You are now a group of consultants. You have been engaged by an engineering company that is looking to procure a knowledge management system. The problem which this company wishes to address is a loss of what they call “organisational knowledge”.
As the company undertakes mainly engineering projects, they hire engineers for the duration of projects when highly specialist engineering skills are needed. This company therefore operates on a changing workforce, where some employees are permanent and some on a contract. In a highly mobile workforce, the company is discovering that as team members work on projects on a contract basis and leave, much of their individual and collective experiences in the project delivery are not captured. One of the main problems faced is that because the company employs the agile methodology for project management, the entire project team seldom work together continually and the process of learning has to repeat each time a new project is commissioned.
Even for permanent staff, it is often the case that they are deployed to new projects before the previous one is completed and in the transition phase members spend only a percentage of time dedicated solely to one project. There is seldom time to understand what went well during the project and what went poorly. Further, some team members who are employed on a contract have no vested interest in the company and some do not want to provide the feedback for fear of not being awarded future employment opportunities.
The company also wants to employ knowledge management principles, because the management wishes to use knowledge translation as a basis for marketing their expertise and past project success.
The company desires to improve their competitive advantage by leveraging knowledge of their staff.
The company wants to procure a knowledge management system, but the management do not know what functionality should be included and how knowledge will be captured and shared.
Use the business analysis tools (process and data) to present your solution, incorporating the analytical perspectives so this company can understand knowledge management and what features to look for in procuring this system.
As business analysts, you need to act as an intermediary between the management and technical functions of the company and provide them with an outline of system to enable procurement of a solution fitting for the business.
The group will conduct a critical literature survey and critique. Your group should produce a reference list (at least 8 references) showing your independent research into different areas that inform the context and solution. You may relegate your literature critique to the appendix of the report and include highly relevant literature segments to support your design and considerations.
The group will synthesise the academic literature in order to identify solutions to the problem presented to you.
The problem solving and clarification process must also involve generating a list of interview questions that your group will ask the client to clarify interpretations of the context, the literature and the solution. You should add your interview questions in the appendix. Ensure your interview questions are derived from literature (i.e., you are exploring theory through your interviews).
