Effective Knowledge Transfer
As the old saying goes: the only thing that is constant in life is change. Consequently, companies must be prepared to address changes in all its forms, not least in the form of employee turnover.
Although of immense importance, many companies describe their approach to knowledge transfer as passive, meaning that KT is rarely prioritized and when KT is actually performed it occurs in a highly sporadic manner. Consequently, the sudden lack of knowledge that emerges as key team members leave the company has an adverse impact that manifests as: failure to meet deadlines, increased cost of development and maintenance, and decreased employee morale.
Evidently, there are many ways to perform an effective KT. the following are my suggestions.
As seen above, an effective KT should contain: comprehensive documentation (e.g. system documents, etc), KT sessions, a KT plan, and supervised learning.
Documentation is essential for an effective KT. It can be various types of documentation, e.g. system documentation, operations documentation, support documentation, etc. lack of documentation constitutes a big hurdle to effective KT, as the only source of information will be the knowledge provider(s), meaning that they must answer an increasing number of questions. Evidently, this is not an optimal case. It is important to break such a dependency by having alternative sources of information such as documentation.
Not surprisingly, documentation alone is not sufficient to achieve effective KT. It must be combined with practical KT sessions in which the knowledge provider presents various important topics, and also arranges hands-on training. Such sessions, enable the knowledge receivers to ask further questions that are not covered by the documentation.
It is widely known that KT is essential to ensure the quality of the software and to keep maintenance costs within the budget. Hence, an active approach to KT must be taken rather than a passive one. Thus, a crucial step is to devise a clear and realistic KT plan. This plan must have tangible goals and deadlines. It must also define which documents must be written, which topics must be described, and what communication medium should be used for each topic (e.g. documentation, oral presentations, mail, etc). Such a plan must be constructed by the knowledge provider, but feedback must always be obtained from the knowledge receivers in order to evaluate factors such as whether the plan is achievable, etc. The importance of a KT plan is further emphasized when new team members joint the team. Moreover, the plan should not only be on the KT level, rather on a team level. Meaning that adequate time must be allocated for the KT to be conducted.
Last but not least, supervised learning is also required for an effective KT. The concept of supervised learning is similar to KT sessions (described above) but it still differs. During supervised learning, the knowledge receiver should be assigned tasks to perform semi-independently. Meaning that the knowledge provider must take a step backwards into a supportive role in order to enable the rest of the team to take on the responsibility of development and maintenance. As a result, the team will aquire practical knowledge which is essential.
KT in Practice
The KT must be driven by 3 variables: unknown unknowns, unknowns knowns, known knowns. Note, these variables must be viewed from the knowledge receivers’ perspective. Before proceeding to the KT in practice, each variable will be defined below.
Unknown unknowns describes knowledge that is unknown by the knowledge receiver. This knowledge is also very hard to obtain by oneself. Thus, the knowledge provider must always reflect in order to identify what areas are unknown unknowns by the knowledge receivers.
Known unknowns describe knowledge that the information receivers know that they lack. It can be technical, domain or even operations knowledge. Known unknowns are good, since it implies that the area where knowledge is insufficient is identified. Team to take action to address this issue.
Known knowns describe knowledge that we as a team know that we know. Our goal is to make all information known knowns.
The image above describes the desired KT in action. First, the knowledge provider should plan the KT (as described earlier). The plan should contain information regarding: which documents to write, potential supervised learning possibilities, and short and long-term goals. Thereafter, the knowledge provider must present the plan to the knowledge receivers, in order to obtain feedback, and to surface further known unknowns. Evidently, the knowledge provider must change the plan based on the feedback. As a result (see image above), the knowledge provider and the knowledge receiver defines known unknowns together and these areas should be further explored during the KT.
How the knowledge transfer is conducted, meaning what means of KT is used is up to the knowledge provider and the knowledge receiver. KT can as mentioned above consist of various components, such as KT sessions, documentation, supervised learning etc.
The main objective of the KT is to convert the known unknowns to known knowns. The latter mentioned should be stored in the teams’ knowledge base. As a result of the KT, new known unknowns will be surfaced during the discussions. Both the knowledge provider and the knowledge receiver should then agree on the new known unknowns, and arrange a KT to address them.
During the whole process, the knowledge provider must continuously reflect on the level of knowledge possessed by the team, in order to identify potential unknown unknowns by the team. Since the knowledge receivers are not aware that they are lacking knowledge in a particular area, it must be the knowledge provider’s responsibility to ensure that these areas are addressed in future KT.
Aspects to explore
There are many aspects that companies can investigate in order to achieve effective KT, for instance:
1. What are the main challenges related to KT today?
a. Psychological hurdles to effective KT
b. Time
c. Money
2. What communication medium is most efficient to use?
a. Documentation
b. Oral presentation
c. Video tutorials
d. Graphical illustrations, such as mind maps instead of comprehensive documentation
