How can you develop a knowledge management system for your team?

Assessing the team's need is the first step, then choose the right tool such as Confluence and design it's architecture. Then Train the team on how to use the KMS effectively, including best practices for creating and managing content. Finally, monitor usage, gather feedback, and continuously improve the system to ensure it meets the team's evolving needs.

Assessing your current situation objectively and against a standard is essential. There are multiple resources that can help you understand your KM Maturity Level against your peers or industry. This added dimension speaks to business stakeholders working outside of KM. Finally, an objective outside perspective is key. A trusted partner will identify gaps in your blindspot and provide suggestions without bias.

Something that is often forgotten is to link your objectives and requirements to the larger business goals. As KM professionals, it is easy to see everything through a KM lens. If your objectives and requirements don't immediately resonate with the executive team, you'll face significant headwinds progressing your program. If the business publishes a yearly strategy, this is a good place to start mining ideas. Ask yourself, "how does this objective support or contribute to the strategy or strategies defined by leadership?"

Organizations should carefully assess their needs and use cases. Larger companies will be suited to a solution rather than an internal development. This will reduce the resources required for the deployment and ongoing developments needed. Robust knowledge management needs are best resolved with dedicated KM platforms offering hundreds of features beyond simple FAQs, including decision trees, workflow management, feedback routing, AI search, version control and more.

Selecting tools and technologies is fun, and it's easy to get caught up in the flashy new capabilities coming online seemingly every six months. To maintain focus and avoid scope creep, have a tech strategy to execute against. This can have multiple dimensions and if you find yourself stuck, there are resources available to help (professional services, KM communities, etc.). Start with a business led mindset. The technology should support KM efforts, not drive them. If you find yourself trapped by a technology and unable to evolve, you're in a situation where technology drove the conversation. In addition to the suggestions above, consider your risk tolerance around GenAI as you begin to bring these capabilities online.

Starting simple FAQ and simple stackoverflow-portals with answers to a question is a good start. Tools are not so critical, but culture is. Create a supportive culture where team help to answer and share information

When developing a knowledge management system for a work team, you need to choose a knowledge management platform. There are various platforms, different in technology and functionality. Here are some examples: - company wikis: suitable for collecting project topics; - document repositories, suitable for collecting documents of various formats; - ticketing systems, to collect fragmented information; - online forums, suitable for collecting comments; - etc. Choosing the right platform takes effort, but can lead to significant improvements in team efficiency and productivity.

Consider involving team members and identifying broader roles and responsibilities BEFORE selecting a tool. Your program needs to be self-sufficient regardless of the technology chosen. Start small, gain quick wins, and scale as fast as the business will tolerate. Become best friends with your IT team and include them at the earliest stages. When resources are scarce, IT can absorb the lion's share of support while you and your team focus on the underlying KM architecture the system supports.

From my personal PoV, change management and the aspiration/strategy to integrate knowledge work as much as anyhow possible in the daily processes and routines are the real drivers for making KM work - a platform or so is nice, but does not work without any ?fuel“, thus regular meaningful contributions which ideally are steered and coordinated based on preexisting processes within each team

Change Management is the unsung hero and can make or break your initiative. Communication can start before anything is in place to gain momentum and excitement. Have a plan in place and a strategy to execute against early on. I suggest training fall into this category as well. Once in sustainment mode, feedback is key and an objective point of view or an outside observer can help you stay on track, especially when navigating the internal complexities of the business.

i would say it is a step zero. create a habits and cultures together with a rules of play. - operation run books on errors or repeated task - summary of conversation or frequent questions as a note in KMS - ADR and decision logs All this should be naturally integrated to a team culture and work process