EXPEDIENT KNOWLEDGE INVENTORY EXPLAINED

Strategy 1st has developed what they call the "Expedient Knowledge Inventory," which they market as a "methodology for the identification, classification, and enhancement of business knowledge and processes." If you've never dealt with one of these before, it's a useful example of this sort of analysis.

A "knowledge asset" to their methodology named EKI, as to most all of them, is organizational understanding that can be described or derived. An asset, in this sense, does not need to be a permanent tangible item. The ability to fabricate an item when needed is sufficient to support the definition of knowledge asset.

Assets may be in found in four different forms: raw, simple, inferred, and experiential. Assets in "raw" form include data and databases. "Simple" forms of assets, such as documents, forms, reports or recordings, are the most tangible and identifiable -- no sweat taking inventory of these. "Inferred" assets require analysis, computation, translation, combination or some other operation to derive the desired results. "Experiential" assets are results that are known to be available but are in uncertain or indefinite condition, or may require special resources of people, time or money to generate -- what an ad hoc project team could come up with, for example. A "process" is a series of actions or operations leading to a desirable end. EKI seeks to track knowledge assets across an organization following transfers and transformations of the information.

This EKI includes many components that define and refine knowledge assets, processes, and interactions. The level of detail that each component is used will be -- rightfully -- varied for each project. Yet any thorough analysis should address at least the following areas, including others:

Environment definition. The project scope, including goals, objectives out-of-scope, impacted business areas, impacted business processes, impacted knowledge assets. Business Area Information. Function/purpose, alignment, staffing, location, strength, weakness, business processes, knowledge assets. Business Process Information. Description, value, process diagram, knowledge assets, business areas. Knowledge Asset Information. Description, purpose, transition and transformation, diagram, attributes, business areas, business processes.

In addition to those major areas, a thorough job will address process actions, process skills, knowledge attributes, and knowledge lifecycle.

To start the inventory, one set of business areas, business processes, or knowledge assets will "form the basis of the project depending upon the desired scope or constraints," EKI recommends. In other words, one of those components is used to identify in-scope information, and discovery then continues to the other two.

For example, an EKI project could begin with the identification of a knowledge asset -- say product specification. It would then identify the corresponding business processes such as the R&D budget process, marketing review, PR review, and legal review, among others. It would then move to the recognition of business areas involved, such as product team, finance, product management, marketing, communications documentation, PR, legal, and others.

The inventory's results can be customized and shaped to the specific application. Remarkably different results can be achieved by combining the components in different ways, which is why more than one vendor should be consulted before starting a project.