Knowledge Management Architecture and Implementation

The Knowledge Management Architecture is different from an Enterprise Architecture,

but typically connects to it, so in some cases, they are confused with each other. The
enterprise architecture emerged out of methods for documenting and planning information
systems architectures, and currently most enterprise architecture practitioners are
employed in the IT department of a firm. The enterprise architecture team performs
activities that support business and IT managers to figure out the best strategies to support
innovationin relation to the business information systems the firm depends on.
Enterprise architecture defines what an organization does in terms of business goals and
objectives, who performs individual functions within the organization, how the
organizational functions are performed within the innovation value chain, and how
information assets are is used and stored in support of that function.
EA is also referred as "Everything Aligned", as the Business-Technology alignment is
achieved through EA tasks. The Business and Technology parameters like Availability,
Scalability, Security, Interoperability, Maintainability, Lower Cost, Extendibility, and
Reliability are improved through EA.
As pmNERDS go about making innovation a science, it is in the Enterprise Architecture that
the categorization stage takes place.
The Knowledge Management Architecture is different from an Information Architecture,
but again is sometimes confused with it. Information architecture (IA) is the art and science
of organizing and labeling data including: websites, intranets, online communities, software,
books and other mediums of information, to develop usability and structural aesthetics. It is
an emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing together principles of
design and architecture, primarily to the digital landscape. Typically, it involves a model or
concept of information which is used and applied to activities that require explicit details of
complex information systems. These activities include library systems and database
development. (Wikipedia)
IA can be about making wire-frames of a website, or the blueprints of a digital design,
which are both a large part of the information architecture. An IA might also produce a
taxonomy of how content and products on a website should be classified, or a prototype
illustrating how the information should change on screen as a user progresses through a
task. These solutions are developed by research. This research can take the form of
competitor analysis, reading academic papers on human/computer interaction, or testing
ideas on real users.
In the end, however you try to define it, information architecture boils down to consciously
organizing the content and flow of a website or application, based on some principles that
can be articulated, that have been derived through evidence gathering. At a micro level,
this can mean deciding that products on a search page should be ordered by price rather
than by name. On a larger scale it could be reorganizing the content on a site to support
some clear tasks that users want to perform. On a strategic level, an information architect
might get involved in determining the way that articles and metadata are placed into a
content management system.
As pmNERDS go about making innovation into a science, the information architecture helps
innovation teams discover relationships and values between information assets. The
information architecture should provide support to the system of systems type of thinking
that needs to take place in the correlation stage of making innovation a science.
Unlike the other two architectures, the Knowledge Management Architecture resides in
the business unit as often as in IT. Knowledge Management Architecture is the application of
an information and enterprise architecture to knowledge management. That is, using the
skills for defining and designing categorized assets, and leveraging the correlations defined
in the enterprise architecture to establish an environment conducive to managing
knowledge.
Information architecture tends to focus on designing spaces for existing or predefined
information assets.. For example, one branch of information architecture focuses on
findability, with little or no concern about how the information asset itself comes into being.
In the knowledge architecture, the transition from data, into information assets, and then
into knowledge is paramount.
Knowledge architecture, deals with potential information. So, rather than determining the
best way to use existing content, the knowledge architect is designing "spaces" that
encourage knowledge to be created, captured, and shared. In this respect, the actual
content doesn't matter as much as the life cycle -- how and when it gets created and how
best to get it to the right people quickly.
The knowledge architecture supports two types of tasks, Strategic and Operational. The
knowledge architecture should provide focus and enable the accomplishment and
measurement of business goals and objectives. There needs to be a concept of the
knowledge life-cycle, and how new knowledge can be correlated to the accomplishment of
the firm's goals. From an operational point of view, tasks such as knowledge identification,
creation, acquisition, development and refinement, distribution, use, and preservation all
fall within the realm of the knowledge architecture.
Some of the benefits of a knowledge architecture include capturing the rational for
decisions, improved reusability of lessons learned and other experiences, an increase in
quality decisions, minimized innovation and change risk, minimized design mistakes, ability
to avoid dependency on key individuals, gain competitive advantage, encourage adoption of
best-practices, improve efficiency of processes, and support case-based reasoning.
As pmNERDS go about making innovation a science, it's the knowledge architecture that
provides the space for effect-cause-effect thinking.