The challenge of Findability: Optimizing Project Knowledge Management

Sue Feldman of IDC?found that you and I, ?knowledge workers, spend about 35% of our time searching for information, and 40% of corporate users reported that they?couldn’t find the information they need to do their jobs on their intranets.

According to KM Institute, “the subsequent costs are significant; in another?recent survey?conducted by IDC, the time spent searching for information averages 8.8 hours per week, at the cost of $14,209 per knowledge worker per year.”

My friends, the time and costs associated with unstructured information—experts estimate that 80-90% of information are unstructured, unmanaged knowledge, and the challenge of findability are simply too significant to ignore in today’s knowledge economy.

I remember the first time I developed the charter for a major transformational project involving replacing dozens of legacy applications in an organization. When I searched the organization’s intranet for a charter template, I got more than a million results that say anything but a charter. This could be frustrating. It’s like I’m living in a Walmart Superstore of information, but I can’t find what I need to manage my projects. What a travesty to store needles on a haystack!

What is Findability?

Peter Morville, in his book Ambient Findability (2005), provides three definitions:

1. The quality of being locatable or navigable.

2. The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate.

3. The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval.

In the 21st century, “Your?knowledge assets?MUST be findable. They must be ambiently findable (which means that by their very nature, they pop up when you start looking).”?Knoco stories. All forward-thinking and thriving organizations “must have the right tools and products to break down information silos and improve findability “…better understand the?experiences of their customers and employees, see hidden connections, expand collaboration, enable AI and machine learning where it is feasible, and take advantage of automation to streamline processes.” KM World (2021)?

“Knowledge management is about making it as easy as possible for people to find, use, or re-use organizational information and knowledge.” Fire Oak Strategies. According to NCHRP Projects 20-97 and 20-97A, “The term “information” encompasses a variety of content and formats; for example, printed documents, written and electronic data files, maps, images, audio, and video files.” KM removes redundancies, stops reinventing the wheel, improves efficiencies, and stirs collaborative innovations through new knowledge creation.

I’m not limiting findability to the search engine architecture—search input, query management, and search output. What about finding a colleague with the right knowledge, finding a knowledge café or a community of practice, or finding how and where to find what you need? The ease of finding relevant information and knowledge for your projects and Programs from the piles of files, data, and information is a competitive advantage.

Why is findability important?

All products, regardless of whether they are physical devices, systems, or websites, information or knowledge become useless unless there is findability. Therefore, it’s an essential usability consideration. If a user, knowledge worker, or visitor is unable to find what they need, they will either be stuck or simply abandon the product or service and look for a better alternative. “The findability/discoverability challenge is even more critical when considering intranets, knowledge bases, and other internal content/document management systems, where users may need to wade through thousands of documents to find what they’re seeking.” Enterprise Knowledge.?

What are the impediments to findability?

o??Little or no resources are devoted to this knowledge management. If your organization has a KM office or a resource dedicated to KM, let me know.

o??Existing information management is still mainly conducted in silos.

o??Misaligned Data/info sources: Often, data/info sources are not treated as assets or deliberately planned out. Some see them as a library or IT issue alone.

o??Lack of proper KM or findability policies and processes.

o??Lack of digitization: Some information is still not converted from paper to electronic content. Some scanned documents are not OCR-capable.

o??Lack of Intentionality: There is no intentional training and monitoring. It’s assumed that everyone is doing KM.

o??There is lacking annotation or metadata. Ontologies or metadata schemas can be adapted to classification, search, and retrieval of the diversity of information an organization creates and uses.

o??The relevant project, program, and operational information and knowledge are saved on local machines.

o??Systems talk at systems, not to systems: Disparate systems that don’t talk to or are not connected to each other—owned by tribal units. All systems are not connected to one single search engine.

o??The search engine is not intelligent.

How do you Improve findability?

o???Generally speaking, to improve findability, put a knowledge management lens. Have a KM plan.

o??Keep it simple and responsive. Consider how many clicks to reach the final destination. Can they get the same result on a tablet or cell phone? Do you know what happens if they can’t find what they are looking for in three seconds?

o??Manage your content: write good contents that are clear, concise, and consistent by choosing an appropriate style guide, editing your content to create a consistent style for the end-users or your readers.

o??To increase product, information, or knowledge findability, improve information management discipline by cultivating disciplined practices for creating, naming, storing, versioning, and culling your content.

o??Improve organizational search and navigation capabilities by implementing and configuring tools to explore available content and locate your items of interest.

o??Improve metadata and terminology management by developing and using consistent ways of cataloging, describing, and classifying content.

o??AI will quadruple the effectiveness of search engines. See NASEM for more.

Knowledge Management is not Information Management. “Information becomes individual knowledge?when it is accepted and retained by an individual as being a proper understanding of what is true.”?(Lehrer, 1990). Projects don’t manage themselves. Therefore, knowledge must be intentionally managed. Findability increases discoverability. Good findability is a precursor to discovering new and existing information and knowledge.?If it takes more than three clicks and three seconds to find what we need to do our work, we can use KM to improve that capability today.

If you are interested in KM, you’ll like my new book, The Knowledge Café. Check it out on Amazon

The Knowledge Cafe: Create an Environment of Successful Knowledge Management

#TheKnowledgeCafe #KnowledgeManagement #KnowledgeCafe #Findability #PMI