tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2007://1/tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2006://1.8025- 2007-12-03T11:45:15Z Comments for KM and ROI Jack Vinson writes about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints and more. As of December 2007 Jack will likely start writing about product management too. Movable Type 4.01 tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2006://1.8025.17574 Comment from sean on 2006-10-24 sean http://www.patternhunter.com I have helped (re)design and implement a number of KM systems for some big telecom companies in the Denver area. Some of these tools have been tremendously sophisticated and yet, enthusiasm seems to drop off as features get added.

The most successful (in terms of improving measurable performance) KM solutions we have implemented to date are unstructured wikis vetted by peer groups of 50 people or less.

We are experimenting with a "prediction economy" tool (see Sunstein's Infotopia) that uses peer review and "futures trading" on the likely success of anonymous posts. As an end user, you have no idea if the entry comes from a VP, M&P SME or someone still in training. Similar to digg.com, if a post gains popularity, it makes it to the top of the info heap and the poster's "whuffie" score rises. At the same time, the earlier a reviewer successfully predicts that the post will gain popularity, the more points get awarded to the reviewer. In this system, posting valuable info and predicting the likely value of posts is rewarded.

We'll see how it goes. So far, the early results are impressive (starting with "low-tech" paper-based trials with groups of supervisors and managers). Onward ho!

]]> 2006-10-24T23:45:55Z 2006-10-24T23:45:55Z tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2006://1.8025.17589 Comment from Dennis D. McDonald in Alexandria, Virginia USA on 2006-10-24 Dennis D. McDonald in Alexandria, Virginia USA http://www.ddmcd.com I don't understand why there should be any argument about whether the concept of ROI is or is not inappropriate for a KM project. Experienced project managers know some project impacts can be measured, some impacts are hard to measure but reasonable proxies can be found, and some "soft" impacts can't be measured but at least can be defined. Just because you can't assign a dollar figure to certain types of impacts doesn't mean you throw out the concept of metrics altogether. Sometimes I wonder if some of the folks actively resisting the application of ROI concepts to KM and related areas do so because they just don't want to be evaluated. (I'd be the first to admit that not everything can be measured, and I spent a good chunk of my career as a number cruncher.)

For those interested in the topic of ROI and justification, I'd be very interested in getting feedback to a post I wrote about justifying Web 2.0 projects; some of the concepts might be relevant to discussions of KM and ROI:
http://www.ddmcd.com/justification.html

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