What is Knowledge Management from an ITIL perspective? : ITILNews.com

What is Knowledge Management from an ITIL perspective? [6 comments]

The primary role of Knowledge Management is to improve the quality of decision making by ensuring that accurate, reliable and trustworthy information is available throughout the Service Lifecycle.

In order to achieve this, effective sharing of knowledge in most scenarios requires the development and ongoing support of a Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS). This repository should be accessible to all parties who wish to obtain information.

There are often four stages to knowledge:

Data - from metrics are turned into quality information
Information - combining this with context, experience and interpretation becomes knowledge
Knowledge - having the above enables correct decisions to be made which in turn is perceived as wisdom
Wisdom - the culmination of all of the above

The SKMS is made up of various data source, namely the Configuration Management System (CMS) and the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) as the following simplistic diagram illustrates:

Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS Diagram

The SKMS can also hold other information such as staff skills, organizational and user behaviour and supplier information.

There are four key activities regarding Knowledge Management:

Knowledge Management Strategy
Any organization needs this strategy to focus on identifying and documenting the type of knowledge it wishes to capture.
Knowledge Transfer
Identifying the knowledge gap between person or department and those in need of obtaining that knowledge. A communication or transfer plan may be required.
Information Management
Establishing data and information, defining the architecture and finally establishing process and procedures for operational use and also improvement of the process
Use of the SKMS
Customers who require access to information at different times of the day can be challenging. There needs to be control over how this is developed and maintained to ensure accuracy of data/information/knowledge.

There are many users of knowledge but the main gathers are Operational Staff, 1st and 2nd line support, with the main users of the knowledge are the Problem Management team.

6 VISITOR COMMENTS

2011-09-27 by "ahmadcomputer"

Nice article, good diagrams and to the point.

2012-01-01 by "noorsehar91"

Great knowledge and best diagram.

2013-05-07 by "ahdaman"

very brief and informative article. The diagram is illustrative and supportive. Thanks.

2014-02-24 by "james.sipple"

I would suggest there are 2 basic schools of knowledge management developing. First a controlled and test base of information that is vetted by problem management and security to comply with business requirements. In this form suggested knowledge for resolving or working around incidents is provided by anyone to problem management to evaluate. Second is a wiki style system of checked information collect with no testing or security checks and introduced as an open suggestion at a solution that my resolve or expand issues into the IT environment.

Both seem to be gain use but the former reduces the threat of introducing unintended security flaws into the systems, the latter is initially quicker but has a higher risk to the IT infrastructure.

2014-09-09 by "srinath.flex"

This KB is really a KB for my own self grooming on ITIL KM process.

2014-11-10 by "ashmar21"

Great information sharing, easy to understand with the diagrams.

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