The Organisation s Knowledge Management Journey

The Organisation’s Knowledge Management Journey

The organisation’s knowledge management journey started in about 1996, before QinetiQ was formed. Many of the scientists, engineers and technologists that work within QinetiQ have grown up in an environment that closely mirrors that of an academic research environment. Thus to a certain extent many of the disciplines required for effective knowledge management are ones that individuals are familiar with, as these have been developed as part of their scientific practice. None the less the organisation has adopted a more strategic approach to knowledge management over the past six years. There have been several stages to the organisation’s knowledge management strategy. The key stages, requirements and deliverables are summarised in Table 12.1.

Table 12.1: Stages in QinetiQ’s strategic approach to knowledge management

Date	Key priority area	Key requirements	Key deliverables
1996	Stage 1: Focus on codified knowledge	Provide easy access to explicit knowledge Create an environment where it is easy to share knowledge Locate where the tacit knowledge is	Intranet established, containing information about who is doing what and when, citation index Appointment of Chief Information Officer, reporting directly to the Board
	Stage 2: Focus on tacit knowledge	Identify what tacit knowledge is available	Introduction of K-NET, designed to hold details about individuals and ‘know how’
1998	Focus on the organizational culture	Clarify the business benefits of knowledge management Identify KM priorities for different DERA sectors Develop just-in-time knowledge delivery	Knowledge management steering group established Appointment of Manager to manage the cultural aspects of KM Identification of 56 key KM initiatives, linked to 4 main categories K-NET web enabled to allow direct input by staff
1999			FISP(PeopleSoft) introduced to provide a central repository for organizational information, such as personnel data, finance, contracts etc
2001/2002 (Now QinetiQ)		System to make it easier to tap into the organization’s intellectual capital	New technology – ‘Knowledge Store’ – introduced

One of the biggest challenges for QinetiQ was that despite having an accreditation system for identifying and categorising the knowledge of its scientific community, through the ‘QinetiQ Fellow’ system, the breadth of knowledge held by ‘QinetiQ Fellows’ was often only available to a tightly knit group of colleagues. Given the organisation’s aim of maximising advantages from technology for its customers, it is important that it knows what expertise exists within the organisation and is able quickly to bring together experts from different disciplines to create new business opportunities.

Although the K-NET system, introduced in 1998, provided a central repository for scientists and technologists to store some basic details about themselves, e.g. name, contact numbers, qualifications, and membership of professional bodies, in practice this did not bring the expected business benefits. There were a number of reasons for this. First, the WIFM factor had not been fully addressed. While it was the scientists and technologists who were expected to input information into K-NET, the main users of K-NET came from a small sub-section of the organisation, i.e. the Resource Managers (responsible for matching people to projects) and the Bid Managers (responsible for winning new business). There was a disconnect between the WIFM factor for contributors (individual scientists) and users (the management population). Second, the use of the K-NET system had not been embedded in a business process and therefore did not form an integral part of people’s day job.

Despite these difficulties, the organisation learnt some valuable lessons from the introduction and usage of K-NET, which it was able to take on board when designing the Knowledge Store. These lessons included:

• It is better to adopt a phased implementation approach, rather than go for a big bang approach.

• It is important to ensure up front that any existing systems that the new system needs to interface with, or co-exist with, are fully operational.

• Agreeing on some common design principles. For example acknowledging that there will be different users with different needs, ensuring that there will only be one master information source to avoid wasteful duplication and where information is already known about an individual, but available in another source, don’t ask users to input this information again.