MASTERCLASS/WORKSHOP for CII KM 2009 ...

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Measuring KM in Projects: Why, What and How. Ms. Latha A. AVP and Head, KM Group,. Infosys Technologies Limited,. Bangalore, India. LathaA@Infosys.com.
MASTERCLASS/WORKSHOP for CII KM 2009 Conference Measuring KM in Projects: Why, What and How Ms. Latha A.

Dr. Kavi Mahesh

Dr. J. K. Suresh

AVP and Head, KM Group, Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore, India [email protected]

Principal Consultant, KM, Infosys Technologies Limited and Professor of Computer Science, PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India [email protected]

AVP and Principal Knowledge Manager, Infosys Group of Companies, Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore, India [email protected]

Many enterprises have been successful in instilling the culture and practice of KM across their organizations. Such success is usually exemplified through attributes such as the progress achieved in motivating employees, integrating silos of knowledge, inserting KM into business processes, establishing innovative technology infrastructure, and the like. In the initial years of KM, however, in spite of having made deep inroads into the organization, it continues to possess the character of an undifferentiated corporate service that is not well suited to the idiosyncrasies of business situations. This is largely due to the nature of KM during this time where, in responding to its appeal for bridging islands of knowledge across the organization, the innate impulse of KM teams is to facilitate greater flows of relatively generic and more widely applicable knowledge than of highly context-bound and locally relevant knowledge. While the former significantly caters to long term knowledge needs of employees, the latter types of knowledge – critical to the immediate needs of business - are not well developed in the supply chain thereby leading to a weakened perception of the value of KM. It may be recognized therefore that for a KM solution to be enduring, it inevitably has to draw its sustenance from the creative interplay between the local and the global, the specific and the generic, and the immediate and the long-term applicable forms of knowledge in the organization. This, in turn, has important implications for the means and instruments adopted to measure the activities and outcomes associated with KM. The current focus of KM in many organizations is on two primary issues: how do we derive concrete business benefits from KM and how do we measure and demonstrate the benefits as returns on investment made in KM? The workshop addresses both of these issues by presenting a framework for adapting and fine-tuning generic KM practices in particular projects to generate concrete business benefits, as well as for measuring, analyzing and benchmarking critical KM parameters in projects. The workshop also illustrates several best practices in implementing the framework by sharing copious data from its successful practice at Infosys Technologies Limited with its renowned, Global-MAKE winning KM practice. The workshop raises and answers questions such as: – – –

How do we integrate global knowledge sharing with the circulation and reuse of local knowledge in project teams? How can KM help in developing the capability to predict, manage and produce output that is self-sustaining and measurable? Who owns KM in projects?

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How do we assess the effectiveness of KM in projects? How do we assess the maturity of KM practices in a set of projects in a business unit? How do we combine measures of strategy, activity, infrastructure and culture to arrive at an aggregate “K-Index” for a project or business unit? Can we benchmark “K-Index” values for stages of KM maturity?

Several illustrative exercises would be interleaved with the lectures throughout the workshop to promote a high degree of involvement, participation and knowledge sharing amongst participants.