Considerations for developing a knowledge practice
Knowledge audit
Understanding what exists and what is missing is crucial for developing an effective practice. Conduct a knowledge audit to identify existing knowledge, assets, gaps, consolidation opportunities, and redundancies
The collection of knowledge should support:
- What defines success from an organizational perspective
- The key audience(s) consuming the content
- The intent/objective the audience is trying to achieve
Prioritize the right content
Focus on the most critical content for your intended audience, addressing their biggest pain points. Apply the 20/80 rule: Identify the 20% of content that will solve 80% of the problems. This approach also aids in consolidating your knowledge base.
Use reporting and analytics to assess
- Most used content
- Top support queries / topics with supporting content
- Top support queries / topics lacking content (content gap analysis)
- Whether the prioritized content aligns with your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and supports desired business outcomes
Standardization
Standardizing knowledge management processes create consistent and efficient workflows, reducing repeated work and streamlining operation.
Develop a knowledge creation and review workflow
This workflow should incorporate key stages of content authoring, publishing, and review:
- Draft article is created
- Article is ready (in queue) for review
- Article is in review
- Technical review (as needed)
- Editorial review (as needed)
- Compliance and legal review (as needed)
- Article is approved for publishing
- Article is rejected for publishing
- Article is published
- Article is deleted or archived
- Post publication review, feedback, and update cycle
Develop a content standard
The content standard dictates proper use of and guidelines for:
- Good and bad article examples: Contrast between good and bad articles to reinforce the concepts and intents behind the content standard.
- Templates: Define criteria for each article template and directions for filling out the fields within.
- Style guide: Describe preferred writing styles, vocabulary / voice / tone.
- Supporting materials: Define guidelines for the use of images, videos, tables, and hyperlinks.
- Multi-language considerations: Writing guidelines that ease translation efforts.
Structure and organization
Content structure and organization are crucial for making knowledge accessible, reliable, and scalable. As knowledge expands across your organization and business units, maintaining a standardized structure ensures a seamless integration of new information.
Benefits of content structure and organization
- Ease of access and content searchability: Well-structured content allows users to quickly find the information they need, improving productivity, reducing the time to solve their needs, and enhancing the overall user experience.
- Consistency and reliability: A standardized content structure ensures uniform presentation and easier maintenance. This keeps knowledge accurate, updated, and trustworthy.
- Scalability and integration: As knowledge grows, organized content supports seamless expansion and integration with other systems. This enhances knowledge sharing and prevents your knowledge base from becoming chaotic.
- Collaboration: Consistent content organization fosters a shared understanding across teams, which encourages more and better collaboration and cross-functional innovation.
- Content maintenance and version control: Organized content simplifies updates and ensures effective version control, keeping the knowledge base relevant and reducing the risk of outdated information.
Evaluation and improvement cycle
While creating and reviewing content is essential, ongoing refinement at regular intervals is often overlooked, leading to stagnant and outdated content, and inefficient workflows. Establishing a content evaluation and improvement cycle ensures that knowledge stays effective, accurate, and aligned with organizational goals.
Develop an evaluation and improvement cycle
Consider three key stages as you develop a cycle:
- Periodic assessments: Establish a regular cadence for evaluating content, organization, structure, and process workflows. Determine the frequency of assessments, identify the responsible teams, and assign ownership for implementing changes.
- Feedback integration: Create processes to capture, review, and apply feedback from users and stakeholders. Ensure relevant feedback is incorporated into content and workflows, and share insights with the Product team for future roadmap considerations.
- Gap analysis: Conduct regular gap analyses to identify missing content and opportunities for new knowledge creation. This ensures that your content is complete and accurate.
Continuous adoption and knowledge culture
While most of the knowledge practice considerations focus on tactical developments and processes, continuous adoption and a strong knowledge culture highlight that a knowledge practice is not only implemented, but sustained and embedded into the fabric of the organization.
A knowledge practice thrives when it is owned by the people who consistently use and improve it, ensuring everyone contributes and adapts to new tools and processes. It is critical to foster an environment where sharing and using knowledge is encouraged, continuous learning is valued, and the right tools are provided to manage and spread knowledge effectively.