{"id":4459,"date":"2014-12-09T19:43:31","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T19:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multiacademstg.wpengine.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2014\/12\/09\/itil-implementing-knowledge-management\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T14:24:48","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T14:24:48","slug":"itil-implementing-knowledge-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2014\/12\/09\/itil-implementing-knowledge-management\/","title":{"rendered":"ITIL \u2013 Implementing Knowledge Management"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I read Branimir\u2019s article about Knowledge Management within <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/what-is-itil\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ITIL<\/a> (which I strongly recommend that you read if you haven\u2019t already), <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2013\/09\/10\/building-world-knowledge-itil-knowledge-management\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Building a world of knowledge \u2013 ITIL Knowledge Management<\/a>, one thing immediately came to my attention: \u201c<em>Technicians keep everything local, either on their laptops, in their mail inboxes or in their heads.<\/em>\u201d That statement couldn\u2019t be truer. And it\u2019s not just technicians \u2013 everyone has their own place where they keep important information, <strong>structured<\/strong> for their personal needs, and <strong>available<\/strong> only to themselves. I\u2019ve highlighted keywords for you, and in case you missed them, here they are: <strong>structured<\/strong> and <strong>available<\/strong>.\u00a0 Please remember them.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">It\u2019s a riddle wrapped in a mystery<\/h2>\n<p>When implementing a <strong>Service Management System<\/strong> (SMS), it\u2019s fairly easy to justify <strong>Incident Management<\/strong> implementation. Or <strong>Change Management<\/strong>, and\/or <strong>Problem Management<\/strong>. They all represent cornerstones of service transition and operation and have measurable properties, which can be directly related to service status, internal workload, and <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=relationship-and-agreement-processes&amp;doc=customer-satisfaction-survey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">customer satisfaction<\/a>. It\u2019s the general opinion that with the Knowledge Management module you can\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n<p>While Knowledge Management is extremely important in running a successful service organization, it gets neglected for many reasons, and its importance is obscured by its complexity and entanglement with every single piece of service management framework. Within this article, I\u2019ll try to give you pointers on how to implement a successful <strong>Service Knowledge Management System<\/strong> (SKMS).<br \/>\n<div id=\"middle-banner\" class=\"banner-shortcode\"><\/div><script>loadMiddleBanner();<\/script><br \/>\n<div id=\"side-banner-trigger\" class=\"banner-shortcode\"><\/div><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Start small, think big<\/h2>\n<p>As in implementing Service Management practices, such as ITIL, the vast majority of organizations start with implementing <strong>Incident Management<\/strong> first. It\u2019s the perfect place to start implementing Knowledge Management as well. Operational staff gathers and produces an enormous amount of data every day.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4460\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/DIKW.png\" alt=\"DIKW.png\" width=\"426\" height=\"426\" srcset=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/DIKW.png 426w, \/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/DIKW-150x150.png 150w, \/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/07\/DIKW-300x300.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 426px) 100vw, 426px\" \/><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><em>Figure 1 &#8211; DIKW model<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>But, the data they gather is not useful in and of itself, and operational staff usually don\u2019t understand the importance of the data they handle, or in rare cases they do \u2013 they record it in their own, personal notebooks.<\/p>\n<p>In order to make use of that data, you should understand the DIKW model shown in Figure 1; <strong>data<\/strong> is just a set of facts, <strong>information<\/strong> is data within context, <strong>knowledge<\/strong> is information processed by human experience and understanding, and <strong>wisdom<\/strong> is when you can make informed decisions.<\/p>\n<p>Based on this information, now we know that Incident Management is a great place for data and even information gathering. This information has to be collected in an organized and <strong>structured<\/strong> manner, processed before it can be processed. This is where <strong>Problem Management<\/strong> kicks in (you may want to read some of our great articles about it: <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2013\/08\/05\/itil-problem-management-getting-rid-problems\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ITIL Problem Management: getting rid of problems<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2014\/07\/29\/itil-iso-20000-problem-management-organizing-problem-resolution\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ITIL and ISO 20000 Problem Management \u2013 Organizing for problem resolution<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/knowledgebase\/itil-reactive-proactive-problem-management-two-sides-coin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ITIL Reactive and Proactive Problem Management: two sides of the same coin<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Problem Management<\/strong> takes information about past incidents and events, vendor information, industry best practices and other information, and uses it in order to find and eliminate incident root causes, or to implement workarounds. This process transforms data into information, and then into knowledge, which is only the first step. Now we need to pass back that knowledge to the ones who need it, in order to make use of it. We need to make it <strong>available<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>While this is just an example, please understand that the <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=resolution-and-fulfillment-processes&amp;doc=known-error-record\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Known Error Database (KEDB)<\/a> produced by Problem Management is not the <strong>Service Knowledge Management System<\/strong> (SKMS) itself, but only a part of it.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Tips, tricks and benefits<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Knowledge Management implementation justification and benefits.<\/strong> Just as Incident Management is a great place for data\/information gathering, they are the ones who will reap great benefits from stored knowledge. For example, if the above-mentioned Problem Management discovers a new and improved workaround to common issues, Incident Management will be aware and use that knowledge to improve incident resolution times, which is a measurable property \u2013 directly related with Knowledge Management.<\/p>\n<p>If <strong>Change Management<\/strong> information regarding new releases is available to the incident resolution team (Service Desk), they will be able to identify and escalate incoming incidents to the proper support levels much faster than usual, again improving resolution times, and customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n<p>With SKMS in place, organizations will not lose knowledge if employees are unavailable because of vacation, sick leave, or even when they leave the company. The risk of \u201crediscovering knowledge\u201d is reduced to a minimum, if not eliminated completely.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Where to store it?<\/strong> Almost every <strong>Service Management System<\/strong> has some form of Knowledge Management module or <strong>Service Knowledge Management System<\/strong> (SKMS) implemented, so that could be a great place for storing <strong>Customer Information<\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=resolution-and-fulfillment-processes&amp;doc=known-error-record\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Known Error Database<\/strong> (KEDB)<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=relationship-and-agreement-processes&amp;doc=service-level-agreement-sla-\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Service Level Agreements<\/strong> (SLA)<\/a>, documented <strong>policies<\/strong>, <strong>processes<\/strong>, <strong>instructions<\/strong>, <strong>manuals,<\/strong> and other useful information that affects daily operations.<\/p>\n<p>You could also use web-based portals (such as a wiki) to store and manage information that Incident Management (or anyone else) can use, as they are easy to set up and maintain. I\u2019d always suggest having a \u201chard copy\u201d of information stored in web pages, in the form of office documents, for several reasons: documents can be stored locally in case the web front-end is unavailable, they can be archived, and they can be printed for use in off-the-grid situations (such as emergency situations).<\/p>\n<p>Wherever and whatever you store in your KMDB, it\u2019s important that it is searchable, well <strong>structured,<\/strong> and <strong>available<\/strong> to those who need it.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">\u201cKnowledge is power, ignorance is bliss.\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>When you don\u2019t preserve knowledge within your organization, you are at risk of falling into an endless loop of rediscovering the same thing, losing time on finding basic stuff, or even being unable to find it. It\u2019s important that you get out of that loop to avoid the risk of going insane.<\/p>\n<p><em>To implement ISO 20000 easily and efficiently, use our<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ISO 20000 Documentation Toolkit<\/a> <em>that provides step-by-step guidance for full ISO 20000 compliance.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I read Branimir\u2019s article about Knowledge Management within ITIL (which I strongly recommend that you read if you haven\u2019t already), Building a world of knowledge \u2013 ITIL Knowledge Management, one thing immediately came to my attention: \u201cTechnicians keep everything local, either on their laptops, in their mail inboxes or in their heads.\u201d That statement &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":4460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[351,357,344,428,429,359,204,430,369],"class_list":["post-4459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-change-management","tag-incident-management","tag-itil","tag-kedb","tag-knowledge-management","tag-problem-management","tag-service","tag-skms","tag-sms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4459"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18439,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459\/revisions\/18439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}