promise a similar leap forward for BTM: By using pre-built model templates from a repository, team members can concentrate on developing unique project details rather than common, low-value designs. This provides important advantages for companies whose IT projects need to be agile to keep up with multiple acquisitions, fast product cycles, or high employee turnover .

Reuse in Context

As with collaboration, it is necessary to establish context before you can reuse knowledge and assets to give employees not just the right information, but also the right information at the right time. The very idea of reuse as a distinct practice betrays the fundamental problem with most previous initiatives to reuse knowledge and assets. Like knowledge management, reuse isn't just about deploying business applications to save electronic knowledge for later use. Instead, it means enacting a cultural change so that reusing decisions, policies, processes, technology, and standards is indistinguishable from the normal, day-to-day tasks that created this intellectual property in the first place.

One recurring pitfall of stand-alone systems for reuse is the tendency of employees to ignore them altogether. Integrating knowledge directly into the work environment solves this disconnect and increases the likelihood that employees will embrace reusability both as producers and consumers of knowledge. To do this means facing two important challenges: establishing an infrastructure for reuse that integrates directly with other enterprise applications, and defining a methodology for classifying documents that can be linked to enterprise applications to provide the context for determining which knowledge is relevant at any given time.

The Advantages of Reusing Knowledge and Assets

By reusing knowledge and assets within the context of BTM, enterprises can:

- Give decision- makers the right information at the right time

- Minimize rework and improve cycle times

- Establish enterprise standards for processes, systems, and infrastructure to promote best practices

- Reuse existing enterprise applications, hardware, and networks

Give Decision-Makers the Right Information at the Right Time

Knowledge about business and IT initiatives is stored in the form of market research, documentation, vendor profiles, and consulting partner deliverables. By incorporating this information into a knowledge management system, teams can use context to push relevant information directly to the point of decision. This helps team members to access existing enterprise knowledge before making key decisions, and ensures that documents remain up-to-date and relevant as the model is updated or changed altogether.

Minimize Rework and Improve Cycle Times

By saving previously developed models in a reusable asset repository and then making these available as templates for later projects, companies can reduce the amount of time and effort that they spend redoing crucial tasks. This lowers the cycle time required to plan and implement IT projects, and allows individuals to concentrate on high-value decisions in their specific areas of expertise. Even after the dotcom meltdown, valuable IT workers are in short supply, and forcing skilled subject-matter experts to spend time on activities that don't provide a direct benefit to the project is an inefficient allocation of resources. By reusing models from a centralized asset repository, IT workers can concentrate on specific, detailed customization that delivers real value and leverages their unique skill sets.

Establish Enterprise Standards and Best Practices

Oftentimes, enterprise and IT standards are ignored by employees because they are either unaware that the standards exist or they remain unconvinced of the value that they provide. Knowledge and asset reusability addresses this concern in two ways.

First, contextualized knowledge links standards and best practices directly to the model itself. This can be in the form of supporting documents, research reports, or team member experiences. Also, it can link directly to subject-matter experts, such as enterprise architects, who can pass along their accumulated knowledge to those responsible for individual design decisions.

Second, new models based on templates that conform to standards and best practices encourage teams to keep new modeling in line with the design parameters endorsed in the template. To replace an approved networking standard with a renegade design, for example, an IT architect would have to first deliberately remove the approved configuration. This is unlikely , especially in a culture where a standards-based approach is emphasized . Another way to enforce standards is to include models of technology vendors and configurations in the repository. This makes it easier for IT architects to stick with pre-approved configurations than it is to strike out on their own.

Reuse existing physical assets

By recycling models from previous BTM projects, team members are encouraged to reuse the design decisions captured in the model itself. At the same time, however, it is important to note that these previously developed models are virtual representations of the actual business and IT environments. By recycling a portion of a model, then, employees can often recycle its real-world equivalentstrategies, processes, software, and systems, for example.

Consider this scenario: A particular line of business develops a model for a new CRM initiative, installs the software, and rolls out the project in their business unit. When IT workers from another business unit go to reuse this CRM model, they not only benefit from improved decision-making, but by sticking with the model's design decisions, they may be able to reuse a portion of the actual CRM software itself.

By reusing actual enterprise assets rather than just the knowledge and expertise encapsulated in the model itself, companies can reduce the cost of purchasing new hardware, software, and services, and can unify enterprise architecture across multiple lines of business.