Re: Role of techwriters in the KM process

[HALL Bill <bill -dot- hall -at- tenix -dot- com>]

A couple of days ago Parineetha asked:

-------
1. What is the role of a Tech Writer / Co-ordinator in
the Knowledge Management process. 

2. Would switching from content and help authoring to
knowledge management (or managers as the case may be)
constitute a big leap into nothing from which there is
no return :-)

3. Is Knowledge Management another name (a fancy one
at that)for the tasks that an Information Architect
does or is it another area altogether?
-------

Since I am undergoing this evolutionary process in my own career, it is
probably worth contributing to this thread, even though it's a couple of
days late.

1. As I have stated in earlier contributions, knowledge management (lower
case) depends on how you define knowledge - which can be a contentious issue
in its own right. To me knowledge (in a manageable sense) is information
which has been assimilated, distilled and presented in a context that will
be meaningful by another person, i.e., what tech writers do for a living. My
cynical view is that there are a lot of people in the Organisational
Knowledge Management discipline that don't know what knowledge is, so this
gives techwriters a leg up, in that you do a fairly good understanding of
what it is that needs managing.

I would define knowledge management as the collection, codification,
preservation and dissemination of knowledge within an organisation. Many
techwriters have skills that are directly relevant to these areas. Knowledge
management solutions involve resolving problems in three main areas:
culture, process, and infrastructure to ensure that corporate knowledge is
captured, preserved and made available to those who need it where and when
it is needed.

Your role in the process can be whatever you make it. In my case, I have
just finished supervising a knowledge audit of the whole company, I am
working towards establishing common infrastructure and processes across all
divisions, I am conducting R&D projects relating to a couple of
knowledge-related technologies we are considering adopting, etc.  There are
formal courses of study in knowledge management, but in my own experience,
if you are logical, systematic and have a practical knowledge of how people
can preserve and communicate what they know, this can be far more important
than all the theory and processes you can cram from formal courses. (Which
doesn't mean you should ignore the established theories and processes - I've
re-established academic connections to help me in these areas - but
identifying the needs and interest preceded the academics.)

2. Is it a big leap into the unknown? Not necessarily. If you are a good
techwriter, as I said, you will already have a good tacit understanding of
the issues and some of the potential solutions. Where you become a knowledge
manager rather than a techwriter or a documentation manager is when you
begin to focus on what your own organisation needs to know in order to
become more successful and start working backwards from there to determine
where the knowledge already exists and how best to make it more readily
available to those who need to know it. Instead of thinking what the
customers for your products need to know to use the product, you focus on
thinking what your bosses need to know and how to make that information
available. The only area of km which may be foreign to a techwriter will be
the cultural and social aspects of knowledge transfer. David Snowden's
knowledge management heuristic says that

- people know more than they can say,

- they say more than they will write

So a good deal of attention needs to be focussed on the first step of the
chain, guessing what is in people's heads that the rest of the company needs
to know, and working out ways to ensure that knowledge is captured
explicitly or at least transferred in text, by words or by watching. You get
there by an evolutionary process working from what you now know best - how
to make knowledge explicit and deliver it in a form others can understand.

3. As others in this thread have said, there are a lot of buzz words
floating around. Knowledge Management is one of them. Focus on the product,
not the jargon! 

As I understand it, Information Architecture is one of several fairly
mechanical methodologies to help people who don't know how to write
coherently organise information for presentation. (Flames welcome if I'm
unjust here - I've never studied it, I've never used it, and I've never seen
a need to). 

Whatever else knowledge management may be, there is no mechanical
methodology you can follow to claim you are a knowledge manager. You have to
study your organisation, understand its psychology at the corporate and
individual levels, know its processes and existing information communication
and storage infrastructures. You need to be able to recognise where
knowledge exists now, where it is needed, and how to marry the two. It can
be pretty scary stuff, but learn by experience. You can get there by easy
evolutionary steps if you just keep asking "why do things have to be this
way?" when you encounter stuff-ups in your organisation.

Also, everything you learn along the way will help you to be a better
technical writer should you run into a dead end.

Regards,

Bill Hall
Documentation Systems Analyst
Strategy and Development Group
Tenix Defence
Nelson House, Nelson Place
Williamstown, Vic. 3016
Australia
Tel: +61 3 9244 4820
     +61 3 9244 4000 (Switch)
URL: http://www.tenix.com
Mailto:bill -dot- hall -at- tenix -dot- com

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