Workflows - Collaboration Technology

KM systems are often brought in via the classic waterfall design process, it is one of the oldest and most widely-used software development models. However, the big problem with waterfall design is capturing requirements completely and explicitly upfront. KM systems built this way tend to develop very high costs of change. Often, this is due to low investment in user research and user testing.

The result is that requirements documents are almost always flawed in scope and detail. You cannot rely on them to get everything right at the outset, so you cannot depend on the spec as you go in with the rest of the KM system lifecycle. Don't make the mistake of trying to 'test' quality into a KM system. Testing is not a stage. It should be an ongoing process managed by a highly effective team. If you don't build the highly effective team first, then you are at risk of simply passing down problems until they become the foundation of your system.

If good testing isn't applied at throughout the lifecycle, then the cost to fix problems in triage trying to discover the problem. Consider more agile techniques for KM systems that hope for a long and successful lifecycle.

Labels: KM Tools

As KM practicioners, it is vital that we cultivate an appreciation of the role and power of questions. Questions are at least the equal of answers and it is high time to end the bigotry. We need to practice the art of honoring questions. After all, the right question asked at the right time has changed the world time and time again.

In fact, Wendell Jamieson recently wrote an excellent new book by simply honoring questions that are normally laughed at or ignored. In his hit book: Father Knows Less Or: "Can I Cook My Sister?": One Dad's Quest to Answer His Son's Most Baffling Questions the author finds a wealth of valuable knowledge by simply working toward providing honest, well-researched and serious answers to the seemingly crazy questions from his kids. The impact on his own learning and the relationship with his kids is extremely eye-opening and funny!

Techniques for Honoring Questions:

• Restate and clarify questions without chartacterizing what the questioner feels, believes, or wants.



• Try to understand the feelings contained in questions, not just the 'facts ' demanded.



• Respond to questions with interest and empathy. Avoid cliches, indifference, cold objectivity, or phony concern.

A common but dangerous thinking habit is to begin seeing every question as some kind of 'Dis'. If you can avoiding focusing on the 'Dis' in your discussion, you open yourself up to truly effective learning and collaboration. If people describe you as defensive, try to avoid focusing on 'winning' debates. Make an obvious, public effort to honor the questions.

In my experience, folks who always seem to think they have the right answers are often asking the wrong questions.

Labels: KM Tools

Where does social network speed come from?

Connections. It can be a simple as knowing a 1-800 number or as complex as knowing how to frame an issue to get experts working on a solution fast. Many times the rules are subtle, unwritten, unspoken and unacknowleged. These connections provide the pathways to solutions.

In better days, the most cutting edge firms demanded, created and fostered the infrastructure to enable social network connections to flourish. Executives ignored the scorn of many entry-level employees for 'wasting' time on the golf course, because they knew that the social connections forged there were vital to the business process. The same need for strong social networks exists at the technical level as well.

Today, those same executives blindly destroy their social networks by racing around the world searching for ever-lower wages and progressively longer chains of subcontracted service providers. They seem to think that open-source, web enabled collaboration interfaces will be the whiz-bang gadget that replaces common cultures, shared languages, similar timezones and good old fashioned human interaction.

The results of globalizing operations without due diligence to the care and feeding of social networks tend to be declining customer service, slower response times and reduced innovation. All problems that are easy for an accountant to ignore, but devastating to a firms profitablity, sustainability and market share.

What have you done lately to build and/or strengthen your social networks?

Technorati Tags: KM, Social Networks

IBM in $1.6B Deal for Software Company

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 10, 2006; 10:23 AM

BOSTON -- IBM Corp. took another step to build out its software portfolio Thursday by announcing a $1.6 billion acquisition of FileNet Corp., which helps companies route data through business applications.

The all-cash deal values FileNet at $35 a share, a slim premium to FileNet's $34.65 closing price on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Wednesday. If shareholders approve, the deal would close in the fourth quarter.

...and then there were two!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/10/AR2006081000418.html

FileNet : A Consultant's Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Technorati Tags: Filenet IBM ECM Document Management Business News

FileNet made $422 million in revenue for the past financial year, meaning the company was more than $550 million shy of its new target.

FileNet CEO Lee Roberts sees the market for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) growing rapidly. Obviously, it is being driven by an explosion in data as companies scramble to streamline their business processes to meet post-Enron regulatory requirements. In addition, it is document imaging that often drives the AP and AR processes for large corporations.

According to Citigroup, demand for ECM software is expected to grow at a rate of 12 percent over 2 years, outpacing an expected 8.5 percent growth for applications software. Red Herring Magazine decribes the current ECM market as 'a three-horse race between IBM, EMC, and FileNet'.

Big News from IBM

Earlier this month IBM announced the availability of IBM Lotus® Notes® on Linux®, the industry's first business-grade collaboration software to support Linux on the desktop. The open-source Eclipse platform that it is built on enables vendors to write desktop software that works across operating systems, without the extra work of recoding, and is the same technology being used by the IBM Lotus Sametime client.

Linux users can now experience the Lotus Notes 7 collaboration platform which includes more than 100 new and existing features to help manage an increasing volume of information and work more efficiently. These features include:

• Enterprise-Level Messaging System — Designed to be the most open and interoperable enterprise collaboration platform on the market. This release offers customers the greatest choice in collaboration architecture.
  
• Rich Calendaring and Scheduling System — Includes centralized management of conference rooms and meeting resources such as audio-visual equipment.
  
• Expanded Mobile Support — Increased support available for the mobile user by providing the same offline capabilities as Windows.

Delivery of Lotus Notes on Linux Desktop Expands Scope of 'Migrate to the Penguin' Rewards

The arrival of Lotus Notes on Linux presents a new level of opportunity for the hundreds of IBM Business Partners who implement Linux e-mail and collaboration, and develop Linux-based applications. The 'Migrate to the Penguin' initiative offers Business Partners up to $20,000 for migrating customers from Microsoft Exchange to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino on Linux desktop.

IBM Lotus Notes on Linux is now available as part of version 7 and supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Update 3. Support for Novell SUSE Linux Desktop for Enterprise 10 is expected to be available for delivery to customers within approximately 90 days from Novell SuSE Linux Desktop 10 availability. Current Lotus Notes licensed users can run their existing licenses on Linux desktop.

Once again, IBM has been named the lead Enterprise Content Management (ECM) vendor, in terms of worldwide license revenue.

According to the report, the ECM market grew by 8.4 percent in 2004, driven by business’ need to leverage their data and meet changing regulatory compliance demands.

IBM’s growth this year came with the latest version of the DB2 Content Manager portfolio, in March 2005. The suite of products includes DB2 Content Manager v. 8.3, DB2 Document Manager 8.3 and DB2 CommonStore 8.3.

This marks the third consecutive year that IBM has been ranked the overall market leader as measured by new license revenue among ECM vendors. Learn more at the 2005 IBM Enterprise Content Management tech conference. Its being held September 12th to the 15th in Orlando, Florida.

IBM United States

SAP Blesses New Version of FileNet

Leading EDM platform, FileNet P8 has achieved SAP certification for integration of its new J2EE-based Application Connector with the SAP NetWeaver(TM) open integration and application platform. The connector provides seamless interoperability between the SAP R/3 software solution and FileNet's P8.

FileNet Attains SAP Certified Integration for Its FileNet P8 Application Connector

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A free alternative to Adobe Acrobat and only 1MB in size!

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

Kofax, the world's largest information capture vendor, today announced a new version of its award-winning Ascent Capture platform.

Ascent Capture 7.0 extends information capture into mission-critical applications where an absolute minimum amount of downtime is permitted. Version 7.0 supports fail-over technology that ensures document processing continues without administrator intervention should a hardware, file system or database failure occur, or if the power to a server is interrupted. The fail-over is transparent to the user, who can continue to process documents without interruption. Network load balancing through the Ascent Capture Internet Server (ACIS) also increases performance, scalability and reliability.

Kofax Press Release: Kofax Announces Ascent Capture 7.0

One BPM Architect's Suggestions for ECM Vendors

Sandy Kemsley a longtime BPM guru from Toronto, Canada has posted an insightful article on the need for Enterprise software vendors to change their training strategy from one of valuing information sales to valuing knowledge exchange.

The cost of FileNet -- and other vendor -- classroom training just doesn't make sense for the small incremental value that I would get from it: to become certified in a product via classroom training would cost me thousands of dollars in course fees alone, plus travel expenses and lost revenue opportunities. Considering that no single product is more than a small part of my current business, the cost-benefit analysis just doesn't fly. -- Sandy Kemsley

Check out the full article on Sandy's Biz Blog to learn what she proposes that companies like Filenet can do to remain a top BPM product vendor:
Sandy's Biz Blog: Treating your partners right.

Technorati Tags: Technology, BPM

Kofax Dominates

Kofax announced that it has been named the global market share leader for document capture software by Harvey Spencer Associates Inc. (HSA). According to a new study titled: The Worldwide Market for Document Capture Software 2004-2008..

Kofax's market share (32 percent) in batch and distributed scanning is dominant, more than twice the nearest competitor.

Kofax.com

George Dearing on Distributed Capture

An integration between the StarOffice software and FileNet's Enterprise Content Management Software FileNet P8 has been created. The tool is part of a Financial Toolkit CD that has been created for the German market. Warning: the full article is in German.

FileNet P8 - StarOffice Connector

Looking for A Free Web CMS?

Plone is a popular Open Source Web Content Management System based on the Zope application framework. Roger Johansson's Plone review offers a highly detailed analysis of Plone as a Web CMS. If you have or are creating a website that manages a huge amount of content, don't miss Roger's review.

I’d really love to be able to say that documentation for Plone is good and easy to find. Sadly, it is neither. Far from it.

Documentation is hard to find, inconsistent, confusing, unorganised, incomplete and sometimes outdated. Most of it also assumes that the reader already knows the ins and outs of Zope, Plone, and Python. This only makes the already steep learning curve even steeper.

Looking for more of an enterprise perspective on Content Management Systems? Try FileNet - A Consultant's Guide to Enterprise Content Management

The 24th Annual WinterTales Storytelling Festival is coming to the Stage Center Theatre in Downtown Oklahoma City, February 3-5, 2005.

The Art of Storytelling Workshops
February 4 and 5, 2005

Whether you are a parent, a professional, a CEO or a cleric, WinterTales workshops can build your communication skills. Taught by the nation's best tellers, the workshops explore the use of folklore, legends, true tales and fantasies to get your meaning across.

Featured performers include Judith Black, Eh-Noh-Tec and Bil Lepp. For show times and ticket prices, visit their website or call 405-270-4801.

24th Annual WinterTales Storytelling Festival in Oklahoma City

Content Management experts have long relied on The Gilbane Report newsletter to provide objective, vendor-neutral analysis. In fact, it is probably the most widely read newsletter covering content management technologies.

Now they have entered the blogosphere with what looks to be a very interesting offering. Check out the new Gilbane Report Blog here:

Gilbane Report Blog

A big thanks to Bill Ives for plugging our KM textbook. His blog, Portals and KM, is always compelling. It explores new KM trends and technologies and then on the weekends switches to covering music and food.

I spoke recently with Thomas Jones who manages the Oklahoma Wine News blog. He is also the co-author of Introduction to Knowledge Management, a book that looks quite interesting, especially for those who are planning an implementation.

Not too many wine and KM blogs, so I was glad to find this one!

Portals and KM: Introduction to Knowledge Management - Todd R. Groff, Thomas P. Jones

Nearly 10 percent of respondents to a recent Meta survey indicated that they did not intend to certify that the processes they were outsourcing would meet the requirements of Sarbox. Nearly 20 percent indicated that they were not addressing the issue in any way.
Perhaps more alarming, however, is the fact that 26 percent of the respondents had no idea what their enterprise was doing in relation to processes they had outsourced and their compliance -- or not -- with Sarbox requirements.

Yahoo! News - Sarbox and BPO Present Problems

In 2003, Gartner Inc., a premier industry research and advisory firm, ranked FileNet first in market share at 29 percent for Content and Document Management Software New License Revenue, Financial Services. Commenting on the need for a solution such as FileNet's ECM in the insurance sector, Vincent Oliva, Vice President and Research Director of Gartner Research stated,

Insurance organizations are realizing that managing all types of content is vital to their future success. Disparate types of content; paper mail, e-mail, fax, voice, e-mobile and even video is growing. An enterprise view of how that content is used in the myriad of business processes in an insurance organization is an important component of future success.

Full article: MENAFN - Middle East North Africa . Financial Network: "

Is ECM a Product or a Vision?

More and more experts are coming to the conclusion that all the hype about corporations centralizing on 'One Content Management System to Rule Them All' - was just that...hype.

Content Management blog: Enter Content Here has posted an interesting summary of the Gilbane Conference. Here's an excerpt:

Steven Ashley, who focuses on financial analysis of CM companies, made the point that all the money has been, and continues to be, in Document Management. He pointed to three huge deals that FileNet made ($10MM, $9MM, and $8MM). He said that Documentum is doing equally well. Oracle and Micorsoft are preparing to compete heavily in this area. The interesting thing is that an informal audience poll said that most of the audience was focused on Web Content Management.

Enter Content Here: Keynote Themes from Gilbane