Posted by Reilly Atkinson on September 25, 2001 at 01:01:02:

In Reply to: Challenge of the Week: A question of application: KM and IT posted by Martyn R Jones on September 22, 2001 at 11:31:02:

Martyn -- Great question. First thing I would do is try to change the attitudes of IT or IS personnel. That is, in my long and painful experiences with IS groups, I would remind them that their whole purpose is to serve others, that writing clever code should be secondary to "getting it right", that computers are mere tools, and in reality are of not much interest in and of themselves. Such a transformation could come from "talk it over" sessions (KM?). Since virtually all corporation like slogans to boost morale, production, allegance to numbers of standard deviations,... Perhaps someone could come up with some catchy phrases to put up on walls, and perhaps as slogans to put in email headers.

If it were possible, I would send all IS personnel to business school. But that is very unlikely, so I would try to run mandatory and regular seminars on critical business issue, and how IS helps and can help with solutions. Naturally, company managers would be the main source of teachers or facilitators. Ideally, some of the seminars would be devoted to basic statistics and anaysis and problem solving. I've often wondered why so many IS people are so clueless. Educating the personnel could work wonders.

Also, it should be mandatory for IS folks to know how to do requirements analysis based on user interviews -- what is the system supposed to do, and why it's supposed to do it, what do the users need.

In short, I would push to break the technical isolation of so many IS people, get them on the same page as everybody else. I still believe that KM is a label applied to part of smart management. To bring many IS people into reality will require lot's of KM oriented smart management.

This has been a topic of great irritation for almost thirty years. I could go on and on and .But enough.
Regards,
Reilly

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Follow Ups:

• respectfully disagree Daan de Koning 02:43:19 09/25/01 (6)
  • But who is the customer? Martyn R Jones 03:19:18 09/25/01 (5)
    • Re: But who is the customer? Daan de Koning 12:31:08 09/25/01 (4)
      • Why are children so imaginative? Martyn R Jones 08:16:57 09/26/01 (3)
        • Who said creativity = 10% imagination and 90% transpiration? Daan de Koning 12:37:44 09/26/01 (0)
        • Re: Why are children so imaginative? Chris 10:44:49 09/26/01 (1)
          • Childlike wonder is only part of the solution - KM in IT Jim Love 12:00:00 10/06/01 (0)

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