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Knowledge Management Activities

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Title: Knowledge Management Activities


1
Chapter 15
  • Knowledge Management Activities

2
Recommended References
  • General literature on knowledge management
  • J. Liebowitz (ed.) Knowledge Management -
    Handbook. CRC Press 1999.
  • Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management
  • Reference for change management
  • B. Dellen Change Impact Analysis Support for
    Software Development Processes. Shaker Verlag
    1999.
  • Abstraction and Cases
  • R.Bergmann Effizientes Problemlösen durch
    Wiederverwendung von Fällen auf verschiedenen
    Abstraktionsebenen, DIKI 138, infix Verlag 1996
  • Processes and information
  • Boris Kötting, Michael M. Richter, Sigrid
    Goldmann Flexible Workflow Management in
    Software Engineering Processes

3
KM and Suppliers Utility
  • The overall guiding line for knowledge management
    activities is provided by the preferences and
    utilities of the supplier who has, however, to
    take care of customer needs.
  • This is mainly reflected in the strategic model
    of the supplier.
  • Here this will not be discussed, we instead look
    at the consequences for the formal models and
    actions of the supplier. They will be discussed
    on a general level and have to be instantiated
    for specific applications. Each application has
    its own characteristics.
  • An orientation is given by the sales cycle and
    its refinements in chapter 1, augmented by the
    suppliers view.

4
The Flow of Knowledge
Data
restructure
Knowledge Base
Data Bases
Information
make explicit
use
Flow from external sources
Knowledge
Actions
5
The General Szenario
  • We assume a general agent scenario (see chapter
    14B).
  • The agents (humans or machines) are
  • One or more actors who carry out certain actions
  • A knowledge manager KM, who has access to
    information sources, and who has to structure,
    maintain and apply them
  • An external environment which can generate
    events.
  • In this szenario a communication goes on, and any
    of the agents can take the initiative.
  • The knowledge manager has to interact with all
    other management activities because they all need
    the knowledge
  • The KM can act on demand and on his own
    pro-active

6
Active and Passive
  • Active and passive are roles of agents
  • Passive means in a context that the action an
    agent performs is a reaction on some other action
    which contains a demand.
  • Active means that the action is not determined by
    a demand but the agent sees a necessity from an
    overall point of view. The action is usually
    triggered by some event The action usually asks
    for a further reaction.
  • The switch from the role passive to active is
    called to be pro-active.

7
Fully Automatic Systems
  • In the past knowledge based systems worked fully
    automatic
  • They contained a correct and complete knowledge
    base.
  • When they obtained an input they derived the
    output via reasoning (using an inference
    component) applied to the knowledge base.
  • Often the desired the output contained besides
    the problem solution some explanation.
  • The problems connected with fully automatic
    systems were
  • to achieve and to maintain such a knowledge base
    (the knowledge acquisition bottleneck)
  • partial solutions were useless because they are
    reported as failures.

8
Assistant Systems (1)
  • The idea of an assistant system is to operate
    only partially automatic and to employ humans
    too.
  • A consequence is that assistant systems usually
    do not perform long chains of inferences.
  • Advantages of assistant systems are
  • The work can employ knowledge and abilities of
    humans.
  • To shift tasks between human and machine If a
    task is fully understood and all knowledge for it
    is available it can be transferred to the
    machine, i.e. automized. This can be done
    incrementally.
  • Humans can take over the responsibility for
    decisions.

9
Assistant Systems (2)
  • Assistant systems and knowledge
  • The humans use and need knowledge
  • Knowledge helps the human
  • A knowledge based system to support humans has to
    have the character of an assistant system.
    Consequences
  • Knowledge and its use has to be integrated in the
    general structure of the organization
  • The division of labor between human (e.g.
    decision maker) and machine (automatic
    presentation of knowledge) has to be well
    understood

10
Assistant Systems (3)
  • Assistant systems are a special kind of knowledge
    based systems. Two types of agents cooperate
  • Human agents
  • Software agents
  • Hence assistant systems are examples of
    socio-technical systems.
  • The human agent is dominating
  • Sets the goals
  • Is responsible
  • The human agent is creative.
  • The human agent cannot deal well with large data
    sets, complex computations etc.

11
Assistant Systems (4)
  • The software agent (the assistant) is
    subordinate
  • The decisions are of limited character
  • The space of freedom for actions is limited and
    precisely defined.
  • The assistant knows
  • The range of the decisions, i.e. what to do on
    his own with which degree of freedom
  • Whom to inform about the decisions.
  • Often the assistant has only to provide
    information
  • in a very effective way
  • not to much and not less
  • at the right time.

12
Assistant Systems (5)
  • A major problem is the interface between human
    and software agents which is the bases for
    communication
  • The software agent acts as a formal system and
    requires formal input in a specific
    representation form
  • The human agent has limited memory
  • The human wants information in a form suitable
    for human understanding and reasoning.
  • Therefore the interface has to perform a
    non-trivial transformation. The use of
    interchange formats like XML may be helpful but
    is by no means sufficient.
  • The interface has also to reflect that the human
    has the responsibility for descisions.

13
Classification of Knowledge Management Tasks
  • 1) Searching for knowledge and receiving
    knowledge
  • 2) Restructuring the knowledge
  • 3) Making knowledge explicit
  • 4) Associating the knowledge with the actions
    described in the process model
  • 5) Making knowledge available for actions which
    need it and delivering it to the right agents in
    the right moment
  • 6) Updating knowledge and change management
  • 7) Quality management

14
Knowledge Management and General Management
  • All these tasks cannot be separated from the
    general management activities.
  • Knowledge is used when actions are performed and
    actions are organized by the management.
  • Actions on the other hand change the knowledge,
    e.g.
  • organizational changes
  • change in the employees
  • change of the context (new products, customers
    etc.)
  • Therefore knowledge management is a central
    element of management.

15
Knowledge Management Technical Aspects
  • Knowledge is electronically stored in data bases
    on computers.
  • These locations have arisen historically and are
    often not compatible with each other.
  • A consequence is that important knowledge cannot
    be found when necessary.
  • The first step for the management is to define a
    knowledge structure in order to know where is
    what.
  • The second step is to organize communications,
    e.g. by introducing adequate client-server
    structures.

16
Task (1) Searching and Receiving Knowledge
  • Data, information and knowledge does not come
    from itself
  • Some sources of knowledge are known, others have
    to be found
  • Knowledge sources do not continuously have new or
    interesting knowledge
  • The management task is
  • Get an overview over sources and organize the
    search for them
  • Determine the times (or periods) when sources
    have new knowledge
  • Organize the access to and the flow from the
    sources
  • Receive the demanded knowledge properly
  • Classify and receive the knowledge which came in
    but not on demand
  • It is important that these activities are
    standardized
  • Techniques of document analysis are important

17
Document Oriented Knowledge Structure
  • The knowledge is in documents and the content is
    clear from the document description the type of
    reaction to the content is known from the type of
    the document, e.g.
  • Bills
  • New pricelist
  • New product list
  • Change of address
  • Access to the knowledge inside of the documents
    does therefore not require to study the document
    itself.
  • This is like the access in data bases where one
    has only to know the key of the stored data.
  • The flow of knowledge therefore reduces to the
    flow of documents and the search for knowledge is
    the search for documents.

18
Tables
  • Often knowledge is organized in tables with a
    number of columns and rows.
  • Such tables are presented in a certain layout.
  • It is not always easy to reconstruct the original
    table from the presented layout
  • lenght of entries may vary
  • entries may contain several lines
  • Distances between rows or columns may vary
  • This puts restrictions for extracting the content
    of the table from the table document.

19
Content Oriented Knowledge Structures (1)
  • It is not sufficient to know the title or the key
    of the document in order to react properly.
  • It is rather necessary to study the document
    itself.
  • Examples
  • Complaints from customers
  • Special regulations for special purposes
  • Scientific documents
  • Legal documents
  • The access to the documents should be simplified,
    e.g. using abstracts, extracting key words etc.

20
Content Oriented Knowledge Structures (2)
  • The knowledge management should structure the
    knowledge and simplify the access.
  • This is an area where the similarity concept
    plays an important role because no exact key
    matches are possible but often inexact matches
    with document descriptions are applied.
  • Linguistic tools, Thesauri etc. are useful.
  • In most situations, content oriented structures
    are still handled by humans. But the humans need
    support.

21
Task (2) Restructuring Knowledge (1)
  • The incoming data, information and knowledge are
    usually not structured in the form required from
    the applications, e.g.
  • Wrong format
  • Redundant
  • In an inadequate context
  • Not applicable etc.
  • The task of the knowledge management is to
    organize
  • Restructuring
  • Pointing out weaknesses and getting other sources
  • Again, this should be standardized

22
Task (2) Restructuring Knowledge (2)
  • Restructuring has to aspects
  • Restructuring of a single input document
  • Embed ijn or distribute the input over the whole
    knowledge structure.
  • The whole knowledge structure is determined by
    the general structure of the company. Therefore
    the proper handling of input knowledge is
    connected with the general structure and
    strategy.
  • It may be necessary to duplicate knowledge used
    by different agents.
  • Different agents may need knowledge pieces in
    different forms or formats.

23
Task (3) Making Knowledge Explicit (1)
  • Knowledge is often implicitly contained in data
    or texts.
  • It is the purpose of data mining techniques to
    make knowledge in data bases explicit.
  • The knowledge management has to organize this
  • Where are weak points ?
  • Which information can be helpful for improvement
    ?
  • How to obtain the information ?
  • Data mining activities are long term activities,
    they are costly and need careful planning (see
    chapter 13).
  • The knowledge managers decides which data mining
    activities have to be carried out.

24
Task (3) Making Knowledge Explicit (2)
  • Knowledge in texts can at least partially be made
    explicit by
  • Extracting key words
  • extracting phrases
  • extracting abstracts.
  • The key words, phrases or form of the abstract
    has to be determined according to the needs of
    the users. Problems arise if different user types
    are present.
  • Key words are often insufficient or even
    misleading.
  • Such techniques have been developed in
    information retrieval and use e.g. liguistic
    tools.

25
Task(4) Which Knowledge for What ?
  • The use of knowledge in business is not for fun
    but
  • Is oriented on business processes
  • Influences partially the general structure of the
    processes
  • Has to allow a fast and optimal representation of
    the knowledge in actual contexts
  • If no actions are involved the knowledge is
    silent !
  • If actions are performed without knowledge they
    are useless !

26
Knowledge and Processes
general process
needs
needs
actual data and information
general knowledge
instance
actual process
27
Types of Processes (Examples)
Sales offer A dialogue has to be started Design
and planning processes Process models are
instantiated Execution processes Correct
information of participants (A problem if changes
occur Who has to be informed about what
?) Fault diagnosis Reasons for failure ? Which
data are needed for the diagnosis ? (Help desk
problem!) Logistic chains Transportation and
delivery over several steps Processes may deal
with physical objects or pieces of information.
28
Knowledge Support for Processes (1)
Step in the general process (process model)
Instantiation Details
Corresponding steps in the actual process
The knowledge manager organizes the necessary
sources
Knowledge Source
Knowledge Source
Knowledge Source
29
Knowledge Support for Processes (2)
  • The process model can be described in various
    levels of abstraction. On each level the
    preconditions and effects of an action are
    described in an appropriate abstraction.
  • On abstract levels the types of knowledge
    dominate. Each type is associated with a
    knowledge source.
  • The main tasks of the knowledge manager include
  • Structuring the knowledge sources according to
    the process model
  • Distributing the knowledge correctly
  • Establishing the links between the actions in the
    process model and the knowledge sources
    dynamically (i.e. observing the time schedule)

30
Information Goals
  • The actual information needed for a process is
    usually incomplete
  • The information is available from internal or
    external sources
  • Costs are involved in order to obtain the
    information
  • The information has some value for the actions
    chosen in the process
  • Consequence for knowledge management
  • Define information goals and a plan to achieve
    them in order to have optimal effects

31
Cost/Benefit Consideration
  • Cost aspect Obtaining information has costs
    (direct payment, time of employees etc.)
  • The value of the information is determined by the
    actions performed
  • Performance of actions is more costly if done
    without the right knowledge. It is important do
    quantify this properly !
  • Executed actions lead to new situations which
    have now costs or gains as a consequence.
    Knowledge can make predictions.
  • The value of a piece of knowledge is the
    difference of costs connected with the action
    when performed with or without the knowledge.
  • This has an individual and a statistical
    interpretation.

32
Standardized and Non-standardized Processes
  • Standardized processes occur regularly in the
    same way although each instance has different
    data inputs.
  • Non-standardized processes also occur often but
    only the principal task of the process is known
    and each time the process has its own appearance.
    A general process model may be too abstract to be
    useful.
  • Non-standardized process should not be mixed up
    with completely new and surprising actions which
    react on unforeseen events and which have no
    process model at all.

33
Standardized Processes
  • Because the structure of the process is known it
    is also known which type of knowledge is needed
    in order to perform them properly.
  • The task of the knowledge management is to
    provide such knowledge and data structures such
    that knowledge support is simple Here the
    support is document oriented. For this purpose
    the KM has to watch the process.
  • Example Because employees have their regular
    vacations a corresponding list is advisable and
    persons on vacation can be replaced properly.
    This task is more difficult when persons become
    sick or leave the company.

34
Non-standardized Processes
  • Because of the somewhat irregular type of these
    processes it is often not possible to provide
    standard documents with the knowledge needed.
  • On the other hand the type of knowledge is known
    and it is the task of the knowledge management to
    make access to this knowledge possible.
  • Example It cannot be foreseen which employee
    will be sick and a list of all possible
    replacements for every sick person is usually
    impossible. But the knowledge structure should it
    make possible to find out who can replace a
    person in an actual situation.

35
Task (5) Organizing the Use of Knowledge
  • Knowledge has for each
  • task to be accessible
  • for the right persons
  • at the right time
  • at the right place
  • in the needed format
  • Missing Knowledge
  • creates errors
  • Too much knowledge confuses

This task is very complex and uses different
techniques. Some will be discussed here.
36
Task (6) Change Management
  • Knowledge is not invariant but undergoes
    continuous changes. There are external reasons
    for this (the context changes) as well as
    internal reasons (e.g. organizational changes).
  • These changes have to be reported at the right
    time to those agents who need it.
  • The report can be given on demand as well as
    pro-active.
  • The change management organizes this in a
    systematic way.

37
Task (7) Quality Management (1)
  • The aspects of quality are a consequence of the
    utility concepts.
  • Quality decreases over time due to changes
    (external as well as internal) if no reaction
    takes place.
  • The quality of the processes has to be controlled
    continuously
  • Oberservation of the environment data
  • Observation of the process
  • Interpretation of observed data on the basis of
    quality models.
  • The results of the control are transformed into
    actions which re-establish the quality.

38
Quality Management (2)
  • Quality conditions are defined as constraints
  • Hard constraints Have to be satisfied in any
    case
  • Weak constraints should be satisfied but not
    under all circumstances.
  • Weak constraints have degrees
  • in hierarchical orderings
  • by point valuations
  • in fuzzy degrees
  • This leads to an optimization task Weak
    constraints should be satisfied in an optimal
    way. This should optimize the intended quality.

39
Quality Management (3)
  • For each violation of a constraint a maintenance
    operation has to be defined.
  • The degree of weakness of each constraint is
    transformed to a degree of importance of the
    maintenance operation.
  • There have observable events to be defined which
    can easily be checked and which indicate
    (possible) constraint violations.
  • On this basis a practical system has to be built
    in order perform maintenance efficient and
    economically.
  • The knowledge manager has to ensure the quality
    of the knowledge and has in particular to deal
    with knowledge gaps (see chapter 2).

40
Maintenance
  • The maintenance operations are structured in two
    ways
  • importance
  • events which trigger the operations
  • The trigger is usually an event
  • An analysis can show that the events take place
    in certain periods of time Then time points can
    take over the role of triggering.
  • Operations which are dependent on similar
  • events
  • points of time
  • objects to maintain
  • can be grouped into packages of maintenance
    operations.

41
Formal Notions
  • In order to support the KM all activities and
    objects of interest have to be formally
    represented.
  • We refer to chapter 4 with respect to the formal
    representation techniques.
  • We distinguish between actions which occur in the
    planning phase of the manager and actions which
    the manager really executes. These actions will
    change the real world (e.g. sending a message).
  • The knowledge manager has an own knowledge base
    which governs the management actions and is about
    the other knowledge bases.

42
Actions on Knowledge Bases
  • A knowledge manager has to maintain the knowledge
    bases and this requires actions which change
    these bases.
  • The formal notion of such an action is defined in
    chapter 4.
  • A particular type of action is important in this
    content Actions which are generated because of
    the change of the context (the outer world).We
    call such changes events.
  • The formal representations are the ECA- Rules
    (Event-Condition-Action-Rules
  • IF Event AND Conditions THEN Action
  • These rules specify the preconditions in the way
    that they distinguish between external events and
    internal conditions.

43
Changes and Dependencies
  • Entities for a process are concepts which
    organize the knowledge for the process (e.g.
    catalogue or an internal price list).
  • An entity E has a change impact on an entity F if
    a change of E results in a change of F. E.g., the
    internal price list has a change impact on the
    catalogue.
  • An entity E is change dependent on an entity F if
    a change of E may result in a change of F.
  • Two entities are change dependent if one of them
    is dependent on the other one.
  • E.g., the buying price and the sales price of a
    product are change dependent.

44
Change Knowledge
  • The change knowledge describes all aspects of
    changes
  • The source and the initiator of the change
  • The description about what is changed
  • The reasons of the change
  • The dependencies and the dependent entities
  • The rationals for the dependencies
  • The impact on the dependent entities
  • The agent who executes the change

45
Change Operators
  • The actual change is described by operators.
    These operators are defined on information units,
    e.g. on attributes, formulas etc.)
  • We distinguish (as usual) three types of
    operators
  • ADD operators Adding an information unit.
  • REMOVE operators Removing an information unit.
  • MODIFY operators Replaces some information unit
    by another one. This can be defined as a macro
    operator in terms of ADD and REMOVE.
  • Operators are defined on a general level and can
    be instantiated.

46
Information Dependency
  • An action A is strongly information dependent on
    an information unit IU if A cannot be properly
    executed without the knowledge of IU.
  • An action A is performance dependent on an
    information unit IU if A can be better executed
    with the knowledge of IU.
  • In both cases the execution of A gives rise to
    the information goal IU.
  • If the agent who executes A is active he sends a
    query to some agent (possibly the KM) or
    knowledge source.
  • If the KM is active he sends the information to
    the agent (pro-active).

47
Pro-active Actions, Trigger and ECA-Rules
  • Pro-active actions have to occur with a goal
    Actions have to be carried out where and when it
    is necessary but not unnecessary or randomly.
  • In order that such actions do not take place in
    an arbitrary way they have to be activated by a
    trigger.
  • The most important form of triggering is again
    represented by ECA-rules
  • Event-Condition-Action Rules
  • Event Something (usually external) that starts
    the rule
  • Condition Description of special circumstances
    necccessary
  • Action Action (e.g. giving certain information
    to some agent)

48
ECA-Rules
  • Actions on demand are also described by
    ECA-Rules
  • Event A demand or query
  • Condition Description of when action is expected
  • Action Action (e.g. giving certain information
    or help to some agent or to perform something)
  • ECA-Rules contain important knowledge
  • ECA-Rules have to be structured
  • The structure should reflect the tasks of the KM
    and the process model

49
Generating and Using Rules
  • Rule patterns are defined at compile time they
    represent general knowledge. The generality is
    contained in the variables which can be
    instantiated in their domain.
  • Patterns use typed variables (e.g. for products,
    documents, agents, ...).
  • Instances of rules are generated at run time and
    this is again triggered by events.
  • The time of generation of rules is not
    necessarily identical with the time when they are
    used. This time is determined by the event which
    is part of the precondition of the rule.

50
Example ECA-Rules for Change Management (1)
  • Change rule pattern
  • Event ADD, REMOVE or MODIFY operation (with
    variables also for documents).
  • Condition A formula (with variables also for
    documents).
  • Action Two types of actions
  • 1) Change actions As in the event part
  • 2) Notify actions An operation of the form
  • NOTIFY(recipient, cop, rat, reason, init)
  • where recipient is an attribute which
    applies to agents or an operation of the form
    responsible(d) where d is of type document, cop
    stands for the change operation in the event, rat
    is of type rationale for the change dependency,
    reason is of type reason for the change, init is
    of type agent or of type responsible(d) d of
    type document (the agent responsible for the
    event).

51
Example ECA-Rules for Change Management (2)
  • Example Changes in the internal price list
    (document pl) cause a change in the catalogue
    (document c). Short form of the rule pattern
  • Event
  • REPLACE(pl, product prod, price x, price y)
  • Condition
  • product prod in pl and in c
  • Action
  • NOTIFY(responsible(c) , event, price of prod,
    new parts, price manager)
  • An instance of the pattern is e.g. given by
  • pl pl1, c c1, prod TV, x 750, y 770,
    responsible(c1) Hans, new parts video, price
    manager Peter.

52
Discussion (1)
  • In the example the only action is notification.
    Further support would provide information how the
    catalogue is changed, e.g. additional information
    on the improved product. Here this is left to the
    creativity of the catalogue agent.
  • Important knowledge is contained in the relation
    that product prod is in both, the price list p
    and the catalogue c. It is therefore useful that
    the agent responsible for c has for each product
    an entry which specifies the source of the
    description details.

53
Discussion (2)
  • The KM has to
  • define the rule patterns and the instances
  • group the rules in packages
  • determine when the rules are applied
  • organize the network through which the
    communication takes place and how the actions are
    executed
  • determine how the notification is received (e.g.
    is a receive notification demanded ?).
  • These are organizational aspects responsible for
  • safe
  • efficient
  • flow of information.

54
A Change Management Architecture (1)
  • Agents and their relations
  • The knowledge manager KM Takes care on the
    knowledge base.
  • The generic rule pattern manager Stores the
    generic change rule patterns and has to listen to
    knowledge base updates which may result in new
    instances of the patterns (any addition/removal
    of an entity may result in addition or deletion
    of a change rule).
  • A domain rule pattern manager Same as above, but
    dealing with domain dependent change rule
    patterns.
  • Change manager Manages the change dependencies.
    Changes in the knowledge base are notified by
    this agent and may cause the change rules to fire
    which in turn cause further knowledge in the
    knowledge base.

55
A Change Management Architecture (2)
Listens to changes
Knowledge manager
Generic rule pattern manager
Listens to changes
Adds, removes change rules
Domain rule pattern manager
Adds, removes change rules
Change rule manager
56
Example ECA-Rules for Information Management (1)
  • Suppose agent ag is responsible for action A.
  • Information query rule pattern
  • Event Action A has to executed
  • Condition A formula F (with variables) in the
    preconditions of A
  • Action Prolog-type query to the KM For which
    values of the variables in F will f evaluate to
    true?
  • QUERY(recipient, ag, F, list of variables, A)
  • where recipient is an attribute which applies
    to agents or knowledge sources.
  • Example QUERY(storage manager, sales person,
    delivery time(prod), offer(prod)).

57
Example ECA-Rules for Information Management (2)
  • Suppose agent ag is responsible for action A.
  • Pro-active information rule pattern
  • Event Agent ag will now execute action A (this
    event is a result of the observation of ag by the
    KM)
  • Conditions A formula Improve(A, IU) (information
    unit IU improves performance of A) a formula
    notinformed(ag, IU) (agent ag does not have
    information IU)
  • Action NOTIFY(ag, A, IU, reason)
  • Example NOTIFY(ag, consulting customer C on
    product type P, special information on P, C has
    asked for details on P last time)
  • Such rules are also used during a dialogue

58
Summary
  • A general knowledge management with agents was
    described.
  • Knowledge management and process models are
    strongly connected
  • Knowledge gaps are often difficult to discover
  • Different tasks of the KM were discussed, in
    particular change and information management
  • ECA-rules were introduced as a general formalism
    for triggering actions.
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