UNIT III

Understanding Knowledge:

 Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or

something, such asfacts(propositional knowledge), skills (procedural
knowledge)or objects
(acquaintance knowledge).
 "Knowledge is information, understanding and skills that you have gained
through
learning or experience".
 Knowledge is the state of knowing about a particular fact or situation

According to literature, there are two main types of knowledge:

1-Tacit to personal knowledge embedded in individual experience and involving intangible factors.
This type of knowledge can be considered to be very difficult to transfer.

2-Explicit knowledge r e f e r s t o o n e t h a t h a s a l r e a d y b e e n d o c u m e n t e d a n d articulated into

formal language, and can be much more easily accessible and transferred among individuals.
Hence, one of the key functions of a KM strategy is to make tacit knowledge explicit.

Introduction of Knowledge Management (KM): "Knowledge Management" is an emerging

discipline that promises to capitalize on organizations' intellectual capital. The
concept of taming knowledge and putting it to work s n o t n e w ; p h r a s e s
c o n t a i n i n g t h e w o r d k n o w l e d g e , s u c h a s k n o w l e d g e b a s e s a n d knowledge
engineering, existed before Knowledge Management became popularized."

Knowledge Management is the process that involves a cycle of exchanging

tacit knowledge and converting it to explicit knowledge and then re-formulating it
through an individual's experience and other factors (such as belief, perspective,
and values) into tacit knowledge"

Agile Information Systems:

"Agile Information Systems, defined as information systems developed using agile

methods, are characterized by frequent upgrades with a small number of new features
released periodically".
However, the merit of such "solutions" depends on the constancy (faithfulness) of business
processes, and the advantages that such faith brings an enterprise in competitive position.
Agile Information Systems process information so that employees and customers can
quickly access and distribute it easily.

Another view of agility can be expressed in terms of an enterprise's abilities to continually

improve business processes. A yet broader view characterizes agility in terms of an
enterprise's ability to transform itself, to fundamentally change to address experienced or
anticipated value deficiencies.
Faith of business processes can impede/block transformation. This suggests that agile
information systems should provide sufficient flexibility to respond to disruptions of
"business as usual," either due to opportunities, threats, or unforeseen events. Such
flexibility may limit the possibilities of optimization to maximize efficiency in any givenPERIOD.
In fact, the need for flexibility suggests reformulation of approaches to optimization to
include consideration of flexibility across dissimilar and uncertain time periods.
To address agility more specifically, we need to consider whose information needs are to
be served. Needs in the executive suite are quite different from needs at the enterprise's
call center.
The decisions made, and the information needed to support these decisions, vary
considerably across the various domains of the enterprise.

Agile Decision Making:

Agile decision-making is a process that is collaborative, iterative, and
transparent. It
means all stakeholders are updated on assigned tasks at regular intervals,
they give
feedback, and then the team knows what needs to be changed or improved.
The team
discusses issues together and comes up with a solution together.
Agile decision-making doesn't mean rushed, on-the-fly changes at the whim of one
project
stakeholder. It also doesn't mean that the project team makes all the decisions
amongs themselves and then hands over a final product at the end.

Five Tips for agile decision making:

Here are a few tips to help you and your team be successful in agile
decision-making
during a project.

Tip #1: Gather iterative feedback

When you're showing the work and getting feedback regularly, it reduces the chance of a m a j o r
d i s r u p t i o n t h a t r e q u i r e s a c o m p l e x decision-making technique w i t h a f o r m a l committee.
The team can make incremental pivots and adjustments as needed, without formal oversight or
stress about deviating from a lengthy process document.

Tip #2: Balance alignment and autonomy

Your agile team needs to be empowered and well-informed when making decisions. But
this doesn't mean it can deviate/divert from what the goals of the project are. Leaders
often don't give teams the autonomy needed because they fear the team going
rogue/wrong and producing something completely off the wall.

An agile team will be showing their progress on a regular basis and getting feedback for
Changes.
Tip #3: Get comfortable with good enough
One huge mindset change that is needed is getting comfortable with "good enough." The requirements
are documented "good enough." The timing to start is "good enough." Then, you can work toward "great"
during the execution process. Yes, there will be workscrapped while sharpening what "great" looks like
and that's OK. When the whole team is accountable for the project's success, it won't be such an
emotional hit if some of one person's work has to be cut because of time. The team will support its
members.

Tip #4: Place time limits on decisions

As project managers, we love timelines and due dates. And agile decision-making needs
timelines. Set deadlines for when analysis must be cut-off is good enough because you're
forced to move forward with a decision when it's good enough rather than when it's
perfect.
Tip #5: Don't get sloppy/lazy and
develop self-organizing behaviour
Plan project meetings at a regular cadence to
give updates
, brainstorm for improvements,
pl a n t he next block of tasks for a sprint, and get iterative feedback on wha t 's be e n
delivered. So, these builds trust with senior leadership, improves the strength of the team,
and builds the team's confidence in their decision-making skills.
There are several ingredients a system needs to develop self-organizing behaviour:
You need a minimum number of independent actors.
 These actors need to maintain open bi-directional interactions that allow them to
exchange information they don't expect.
You need sufficient diversity among these actors to allow a productive tension
generating the ability to change.
You need enough alignment on a (business) goal to make sure that the diversity does
not lead into uncoordinated chaos.
Earl‗S Schools of KM:
KMS, an abbreviation of Knowledge Management System, w a s a c o m m e r c i a l s e c o n d
generation hypermedia system, originally created as a successor for
t h e early hypermedia system ZOG
.
In 2001, Michael Earl tried to map knowledge management into taxonomy of seven KMS
schools, each based on existing and observable practice.
This taxonomy grouped these schools into three categories, of 7 types:
A)Technocratic category
B)Economic category
C)Behavioural category
A)"Technocratic" category
Earl classified below three schools i.e., Systems, Cartographic and Process in the
"Technocratic" category.
Systems school
. This school puts emphasis on knowledge creation with no help
available that is further validated by esteemed peers, codified and stored in a KMS.
To me, this is "learning the hard way"
. A question arises: What criterion is used tolabel one an esteemed peer, or who holds these esteemed
peers in such high esteem?

Cartographic schoolIn this school, KMS identifies only the knower of the tacit
knowledge i.e. it is a directory of experts. It is based on mapmaking.

Process schoo This school consists of two components arising from Business
Process Reengineering (BPR) i.e. the description of the process plus output
generated by such process. It seems to be a hybrid between systems and
cartographic schools.

B) "Economic" category:
Michael Earl said that Commercial school come in "Economic category.
Commercial school:
As t he name suggests, this school seeks to market and sell
knowledge as a commodity/item/thing. Unlike the technocratic schools where
knowledge is accessed and shared to knowledge seekers, this school restricts
knowledge to customers an organization considers profitable.
C)"Behavioural" category:
Earl classified below three schools in the "Behavioural" category.

Organizational school
. This school focuses on collaborating knowledge in a
learning community by strengthening the ties between different knowledge holders.
It is a Community of Practice (CoP).

Spatial school
. This school fronts its argument that modern management practices
suc h a s hierarchical structures, commercial buildings and technology are a n
antithesis/opposite to a conducive/helpful environment for learning, knowledge
sharing, discussions and bonding. It suggests that space must be set aside/relax for
exciting new ideas to emerge for quality. Thus, the name spatial.

Strategic school
. The name says it all. A word of caution/carefulness though: it
doesn't mean that all the other schools cannot support an organization's competitive
strategy. The difference of thought with this school compared to others is that in the
other schools, not all knowledge is immediately strategic. Also, this school looks at,
in addition to the internal improvements and problem solving, the bigger corporate