תוכניות ניהול הידע בתע״א פעילויות עיקריות

Knowledge is something that helps us to perform, but only as long it is in someone's head. We want the knowledge to be accessible. It can be stored as text, video, sound or any other form, but mostly text today. Instead of documents - contents (blogs, forums, social networks...). 6 activities: 1. Reuse Every business wants to reuse, but it is a very difficult process. The reason ego and need to invent. if you want a developer to create a reusable component, it has to be one of the goals of the project. 2.communities of practice Great system to share knowledge. For success: internal engine and external engine. Internal is at least one person who is really pacionate and external is a sponsor (manager). 3. Portals and document management. Documents not accessible, no version control, no Internet based technology. 4. Investigations (תחקירים) It is better when happens as part of the operations and not per project or action. Knowledge management works best when it is transparent to the users. If I create an app that integrates some knowledge - all users will benefit from that knowledge. Aar - after action review. 5. knowledge continuity Two types: People who leave, 6. and continuos knowledge. If someone don't want to share his knowledge - no big deal! Avi Kedem.

The presentations day

 

Here is a link to our presentation: http://bit.ly/KNgQ0O

 

To be continued…

wiki.co.il– bad, bad wiki

 

I never thought that I would hate so much to work with wiki. I think that wiki.co.il (and no, typing wiki.co.il will not take you to the website, only www.wiki.co.il will! ) is one of the most confusing and not user friendly websites I’ve used in a while.

I will not start describing all my issues with it, but I would really appreciate if someone could help me understand how it works. So here is where I’m stuck.

I’ve created a user in the website, and I’ve created a page (kmwork.wiki.co.il), and I’ve even managed to invite my team members to make changes to this website. So far so good (although it was not simple at all), but here is a puzzle.

I go to the main www.wiki.co.il page, and try to login with my account (which I’m using for a week now), and this is what I get:

So, maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’ve been dreaming all this week and I don’t have an account?

But no, here is kmwork.wiki.co.il

Ok, so this is a mystery, but it is not over yet.

I remember wiki making me to create a general wiki account that should let me login to the main page with vvvlad username. So let’s try using it. Yep, it worked,

and now I’m logged in with vvvlad to the main page on wiki.co.il and this is probably the all system account I should use, right? But NO!!!

When I try to use it on kmwork.wiki.co.il this is what I get:

Excuse my French, but WTF???!!!

Does this means that each web gets separate account? WHY, oh WHY?

Ok, so last mystery for today, here is my page URL : kmwork.wiki.co.il right? You know it is there, and I know it is there, but does wiki.co.il knows?

Nope! So, maybe I’m stupid, and I’m looking for a wrong value, maybe I should be looking for one of the pages and not the main sub domain, right?

Our wiki has this page http://kmwork.wiki.co.il/index.php/GKMF, so it should be found….I was so much hopeful it would, but…

 

Where should we go from here? Not to wiki.co.il, that’s for sure.

Vlad out.

Lecture 9 - million monkeys

Crowds are very powerful. When many people organize and decide to do something good – very good things happen. When mindless crowds follow a smart leader, very bed things happen.

In this lecture we talked about wisdom of crowds.

The most appealing part for me is actually wisdom of small, professional teams.

In software development, and I’m a software developer right now, there are many methodologies, but the one that I can really relate to is Scrum.

Scrum is an agile methodology, which basically means that instead of rigid rules and requirements – the planning and development is done in small chunks (sprints).

But this is not why I mention it.

One of the nice things about Scrum is that it tries to be fun. And makes some of the most difficult decisions in project management to be fun.

In classic project management, the project manager asks the developers for time estimations and decides how long each task should take. Basically, PM is a single person who makes those decisions. Not FUN!

In Scrum, there is a game. It is called the Scrum Poker! The game is very simple:

Every developer has a set of cards with numbers, and each number represent a number of days. Product owner (this is the guy that represents the customer) describes a feature, this feature converted to tasks. This is when the game begins. For each task, each developer chooses a card that represents how many days he thinks this task can take, but he puts the card face down on the table. When everybody is ready, all cards flipped. If everybody had relatively the same numbers, the mean number is taken. If, on the other hand, one number is higher than the others, that developer explains why in his opinion the task may take longer. When done, the same game played for the same task (with the new information).

In my experience, this is an amazing way for planning the development timings. Not only these are more accurate, but it is also a much more involving experience for the developers. The developers are usually much more committed to the timelines that they have decided about.

Here is a video (as usual):

Lecture 7–Content management

 

Eli talked about new kind of service that manages all the cloud storages in one place – Otixo, and how the Terms of Service virtually grants all rights to the user content to Otixo.

I never read ToS, but I’ve decided to try this once. After some digging I’ve found this:

Copyright in Your Content. Otixo does not claim ownership rights in any information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials or content you make available or use in connection with the Site and the Service or use in connection with your account (“Content”). By submitting your Content and accepting the consideration set forth in these Terms, as consideration for our permitting you to use the Site and the Service, you unconditionally grant to Otixo a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable right and license, with the right to sublicense through multiple levels of sublicensees, under all of your intellectual property rights in the Content, to (a) reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, digitally transmit, and otherwise use the Content in any medium or format, whether now known or hereafter discovered and (b) exercise any and all other present or future rights in the Content. You remain the owner of all Content that you submit to the Service and as a condition to your use of the Site and the Service, you represent and warrant to Otixo that you are the owner of the copyright to the Content you submit to the Service or that you have written permission from the copyright owner to submit such Content. In addition, you warrant that all moral rights in any Content have been waived. You agree to indemnify and hold Otixo harmless for any violation of this provision.

So, now I know why I never read ToS. I have no idea what it means. I don’t understand the above quote. Really, I don’t. What confuses me is that it says that Otixo doesn’t claim ownership on the content, but they can use it  forever .

Anyhow, it makes you think…

This service is not alone out there with these features. There are at least 2 others.

Joukuu – is a free windows program that lets you manage some cloud accounts. The service is paid if you want to add more than one account of the same kind. The support of cloud services is limited but should be expanded soon.

Primadesk – Web services with huge number of clouds supported. Free account gives 1Gb of cloud space and connection to 5 other cloud services. Paid customers get more…

No, I didn’t read ToS for any of them. I prefer to take care of my clouds by myself and I prefer to encrypt them by myself (when needed).

 

My advice to you – don’t get lost in the clouds

Lecture 6 - Portals

I don’t like portals.

I believe that it is possible to have a useful and functional portal that would provide some kind of a gateway to the needed functionalities for each person/employee, but I haven’t seen a single portal in my life that could be described as such.

All the portals I have used were overloaded with mostly useless information (at least for me) and there was a feeling as if the content manager was thinking “Oh, here is a white blank spot, I have to fill it with something!!!!”. Useless information is only a part of my problem, but the fact that I actually can’t find what I’m looking for is the most disturbing part.

One of the elements of the portal is menu. Menus represent hierarchy, hierarchy represent some kind of flow where one item is related to another one. The problem is that this logic is in many cases is not universal and represents the logic of the content manager and not the path that is logical for me.

After some searching, let’s say you do find your item in the list of the menus and taken to the content page. How do you find the relevant information on that page? The pages are mostly long and in most cases there are no internal search engines that can help you find the content on page (or sub portal area).

Another item that is missing for me is that in many cases there are no comments allowed. As Facebook generation I really feel uncomfortable to see any content that I can’t comment. When I can’t comment I can’t contribute to the content and that means that my knowledge is lost for others.

So what do I suggest, you ask?

I’ll keep my ideas for the patent proposal but the general idea is that the content (all content, including comments) needs to be commendable, searchable and context aware.

Lecture 5 – Search wherever and whenever you are

 

This time one of the main topics of the lecture was search strategies.

It seems that most of Elis examples were PC oriented, but I think that today, when most of us have at least the basic options to browse the net on our phones, we should at least consider some new ways to find the information and how the information can find us depending on when and where we are.

Both current technologies giant (Google and Apple) try to find ways to give us an option to find information using nonconventional methods and mobile devices.

Will start with Google.

Google goggles is an application that lets you search using your phone camera and location. For example if you take picture of a bridge, the application would try to match it to known bridges while using your location to improve the accuracy. So, if your location is San Francisco, it will search for all bridges in the area and match the appropriate one (Golden Gate bridge).

By the way, text is not the only thing that can be found. Pictures, maps, videos, games and essentially anything else can be found using Google search.

Recently Google presented a concept (which I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Another of my ideas taken by someone else ) – Project Glass. The video below will give you the details, but just think about how it can change the way that we see documentation. You don’t have to look for documents anymore, but when you are in specific situation – all the steps can pop automatically.

 

Apple has been working on some nice features as well. Siri is a personal, voice activated, assistant that uses online sources, like Google, Wolfram and others, integrated with your current location and knowledge of your personal details, in order to provide the best fitting information whenever and wherever you need it.

One of the great features I use a lot is location related reminders. Just tell Siri to remind you to check the email when you home, and she will do it no matter when you get home :)

I think that the next few years will bring more tools that will make searching for information and receiving it much easier.

Lecture 4 - Patents – the good, the bad and (of course) the ugly

 

The lecture started with a guest lecturer Dr. Esther Luzzatto ( http://www.luzzatto.com). She talked about what Intellectual Property is and the process of filing patent request.

From the knowledge management perspective (per my understanding) patents are used to provide a legal coverage and protection for the owners of the knowledge to use and benefit from it without need to worry about the knowledge being stolen and/or used by someone else. This protection is given for a limited amount of time, and during this time the owner is supposed to cover all the expenses that were invested into R&D and hopefully profit.

There is no arguing that patents are needed and are very important, but it feels that while they provide all the above, they are also impairing the creative processes and innovation.

Now, I know I have to explain myself…

There is a saying that all “new” is a forgotten “old”, but I think that sometimes it is also “new” done right.

My examples are mostly based on a small company named Apple which products I like very much.

Apple and Samsung, while being partners, are battling for the last few years about the patents with each other and it seems that they use the patents not to preserve own knowledge, but to impair other company profit and development.

Apple is known for taking someone else's ideas and improving them to perfection (touch, voice control…), but it seems that when other company tries to release a product that has even a hint of Apples patented feature – they do not spare any effort or money to fight it.

So, why is it bad (and ugly)?

Isaac Newtons quote “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants”, would probably been much less meaningful if the giants would not let him stand on their shoulders…

I’m basically saying that there is no innovation without reuse, and with current pace of development we would need a lot of innovation (and reuse) to keep going. The question is only when the patents will become more damaging that useful.

Lecture 3 – why? why? why? why? why!?!?!?!?!?

 

In the previous lectures we have established the importance of knowledge for an organization, so this time we talked about the way an organization can learn.

Learning process can happen anytime: before, during or after the action/project/process being performed, and for each stage there are different technics for learning. The result is usually the same – written documentation of learned knowledge.

It looks like most of the theories and theory implementations are based on changing the culture in the organizations, and making ideas and information sharing to a basic component of daily routine (BA and SECI).

There is a quote that says:

“Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.” - Brandon Mull

While learning from others mistakes would be the most beneficial for an organization, I guess that in many cases the situations are so unique that the first option is the only one available.

Debriefing is the best tool for learning from own mistakes but it seems that it is not an easy task. On one hand you want to get the most detailed and objective explanation about what went wrong and what led to that situation, but on the other hand you have employees that are afraid of being punished or fired. Such employee would probably adjust his\her version in order to get clean out of an investigation, and this would lead to wrong lessons learned.

AAR (After Action Review) most important part (in my eyes) is to have all the ranks removed during the process and to turn interrogation to conversation.

This is the best place to answer Eli’s question.

I think that we are expected to answer that the employee should not be punished, because it will interfere with the ability of the organization to create a “relationship” with employees where knowledge is shared freely and without fear of being punished.

I think that some information is missing in the question, and that is why I’m not sure that the answer above would be correct in all the cases.

First, we don’t know if this is the first time this kind of incident happens. We also don’t know if previous incidents were investigated. If they were investigated, we don’t know if they were documented and communicated to the employees. There are many more details and pieces of information that are missing, but  the bottom line is that we want to learn from incidents in order to avoid them happening more than one time.

My answer is that if plant process was wrong (no available information, no experienced person available to help and so on…) it needs to be fixed and the employee should not be punished, but if there are processes for such cases and only employee ignorance or negligence brought to such situation, I can’t see why the employee should not be punished.

Back to the lecture, I have to say that the most memorable part for me was the 5 Why’s system. It is so simple,yet so powerful and I believe it can be used for many cases, even in our private lives. Children learn about the world around them using this precise system!

All that being said, there is one thing that really bothers me. The result of most of the leanings are written documents or manuals. NO ONE reads manuals!  They are never available when they needed, it is difficult to find anything when you need it and they are (in my personal opinion) very boring. Shouldn’t there be another way?

I’ll finish this post with an example of “Why’s” system performed by my favorite comedian Louise CK (There is some “language” in this video, so don’t watch if you are easily offended).

Lecture 2–Knowledge is power (or is it?)

When talking about knowledge we always see this “Knowledge is power” statement. I believe in it, and this is really a “known known”, but I think that my perception of this saying has changed a little after this lecture.
Knowledge is power, but what is knowledge and does any knowledge equals power?
The short answer is “No”, the longer answer is “No, sir!”.
When looking at DIKW model, knowledge is “using information for action”, knowing that stop sign means you need to stop, or temperature gauge that shows 120 C means it’s hot and you shouldn’t touch it.
So knowledge can prevent us from hurting ourselves and can help us get some nice grades in school, but is this the “power” we are looking for? Again, if I get it correctly, the answer is no.
Knowledge is just another step, and important one, to the higher level – the Wisdom.

The concept of Wisdom is not 100% clear to me yet, but basically it is the ability to foresee the future. As simple as that!!!
“Wisdom is Power” isn’t it?
The theory is ok, but I think that it can only partially reflect the current global situation and there are many sides to the knowledge/wisdom power equation.
Some items for further exploration could be:
1. Sharing knowledge– empowers, but only if you share it with people who can keep it safe?
2. Will sharing help if you share it with someone who doesn’t want to take it?
3. What is going to happen when China is going to be the dominant power in the world (where freedom of speech and knowledge sharing are not appreciated)?
Just emphasize the last question (and to have a chance to add a video ) here is a short scene from 2nd season of “Game of Thrones” series.
The hints will be a bit subtle for someone who didn’t see the whole series but the bottom line is very clear.

Google docs alternative

zoho.com

Box.net 50gb for android users

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/boxnet-offers-50gb-lifetime-upgrade-android-users-update/

First post from Eli Miron course - live

Knowledge is a good which is very difficult to control.

The first lecture

So, it took me a while to think about this first post about the first lecture.

We were presented with many web tools that allow sharing of content, but I’ve already knew about all of them, and I was really surprised that others didn’t.

I have actually felt that something is off… I couldn’t put my finger on it, but even thought I’ve known about, and used all of them for a while, the tools were presented in a different light.

Now I know what it was.

In my head I had these tools categorized under a different category.

For me Dropbox.com, Delicio.us and the others were mostly for something I call “self-sharing”. I would share the files, but with my other computers or just would use the service for backups.

For “real” sharing, with others, I’ve always used services like Rapidshare.com, MegaUpload.com (RIP) and torrents. These were the “real” sharing services for me.

I’m still struggling with this idea and when I need to share a file SugarSync is not the first thing that comes in mind.

Will see if it changes….

The lecture has also reminded me of Google Wave (RIP) and the fact that it has never took off , which maybe has something to do with us not being ready to accept sharing as our tool for success.

 

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