Corporate Innovation and the Hierarchy of Information Needs
Master the hierarchy of information requirements to unleash corporate innovation, with insights into problem-solving and the importance of knowledge management.
Capturing Knowledge: A Critical Requirement for Corporate Innovation
Drilling into the important role of capturing knowledge in promoting corporate innovation, highlighting the importance of creation & curation, sharing & collaboration, and impactful use.
Unleashing Corporate Innovation: Identifying the Constraints
Corporate innovation struggles, and not from a lack of ideas or capital. More often, the constraints are time and attention.
Breaking Through Buzzword Clutter: Complexity
Complexity means different things to different people in different conversations. Are we trying to simplify a process? Complexity is bad. Understand a supply chain? Complexity is good. Don't buzzword your initiatives with "complexity" until you get a wee bit more specific.
Capturing Knowledge, and Making in Findable
If the training material is difficult to locate, and people can't find it to use it - it might as well not exist. This article looks at multiple ways to overcome this challenge. (Part of a series)
A Hierarchy of Information Requirements
It's a common problem statement - 'I don't have enough information to (run my business unit, manage this process, identify opportunities, etc.)'. The solution designer, when faced with a question like this, starts with a little detective work; the problem is too broadly stated.
Technical Debt and the Cost/Benefit of Knowledge Retention
A rather rigorous, Financial-sounding title for a high-concept line of thought ... Thanks to Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, for calling my attention to this article by Martin Fowler on Technical Debt: Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs…
KM Overcomplicates: Heisenberg Impact on a VBA Quickie
Got a simple request from one of the folks in Operations; we're sending out Excel spreadsheets for some quick data gathering, might we do a little basic input validation before they send in garbage that needs to be scrubbed? This person is very sharp, knows a decent bit about what is possible, and this is definitely not something that is worth a major project engagement; "throwaway technology", a particular fave of mine. His request was simple - just want to…
Best Practices for Process Documentation: Use Cases (3 of 3)
I've been writing about iterative documentation and checklists, and it's easy to see how these are applicable to a number of common IT processes ... Build a server Apply OS patches Move new code into production Initiate a project / programming request Unfortunately, there are plenty of other areas in IT that you think should / could have a definable process ... yet there is always some magic to them, a variable recipe that's difficult to capture in a cookbook…
Best Practices for Process Documentation: Checklists (1 of 3)
I've written before about process documentation and the need for checklists - especially for repeatable and complex processes that you may not perform every single day. A written process solves a multitude of issues: Security: For complex processes with integrated platforms, a detailed list keeps you from forgetting key settings, switches, and process steps that you might forget Reality: No matter how "advanced" or "highly engineered" these systems are, there is always something that must be done in just the…
