Knowledge Management Library Clips

By Bill Ives
Expert Author
Article Date: 2008-10-02

The blogger at Library Clips recently wrote an interesting post on the ubiquity of social tools in context of workflows.

Library Clips begins with a quote from a prior post, "I really think blogs and the like need to be features of existing products. (You would think our document management system would have an item comment stream (like Google Docs)" Then goes on to reference some things I have written about on this blog, "about old KM being both workflow and repository typesthe problem being that the workflow types were too rigid so we went elsewhere for these exceptions, and the repository types were out of our flow, not in tune with human behaviour, and as Bill says, it became managing knowledge rather than supporting work."

Library Clips then builds on this to add, "At this stage of KM 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 we have seen people familiarising themselves with these new social tools, and how they are the new exception handler. Instead of using email to get work done because my workflow tools are too rigid, I can now use wiki or a blog for these workarounds, etcthe benefit is openness, transparency, visibility, feedback and evolvingbasically pooling our talent the next phase of KM 2.0is going to be where answers to these exceptions will be shared into the flow (also) we are going to see features of blogs and wikis in existing workflow tools."

I could not agree more and appreciate the reference. His last statement is already happening as I see many of the enterprise 2.0 vendors I interview for the AppGap blog adding social software to workflow tools. This includes, but is not limited to, Quickbase, Central Desktop, QTask, and Traction, and if you add project management as workflow, Wrike, Planview, Clarizen. Then if you add mashup tools that can build all this into workflows applications you can add Serena, Nexaweb, JackBe, and SynerG.

I am sure I left many out as I see this as the sweet spot of enterprise 2.0. It also allows us to realize the promise of workflow knowledge management that I first saw in the early 90s. It is what got me excited about web 2.0 in 2004 when I saw what Al Essa at MIT was accomplishing by extending what blogs could do then.

Library Clips goes on to provide more useful details on how this might work and I suggest you read the complete post.

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About the Author:
Dr. Bill Ives is an independent consultant and writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies in business uses of emerging technologies for over 20 years. For several years he led the Knowledge Management Practice for a large consulting firm.. Now he primarily helps companies with their business blogs. He is also the VP of Social Media and blogger for TVissimo, a new TV schedule search engine. Prior to consulting, Dr. Ives was a Research Associate at Harvard University exploring the effects of media on cognition. He obtained his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto. Bill can be reached at his blog: Portals and KM. He also writes for the FastForward blog and the AppGap blog.