What's wrong with KM software

Martin Dugage has some interesting thoughts on What's wrong with KM Software?

What these approaches fail to understand is both technical and social. Technically, there is now far more storage capability at the edges of the network than there is at the center, as P2P software has taught us, yet vendors keep on designing server-centric systems because this is more easy to sell to companies (control!). Socially, the framework and governance rules of a group, whether team or community, is not something that can be pre-designed without their involvement.

Knowledge management is much more than the software, but both managers and vendors frequently find themselves in the maze of KM-by-software that Dugage argues against.

My recent thinking leads me in this same direction, that knowledge management approaches cannot work, if their aim is to manage the activities of the worker. KM needs to create opportunities for the worker to be more effective in what she does, rather than explicitly tell her how to do it. Yes, this needs to tie to business objectives - this is the whole point of understanding the business environment before creating new business processes and introducing software.