ITIL says very little about little about Knowledge Management, I know we were all hoping version 3 was going to clarify the situation, but other than saying it goes across the most of the governance and all of the operational processes, it got decidedly little coverage. I don’t disagree with that assessment, I just don’t think it goes far enough to make recommendations or propose guidelines as to how to handle the knowledge of that is generated in executing ITIL processes and IT activities in general.
Knowledge in IT is made up of three high-level groupings:
1) Server and application information that would often be found in a Configuration Management Database (CMDB).
2) The information that is typically found in a Help Desk/Incident Management knowledge base. This includes known problems and how to resolve them, as well as answers to other questions that users may have.
3) The information that is found in documents that are created as part of the on-going activities of the IT organization. Examples of this type of documentation are Service Level Agreements, Service Catalogues, process documents, and disaster recovery documentation.
The first two categories are known quantities, i.e. IT knows how to deal with them and ITIL talks about them, what IT and ITIL doesn’t deal with well is the third type and the integration among all of the types. But as Cindy Allingham, Sr. pointed out in her post ITIL Misunderstood – Insights from a VP of IT (Part 4), documentation isn’t maintained.
Why is this?
There are lots of reasons, what it boils down to in my experience is that IT doesn’t have any people, process, or technology strategy to help them. Even though, in many cases they are supporting technology (Enterprise Content Management and Collaboration systems) that the business uses to do exactly what they, themselves, need to do. IT needs to become its own customer and start using those platforms.
Where to start?
Start with Business-IT Alignment, except in this case IT and Business are the same people.
Answer these questions to get started:
1. What is the strategy of the organization and the IT department?
2. What is the technology Road Map?
3. What are the requirements for document and content management, and collaboration for IT?
4. How are they working?
5. When are they working?
6. What are their processes?
7. What is the corporate records retention schedule as it pertains to electronic and hardcopy records?
Then take these requirements and look and see if there is a service they are already providing that they could use for their own purposes, my bet is that there is.
The next step is to develop an information architecture that describes IT’s documentation and collaboration needs and implement it in the platform. The information architecture is basically how to organize and configure the information and platform so that it meets user needs and requirements.
Part of this implementation is to develop the information management policies and procedures for the information; the information lifecycle (from creation, to archive and disposal) is a critical part of these policies.
Next…Key Success Factors.