The Knowledge Management Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building a Knowledge Management System [With CDROM]

This book/CD ROM combination is, indeed, a toolkit. The essence of the book is a four-phase, 10-step approach for capturing and disseminating knowledge, and measuring the impact of your efforts in the form of ROI and other performance metrics.The phases and steps outlined are: Phase I, Infrastructure evaluation, accomplished by the following steps: (1) analyzing your existing infrastructure (the "as is" part) and (2) aligning your KM and business strategies (to ensure that you are not devising solutions to "non-problems" and/or your strategy addresses real business requirements). Phase II, KM System Analysis, Design and Development encompasses steps (3) designing the knowledge management architecture and integrating existing infrastructure, (4) auditing and analyzing existing knowledge, (5) building the knowledge management team, (6) creating the knowledge management blueprint, and (7) developing the knowledge management system. Phase III System Deployment entails steps (8) deploying with "results driven incrementation" methodology and (9) change management and cultural considerations. The final phase is Infrastructural evaluation, and is performed with the last step, 10, in the approach, which is measuring results of knowledge management, devising ROI metrics and evaluating system performance.A few things stand out: the approach is laid out and the CD ROM that comes with the book has evaluation forms and checklists that will assist greatly every step of the way. Second, the "results driven incrementation" (RDI) methodology is a sane implementation approach that starts with a pilot and grows from there. This prevents dumping money and resources into a strategy that stalls from over ambition or unrealistic expectations. Phase I, however, is also a check against unrealistic expectations, so the author's overall approach avoids or mitigates a great deal of risk.I like the approach and tools because they are directly applicable to what I do for a living: developing and implementing IT processes in support of service delivery. Among the tools I use are problem management systems and help desk software. Most have KM modules (examples: Peregrine, Remedy ARS and SupportMagic). What most do not have is the straightforward method and associated analysis and implementation tools for capturing and disseminating knowledge. This book fills those gaps. Moreover, KM is an essential and usually missing ingredient in project management. While mature companies capture lesson's learned and make them available to other project teams, more often than not this information is not available and history keeps repeating itself. The approach and tools provided in this book would go a long way in rectifying that situation in companies that are project-intensive (consulting, ASPs, developers, etc.).KM has matured beyond buzzwords and visions from people who have ideas but cannot implement, into an essential element of organization and process for companies that wil

The "The Knowledge Management Toolkit" is the best book I've read so far on this topic. Without being a cookbook, it gives all practical knowledge and touches all the different aspects involved when setting up a KM-project. It goes well beyond the theoretical concepts where most other books on KM stop. One of the chapters I find most interesting is "Aligning knowledge management and business strategy". It provides a good model to scope your KM-project. The practical cases spread all over make the topics very understandable. After reading Tiwana's book, you should be able to start working on a KM-project and finalize it successfully.

The authors of this book do not try to seduce you with yet another management fad (common in many KM books). Instead, they offer sane action steps for companies that are victims of stalled thinking about how to make KM work _and_ deliver results. This book is clearly written, comprehensive but not concise at 600 plus pages, discusses many issues in detail, and provides a comprehensive overview of the field. The evolution of KM in Ch 1 is interesting, the 20 plus page bibliography at the end has many hidden gems, and the structure is easy to follow. Many recent examples make reading this heavy title interesting and these examples and cases drive home things that will not work in practice. A step-by-step approach is complemented by an actually-useful CD on which I found word DOC versions of many analysis documents from the book. I liked that the authors have not taken the "build it and they will come" approach and discussed incentives, culture, and rewards for KM that are powerful to remove the security blanket of economic incentives _not_ to share knowledge. Excessive footnotes were a little distracting (ignore them). While this is a very good book, and probably the most comprehensive printed book on KM, read Working Knowledge by Prusak and Davenport (paperback) first. Also recommended are Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management (a collection of timeless articles), Management Challenges for the 21st Century by Drucker, and The Knowledge-Creating Company by Nonaka and Takeuchi.

This book by far is the best book I've read on knowledge management. Most others on KM are so unspecific and unclear that at the end you have no idea what's going on. Not so with this one: author Tiwana has broken KM application into 10 clear steps. In addition, the diagrams are excellent as well as the case studies. Much work and thought went into this and it shows glowingly. This is a winner.

After you have your knowledge content properly engineered, you face the challenge of deciding who needs what knowledge, when, where, and why. Amrit Tiwana has designed the Results Driven Incremental Methodology (RDI) whereby an organization can design and implement a knowledge management system (KMS). The challenge of designing the knowledge management architecture and building the knowledge management infrastructure so that it does perform effectively, is just as great as the previous one of structuring the knowledge so that it can be managed. As Tiwana says, there is no "silver bullet" to solve all problems, AND solving any of the problems will take considerable commitment and work. This book is also well-written and profusely illustrated. Organized as a giant check-list, the author takes the reader through 10 steps: (1)Analyzing the Existing Infrastructure; (2)Aligning Knowledge Management and Business Strategy; (3)Designing the Knowledge Management Infrastructure; (4) Auditing Existing Knowledge Assets and Systems; (5) Designing the Knowledge Management Team; (6)Creating the Knowledge Management Blueprint; (7) Developing the Knowledge Management System; (8) Deploying and Using the Results-driven Incremental Methodology; (9)Managing Change, Culture and Reward Structures; (10) Evaluating Performance, Measuring ROI, and Incrementally Refining the KMS. Each step is described in terms of roles, tasks, and procedures, so it is possible to keep track of the flow of the project as well as the list of necessary activities. This book has a companion CD which serves a similar role to the CommonKADS website for that book. There are a variety of demos of different knowledge management tools on the CD, and a couple of them are full-fledged versions. The CD also contains the question lists that can guide the design and implementation of a RDI Knowledge Management project. The many real-life examples of the use of RDI will demonstrate its practicality.