BizTechTalk

Enterprise 2.0 = Knowledge Management 2.0?

Presented a subset of our Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 findings today at the Boston KM Forum hosted at Bentley. Specifically dived into the Knowledge Management-oriented aspects of Enterprise 2.0.

Not claiming by a far stretch that Enterprise 2.0 is exactly Knowledge Management 2.0 (or vice-versa), but there are some great overlaps. The battery of a dozen profiling questions (a modified version of the KM2 Methodology we've used in the past) that we'd used in the survey popped out a subset of respondents who were "KM Inclined" - and that served as the main data used in this presentation.

If you've already seen our webinar, or read the report, this presentation may be redundant, although the front 2/3rds is new material, setting up the discussion of Enterprise 2.0 in general, Knowledge Management 1.0, and where we seem to be heading.

A fellow was recording the audio, we'll see if I was loud enough to make it worth syncing up and posting - in the meantime, you can probably follow along with what I'm trying to get across, but feel free to let me know if it's clear or mud! (BTW - if you aren't seeing the commenting area, hit me on twitter, and let me know you're having issues. Seems something has gone wrong with Internet Explorer 7 viewers [use Firefox and it's fine - hint hint])

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Circling Back to KM - now KM 2.0!

Having so many social network services to chose from, and so many contacts, it's easy to forget who is where, and what they're up to.

Thankfully, although it's annoying at times, most of these services let you know when someone "friends you," "favorites you," or adds you as a contact.

I'm in a deep Knowledge Management (KM) mood recently, probably because as we've been putting together our Practitioner Training on Enterprise 2.0 (almost done), I've been talking quite a bit about KM. And I mean literally talking about it... for days... just me and my laptop as I've been wrapping up recording somewhere around 9 hours of audio. Not quite as much fun as you might think... ;)

So, swimming in the KM waters once again, and SlideShare.net (which I use to embed presentations here from time to time - very handy little service), notifies me that Stan Garfield has added me as a friend.

What a great blast from the past! I'd interviewed Stan last year, on the topic of "Reinvention Prevention" - fantastic interview, and Stan is one well-seasoned guy. He completely understands KM, the issues of incentivization, taking KM out of KM 1.0 and along for the ride with Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0.

If you aren't following his blogging and presentations, well, what are you waiting for?

I'll save you one trip, and have embedded his presentation, Knowledge Management in the Real World, as seen on Slideshare, below (follow the "View" link if the embedded copy doesn't work).

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I knew HP (where Stan leads the Worldwide Knowledge Management program in HP's Services arm) was  advanced in their KM thinking, but had no idea how advanced. As seen in Stan's presentation, they have a n array of tools, to cover the gamut of interactions, knowledge sharing, knowledge seeking, re-use, and more that goes on within the (virtual) walls of HP.

Between HP and IBM, it's quite amazing to see how large professional services organizations can be so nimble. Embarassing even, for most other organizations.

My point, folks, is that if you're sitting on the sidelines, waiting until social networking, blogs, wikis, collaboration, etc. "get real" before you start adopting them. Well, you're already too late! Of course that's never true, but if you don't get started, you will surely never see any value as a result.

More on that next week, when we release our Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 - but I'll sum it up as this...

You can get moving nearly instantly, and free to pretty low cost (per user) with many of these capabilities. You want integration to existing systems? Well, that will take more work, but still, likely easier than you're expecting (a bonus of the standards that are powering mashups et al).

But, the sooner you start running, the more likely you are to catch up and surpass your competitors who, right now, are more agile, able to recognize new threats and opportunities, and bring their experiences to bear to keep oriented towards the future.

What do YOU think? Is KM alive again? Did it ever die? Is it just a buzzword that refuses to go away?

And for the ~70 people who responded to our Enterprise 2.0 survey saying they'd be interested in participating in a writeup of their case studies, stay tuned, we'll be in touch shortly.

Feel free to prime the pump in comments here though, if you would like to talk about your successes OR failures.

Time To Market and Enterprise Development

A quick (it's all relative, eh?) peek into some of the ideas we're going to be surfacing around our Enterprise 2.0 Market IQ (research paper), and forthcoming Enterprise 2.0 Training course (see announcement from our VP of Education, Atle Skjekkeland), premiering March 3rd in Boston at the AIIM International Expo & Conference. Carl Frappaolo and I are developing the research and training in parallel, as an exercise in juggling our "normal" Market Intelligence work, with the added fun of blazing some new educational ground. (sanity is over-rated as it turns out!)

None of our Enterprise 2.0 work is going to be targeted specifically at software development teams per se, as we are focused (typically) on the "tech-savvy business person" in most cases, but we are most definitely going to be pointing out a trend that has been brewing in software development for at least the last 15 years, and more broadly, to manufacturing processes, for over 50 years.

To start priming the pump and get your mind going, I found a succinct overview of Agile Project Management (based around SCRUM, one of the most popular "agile methods"), via Scribd.com - a self-publishing, mostly book-oriented service, similar to slideshare.net. Ironically, this example is a presentation - whoops!

I'm highlighting page 8 below (in the embedded version - or view it directly on scribd), which discusses tight, 30 day "sprints" (development cycles), and the quick (typically daily) 15 minute reviews that agile teams typically do. It is not uncommon for SaaS-oriented commercial outfits (such as salesforce.com, springcm.com, etc.) to release new software/functionality on a 1-3 month basis, non-stop, forever.

Flip through the presentation, and see what you think of the concepts and promises regarding SCRUM.

Can your team do that? (whether an internally-facing shop, or commercial development shop)

If yes, fantastic! Would love to hear your success stories. Please comment/trackback.

If no, why not? Have you tried this approach? Tried and died? Lacked management buy-in? Feel it's a fad? Please comment/trackback.

Regular readers will know I periodically ask specifically for feedback for internally facing development teams. My anecdotal evidence is that "corporate development/IT" is far behind the curve in adopting any agile practices (SCRUM or otherwise). I would love to be proven wrong however, so blow your horns folks!

Also, I'm starting a secret army (shh) of "BizTech" types, via the LinkedIn group I started this week. Current rallying point for discussions, for the moment at least, will remain this blog, but I have some ideas I want to bounce around as well, so join the BizTech Army! (I'm happy to network with just about anyone as well - the more connections, the more potential. Who knows, you could be the 3rd person in recent months that I've helped connect to their next job.)