Boosting Project Efficiency Through a Well-Designed Knowledge Management Framework

It was a cold Monday morning when I was packed into a meeting room with a bunch of technical architects and project managers for a general technical discussion. It was my first day as a knowledge management consultant with a market-leading telecom company in Australia. After the icebreaker, an architect started explaining an approach to implementing a feature stated in the scope definition. As he went on explaining, the others were lost as they couldn't find that feature in their copy of the scope definition. It took us a few minutes to realize that three different versions of the same scope document were in circulation. The story became horrific when a few SMEs revealed that some of those copies had been reviewed too.

Then started a project manager whose job was to maintain the six-week look-ahead model for the various teams. A detailed Excel sheet was projected on the screen with hard-to-read data and a few fancy charts. To my surprise, the manager maintained a separate sheet for each department lead, which was circulated via email. Anyone willing to know about the look-ahead was supposed to get a copy via the email. 20 minutes in the meeting and I could clearly see some of the classic knowledge management mistakes in practice. 

Here started another terrible week for the document author, reviewers, and the project managers too. The hiring manager was relying on me to make all of them happy (perhaps by waggling a magic wand). The situation was not new to me and was a usual case for organizations using email attachments to circulate stand-alone technical documents without having a centralized documentation repository.

Proposed Solution

After analyzing the current practices and documentation approach, I proposed a Confluence Cloud-based knowledge management framework to boost the project efficiency. I used many inbuilt as well as marketplace add-ons for customizing the framework. This framework was proposed by keeping the following design considerations:

• The framework should be globally accessible through a role-based access model.
• The correct templates should be used to produce consistent documents. The framework should automatically pick the correct template when a document type is selected. For example, if a user is creating a requirement specification, the appropriate template should be used to create the page when the Create New page option is selected.
• The change history and version control should be maintained.
• The administrators should be able to configure workflow-based reviews, and the authors should be able to select an appropriate review workflow for their documents.
• The authors should be able to assign reviewers at each stage of the review workflow.
• A version control mechanism should be in place to set baseline versions.
•  Email notifications should be sent to reviewers, watchers, and administrators for each workflow stage.
• The related documents should be linked using cross-references

The Framework

The proposal was to create a Confluence Cloud-based knowledge management framework to enable users to create and manage technical information for the project such as requirements, scope, design, and delivery documents. Read-Only access was proposed for the cross-functional teams, and role-based write access was proposed for the project team. Based on Confluence Cloud, it was accessible from anywhere through any web browser. After hitting the URL, a user was supposed to enter her credentials to access the platform.

Initial Setup

A role-based access control model governed the access to the framework. I created a new space in Confluence and configured its settings. I got a list of user roles and configured their permissions in the space. For example, the internet services team had no access to the prepaid mobile services team documents.

The desired page hierarchy was finalized after a couple of workshops with different stakeholders. For example, the company had multiple programs and many projects under each of the programs. A page hierarchy was required (requirements, design, test) for each of the projects.

The next step was to create templates to ensure document consistency. I converted the existing MS Word template to Confluence and configured the page hierarchy. I also provided the Create From Template button on the parent page in each category to enable the creation of child pages using the template for that category. For example, to create a new requirement specification, the user would click the button from the Requirement Specifications page, and Confluence would create a page based on the Requirements template.

I selected the draw.io add-in for creating powerful diagrams in Confluence. The add-in enabled users to edit the diagrams by invoking the editor from within the page.

Review Strategy

The client required multi-staged, notification-based workflows for document reviews. The ability to select and assign reviewers and approvers was also required for every technical document.

I used the Komala Workflows add-in to implement workflow-based reviews. Multiple review workflows were created using scripts to satisfy the client requirements. These review workflows were designed in such a way that:

• The author could select the appropriate review workflow for her page.
• Upon assigning a review workflow to a page, the workflow phase was displayed under the page title. For example, Draft, In Review, or Reviewed.
• The name of the current reviewer or approver was also displayed if the page is being reviewed or pending approval from a user.
• An email notification was sent upon a workflow stage change.
• The watchers automatically got notifications when the page was edited or reviewed.

Versioning Strategy

It was one of the requirements to provide the ability to create a baseline version for a set of design documents when a particular project delivery milestone is achieved. Another requirement was that the older version should still be accessible to see the difference between the current and the old version.

I used the Scroll Versions add-in to create baselines and manage multiple page versions. The add-in even allowed the administrators to configure access rights by versions.

User Interface

The ease of search is one of the notable features of Confluence. I used the Confluence search to create a Google-like interface on the framework home page. The auto lookup automatically displayed the matching page names as the user typed in the search area. The free search enabled the users to access the information without bothering about the knowledge hierarchy such as guessing which document would be under which parent page.

To make the user experience even better, each page had links to the related pages. This was accomplished by intelligent use of labels and associated macros.

Increased Productivity

The framework boosted the project productivity as by centralizing the knowledge base. The users were able to:

• Access the latest version from anywhere,
• Make changes without any conflicts
• Manage reviews through workflows
• Create new versions upon reaching a project milestone.

The meetings were crisp and productive as there were no confusions at all. My delight doubled when the senior manager marked my stint as "Super Productive".

If your organization is facing a hard time managing the project information, feel free to contact me at Hemant.auz@gmail.com. I would be happy to help.