APQC’s Knowledge Sharing Network

APQC’s Knowledge Sharing Network KnowledgeNets May 8, 2003 New York, N.Y. Farida Hasanali

American Productivity & Quality Center • Founded in 1977 with $10 million from 100 corporations • Annual revenues $12 million and staff of 95 • Membership • Research & Publications • Training & Consulting • Non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization • No government support; no endowment • Board of Directors • 55 senior executives from corporations, education, and government

APQC Mission …to work with people in organizations around the world to improve productivity and quality by: • Discovering, researching, and understanding emerging and effective methods of improvement; • Broadly disseminating our findings through education and advisory and information services; and • Connecting individuals with one another and with the knowledge and tools they need to improve

American Productivity & Quality Center – The APQC • Membership • Research and Advisory Services • Knowledge Management • Performance Excellence • Networking • Training and Conferences

Knowledge Management Building on Learning Transfer of Best Practices Benchmarking & Best Practices Systemic Quality and Process Improvement (MBNQA) Competitiveness: Productivity & Quality 1977 Present Building APQC’s Capabilities to Help

Membership • APQC’s Knowledge Sharing Network™ • Member discounts • Qualitative and quantitative benchmarking studies • Proven tools, methodologies, and templates • Metric databases • Organizational assessments • Publications • Computer-based, on-site, and public training • Networking

Definition of a CMS • Content Management is a system to provide meaningful and timely information to end users by creating processes that identify, collect, categorize, and refresh content using a common taxonomy across the organization. • A content management system includes people, processes, technology, and most importantly, the content itself. CMS is the enabler that provides the right information to the right person at the right time

Phases of a CM Approach • Phase 1: Develop the Business Case • Identify strategic rationale • Estimate costs and benefits • Phase 2: Plan and Design • Analyze requirements, current processes and systems • Conduct a content audit, develop a taxonomy, vendor assessment and selection, and project design • Phase 3: Implement • Refine and deploy the CMS • Change management • Phase 4: Maintain and Upgrade • Evolution of processes, technology, and roles over time

May-Sept 2001 Oct-Dec 2001 January 2002 February 2002 March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 Phase 2 Support KSN Timeline Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Elaboration of user requirements and strawman Looking for an answer: Assessment of existing processes Assessing vendors with new ideas Result: We knew what we did not want to do Construction and content input April 15, Launch Better understanding of what we wanted, assessed three vendors, selected one Design and Develop wireframes and conduct content audit Identifying requirements for Phase 2 and focusing on clean content

Phase 1 APQC’s business case for the KSN Opportunity Statement: To provide Members with what they are asking for: • better access, personalized content, people to people, and people to expertise connectivity • we will be able to provide more value to the membership, increase the renewal rate, and get a better understanding of member needs in order to target products and services that will meet and exceed their expectations. As a non-profit, we know we still must grow in order to remain viable and add value to our members.

Phase 1 Business Case for the KSN Opportunity Benefits • Harvest content (slice & dice) • Better position APQC expertise & services • Automatically index, and filter content • Track customer interests • Member networking platform • Enhance membership renewal rate and grow membership • Better APQC branding on processes and functions & repeat traffic to the Web • Real-time trend analysis and personalized customer interest information • Enhance APQC position as recognized SME in the mind of our members Issues Solution Enablers • Our members continually tell us they value: • Access to content • Access to each other (networking) • Access to expertise • Internal document management • Security and multiple access levels • Match interests to taxonomy & deliver personalized, individualized content • Identify other members with similar interests & connect online • Identify & contact Experts • Dynamic web pages

Phase 2 Structure and Roles within APQC • Core Team • Executive Sponsor – Ron Webb, Director • Program Manager, Farida Hasanali • Subject Matter Expert • Portal Administrator – business side • Content authors (3) – information research specialists • Editors (2) • Additional support as needed from within APQC

Phase 2 Understanding User Requirements • Cross-functional user groups • Representative of each product and service group • Core CM team • SME conducted preliminary user requirements sessions • Formulated a list of functionalities that APQC wanted to deliver • Took that list to several vendors for bid

Phase 2 Making decisions Functionality Requests Strategy Business Case Business Strategy Scorecard Filters - used to define the scope and direction of the project relative to the broader strategy Project Vision 4 4 4 Business Requirement 1 Critical Success Factors 4 Business Requirement 2 4 4 Business Requirement 3 4 Business Requirement 4 Core Requirements Set - Drives the implementation Requirements Set Use Case Survey Supplementary Spec Wireframes/Nav Map

Phase 2 Requirements Management • 78% of all software projects fail to deliver expected features on time and on budget1 • The average project only delivers 67% of planned features1 • The average project runs 45% over estimated cost1 • The average project over runs schedule by 63%1 • Requirements errors are estimated to be 40% of all software project errors2 • Rework from requirements errors account for 50-85% of total project rework costs3 Poor Requirements Managementis universally regarded as a major cause of each of these issues! 1The Standish Group International, Extreme CHAOS 2001 2 Rational Software Corporation, 1996 3 Raytheon Corporation

Phase 2 Taxonomy and Content Audit • Existing site had taxonomy, but was inconsistent and redundant • 1st tried to get buy in on a new structure from the executive team • Failed – too many opinions – did get a barebones agreement • Took taxonomy creation offline and worked with KM SME to get it done • Content audit was cumbersome and time consuming, found we could make same decisions directly during content input rather than twice • Probably worked only because we are a small group

Phase 2 Lessons Learned: Design and Implementation • Creating and Acquiring Content • Conduct a content audit: prune ruthlessly • Authors own the content • Publishing tools must be “ridiculously easy to use” • Content Management Processes • Spend enough time creating business rules • Maintenance is as important as creation • Create content stewards in each domain / unit • Allocate enough time to these roles • Content Delivery • No dead ends; always have a help desk somewhere

Phase 2 Lessons Learned: Design and Implementation, Cont. • Taxonomy and metadata • Reflect the user’s view of the world • Use SMEs for a first pass; validate and expand with user groups • Provide templates and wizards whenever possible • Taxonomy comes before technology – usually

Phase 2 Assessing Vendors • Decided we needed to assess at least 3 vendors • Provided list of functionality to all three and asked to propose solutions • Vendor 1 – custom solution based on software they had developed for other customers • Vendor 2 – Fatwire for content management, Autonomy for a search engine and, custom portal for Web delivery • Vendor 3 – Interwoven for content management, Verity for searching, and ATG for portal

Phase 2 Selecting Vendors • We decided to go with vendor 3 • vendor understood what we were looking for, • vendor assumed some of the risk, • solution was within our budget, • solution met our needs, • APQC/Vendor team gelled early, • solution was proven, and • vendor was experienced in solution.

Phase 3 Elaboration • A week long series of understanding user requirements • People in the sessions depended on the functionality being discussed • Marketing was invited to all sessions • Core team was present at all sessions • At the end of elaboration, we had a set of wireframes and a detailed outline of the functionality of the site

Phase 3 Construction • Developers constructed modules and got feedback as they went along • First module to be installed was Interwoven so we could start entering data • Then came the staging environment with the templates so we could see how the real data looked on the site • The production site is a mirror image of staging • Verity functionality was built to enable browsing using the knowledge trees

Phase 3 Deploy and Transition • Original launch date was set to April 8 • Decided to do a soft launch on April 8 – invited selected members to test the site • Moved full launch to April 15 • New functionality rolled out April 29, 2002 • Vendor transitioning knowledge of system to internal APQC application support person

Lessons Learned • Measure twice, cut once • But don’t get caught in analysis paralysis • Make the best decisions you can with the data you have • Its all about mitigating your risks not getting it “right” • Get an SME, its worth it • Don’t forget the people aspect • Pay attention to the amount of content you have to put in the system • Don’t let the “code freeze” get you

Lessons Learned (contd.) • Negotiate with vendors • Give and take normally works better than constant conflict • Important thing of course is to know when to give and when to take • More than one vendor on the project is both good and bad • shared accountability between vendors does not work • React quickly to changing situations • Divide, conquer and, monitor EVERYTHING!

Some Measures To-Date • Went live on April 15, 2002 • Registered Users • Over 12000 registered users • Content Items • Over 6,200 different content items loaded • Active Sessions • Peak has been at 600 • Average 50 – 60 • Busiest Times • Business Hours, Sunday afternoons • Thursday • Customer Feedback • Membership response has been very favorable • Two formal customer satisfaction surveys deployed – focus changing from want content to want communities

Jury is Still Out On….. • Quantifiable ROI – because cannot prove cause-effect relationship • Content vs. communities • Internal use of system • Parts of the total solution

APQC’s Knowledge Sharing Network