Emnekart 2006

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Emnekart 2006
Managing Knowledge in the Development Process
Knowledge Management at ATLAS ELEKTRONIK Ingo
Schönfeld

• Overview
• ATLAS ELEKTRONIK and Knowledge Management
• A Misunderstanding ECM and Knowledge Management
• Integrating Knowledge Using Topic Maps by Means
  of EII
• Pure Synergy The ATLAS Development Process
• Benefits Conclusion

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ATLAS ELEKTRONIKKnowledge Management

• Knowledge Management is the business case
• Integrated holistic approach set up in 2000
• Knowledge Manager of the Year award in 2003
• Facets of ATLAS Knowledge Management
• Company culture
• Knowledge process
• Contents Knowledge assets
• Tools and technology
• Facet Tools and Technology
• Currently running Hyperwave IS/6 as our knowledge
  repository
• Central web-based Enterprise Content Management
  System (ECM)
• Using the well known folder metaphor to
  categorize documents

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ATLAS ELEKTRONIKECM and Knowledge Management (1)
ECM-KM solution What ATLAS-KM really needs
Almost managing only the covers or containers documents Attach meta data to documents Other typical ECM features Handling the content of documents Handling arbitrary subjects Attaching meta data to subjects Creating relationships Powerful structuring mechanisms

• Significant shortcoming in most document-oriented
  systemsmissing flexible tools to structure
  information and model meaning
• Documents are important, but in this sense they
  are nice to have!
• Categorizing documents in folders doesnt
  correspond to the way people think

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A MisunderstandingECM and Knowledge Management
(2)
Categorizing documents in folders doesnt
correspond to the way people think.

• What does it mean? How do people think?
• We use terminology to facilitate talking about
  matters
• We are able to describe the characteristics of
  things or matters
• We can explain how things relate to each other
• Thats exactly what Topic Maps do!
• We dont think in documents! But theyre useful
  for sharing knowledge.

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A MisunderstandingECM and Knowledge Management
(3)

• Peoples mental model ? Unified knowledge model

Source Ontopia A/S
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Integrating KnowledgeUsing Topic Maps by means
of EII

• Enterprise Information Integration (EII)
• Connects information instead of applications
  (EAI)
• Harvests other (unstructured) information
  resources
• Topic Maps Building an integrated knowledge
  layer on top of the IT infrastructure
• Distributed information resources can be linked
  to the topics in the topic map
• EII
• Connects information systems, and
• Peoples implicit knowledge
• How to apply EII pragmatically? Microarticles
  and predefined annotation types

Topic Types Association Types Scope
Experience Best practice Lesson learned Ask the expert Open discussion Attach document depends-on relates-to best-used-with requires part-of Engineering Sales Procurement Quality Management Human Resources
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The ATLAS Development ProcessGeneral Principle
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The ATLAS Development ProcessSimple merging
example
Before merging
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The ATLAS Development ProcessIntegrating
stand-alone Topic Maps
Bid Manage- ment
System Definition
Develop- ment HW / SW
System Integration
Remaining Tasks (internal)
Modelled in ARIS
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The ATLAS Development ProcessThe overall
connector the process itself
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The ATLAS Development Process Benefits from a
KM point of view (1)

• Single point of access
• Bridging wide spread information islands
• enriched by peoples knowledge and experiences
• All relevant information are available in one
  consistent user interface
• Addressing users retrieval problems
• Lower costs
• EII cheaper than EAI EAI is often not necessary
• Existing systems dont need to be changed and
  work as usual
• Easy to extend information layer
• The Topic Map knowledge layer itself is valuable
  knowledge asset

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The ATLAS Development Process Benefits from a
KM point of view (2)

• Other benefits
• Higher quality of search results
• Querying Infer knowledge not explicitly modelled
• Improved transparency in company information and
  knowledge structures
• Other helpful side effects
• Topic Maps/EII lowers
• resistance on the part of any third parties new
  systems provide resistance
• on-going discussions about pros and cons
• Topic Maps spark interest in itself when used for
  integration purposes

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ConclusionMaking Knowledge Management a success

• Experiences
• An ECM is no bound to succeed, but useful
• Use existing systems and connect their
  information using Topic Maps
• Merging is a killer feature realising a kind of
  information plug-in concept
• Best Practices
• Use established knowledge structures people are
  familiar with
• Create modular Topic Maps and merge them as
  needed
• Use a bottom-up approach
• Modelling instead of programming
• But dont underestimate the effort of developing
  harvesters

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Emnekart 2006
Thank you for your attention! Your questions,
please? Contact Ingo Schönfeld
ltschoenfeld.i_at_atlas.degt