1 Introduction
2 Relevant context: IT maintenance, outsourcing and knowledge management
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Explicit knowledge, which is essentially information and already articulated and captured,
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Implicit knowledge, or “know-how”, which can be captured and codified as information, but has not been articulated yet, and
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Tacit knowledge, which is not and cannot be captured and codified as information, but is important for how information is interpreted.
Call management | Incident management | Problem management | |
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Description | The process that handles all notifications, registrations and solution | The process that restores normal operations of IT services | The process that eliminates or prevents structural errors in the IT infrastructure |
Scope | All notifications, both call and events | Incidents that could not be resolved by Call Management | All threats that endanger the stability of ICT services |
Inputs | Calls and events, from users and monitoring functions | Incidents received by the ICT Helpdesk that could not be resolved easily | Incidents that may have an unknown underlying problems, events, management observations, known error list from suppliers or projects |
Outputs | Feedback to user and if possible a solution. Closure of Incidents | Solution to users (through IT help desk), input to PM | Solution to users (through IT helpdesk), unresolved problems |
3 Framing an IT maintenance outsourcing decision
3.1 Basic primitives for framing a decision problem
Basic primitives for framing | Contextualized elements for the frame of the IT maintenance outsourcing decision |
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P1. Identification of roles, decision agents and a “presented” problem as a subject matter | What is this decision about? Whose concern is this? Decision agents (Executives Managers); Proponents, Opponents, and Proposers (Managers, Vendors, External Agent); IT maintenance outsourcing |
P2. An orientation of the decision matter and the subject matter concerns | What is important in the decision? Knowledge management as a preferred perspective; various management concerns (knowledge loss, inadequate IT support, poor business performance) |
P3. Exploration of related decision problems | Understanding of the rich-context of maintenance practice (past, present and future analysis); dealing with knowledge drain |
P4. Exploration of alternatives | Management measures; knowledge management systems (see Table 3) |
P5. Exploration of consequences | Effect and effectiveness of maintenance outsourcing; possible ways and contributions of KM to avoid IT Quality Drops |
P6. Elicitation of judgment and desirability | Perceived expectations, value-laden statements (reasons for any interest in the decision); Why is it a concern and alternative, consequence? |
3.2 Preparation of contextualizing the decision primitives for IT maintenance outsourcing
4 Explication of the decision primitives in an organization
4.1 Background knowledge about the decision in the organization
4.2 Explication of primitives
4.2.1 Identifying relevant roles, decision agents
4.2.2 Relating primitives to interview questions
4.2.3 Perceived effects of outsourcing on IT quality
“Employees of an external party would be less involved with the business”
“First maintenance will be slower than the business would like. Later it will also not be very fast, but the process will be more professional, there will be less incidents and solutions will be more structural”
“Documentation will be more complete which means that maintenance will be easier”
4.2.4 Perceived effects of IT quality drops on business performance
“Insufficient knowledge of the business”
“Before outsourcing: lack of personnel, lack of motivation with remaining personnel”
“It is unknown how the different groups will work together”
4.2.5 Dealing with knowledge drain due to outsourcing
“We delay work when the absence is temporary”
“We started a project to deal with the future retirement of one particular person”
“For night duty, we paired to people whose skills complemented each other. This way they have more combined knowledge and they can learn from each other”
“There used to be problems with key people. As a result of the Sarbanes–Oxley regulations there are procedures to identify key people in key areas. We try to train people on time or eventually ask people to stay on longer”
4.2.6 Common sense and understandings of knowledge management in the organization
“KM supports those with less or no experience to help them create a basis for developing their own knowledge”
“KM is about providing and ensuring easy access to practical knowledge”
“KM is a means to the end of solving problems adequately”
“KM is a large chunk of discipline combined with a nifty tool”
“KM is largely a cultural issue”
4.2.7 Possible contributions of KM to avoid IT quality loss and lower business performance
“We need to think about how we can avoid that the vendor does not have enough knowledge after the transition”
“KM can help giving people unfamiliar with the subject a basis on which they can expand their knowledge themselves”
“Coping with a person leaving or being absent becomes easier”
“For new employees, the informal network and ‘how things are done here’ is unknown”
“Better predict the impact of incidents and changes by having a ‘map’ of all systems and their underlying relations”
“Reducing the amount of incidents and solving incidents faster because of increased learning”
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Knowledge is scattered over different locations and difficult to disclose
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There are various databases with relevant knowledge.
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Some knowledge is only held by one person. When this person is unavailable, his knowledge is unavailable.
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The original system documentation is incomplete.
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Documentation on changes and additions and the ‘why’ of those changes and additions is incomplete.
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An overview of all systems, their components and their relations is lacking, as well as an easy way to relate IT components to specific business activities.
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Knowledge of the systems, additions, alterations and cross-relations. Especially knowledge about how different parts of the systems work together is regarded as crucial. This is knowledge on paper as well as in people’s minds. Many have expressed concerns about the completeness of documentation and the ability to improve this. One interviewee expressed his concerns explicitly about the online systems. One person indicated that it was not important to retain this knowledge for maintenance purposes, but it was important for test-purposes. Tacit knowledge often used for scarce incidents (once every 6 years) is difficult to transfer.
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Knowledge of the business processes. This is especially important for writing system requirements and for translating technical disturbances to business impact.
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After the reorganization knowledge is being created and used outside the organization, which poses new kinds of challenges concerning the management of that knowledge, especially when many different vendors are used.
5 Illuminating the decision primitives: Exploration of related decision problems and alternatives
Perceived management problems | Expected consequences | Possible actions |
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Leave or scarcity of experienced in-house people | Loss of critical skills, knowledge or developing the wrong skills | 1. Identify knowledge that is critical → identify key knowledge holders → capture their knowledge/transfer their knowledge/retain them |
2. Transfer key members (temporarily) to the vendor | ||
3. Use a central repository and a unified process model for collecting all relevant knowledge | ||
Loss of control over the vendor | Lack of commitment on the vendor side leading to poor IT maintenance | 1. Create explicit SLAs including incentives and penalties |
Too much dependence on one vendor. In the case of a multi- vendor setup: communication between all parties | 2. Agree with vendor to store the knowledge they acquire during the contract in such a way that is easily transferable | |
3. Make sure that the retained governance organization is owner of all knowledge and communications | ||
4. If there is no expertise to run a governance organization as described in point 3, this expertise should be acquired | ||
Lack of executive commitment and shared understandings on the importance of KM for outsourcing | The negative effects of uncertainty on the use of social influence | 1. Important that knowledge holders do not feel threatened in their job security |
2. Show senior management that investing in KM is less costly than dealing with problems that result from bad preparation for outsourcing | ||
Uncertainty about the scope and kinds of knowledge to be outsourced and how business performance to be affected | Emerging fuzziness on existing process, governance model | 1. By categorizing the knowledge it should be easy to identify which kind of knowledge can be outsourced more easily than another |
Lack of (socio-technical) readiness for outsourcing transition | 2. Take credit not only on a more formal process, but also the high quality of work in outsourcing vendor |
5.1 Management actions and related decision matters
5.2 The kinds of knowledge needed for desired IT maintenance
6 Practical insight on planning knowledge management in IT outsourcing
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When owners of implicit knowledge leave the organization before their knowledge is externalized.
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Certain kinds of knowledge (e.g., tacit and ad-hoc built knowledge) by nature can not be captured.
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Knowledge to perform business responsibilities in IT maintenance process
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Critical (social) Knowledge Areas/Functions (C(S)KFs) that are/will remain responsibility of the organization
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Identify people with unique tacit knowledge and retain their services for the organization (internally or externally) or get them to transfer their knowledge to someone who will remain available to the organization.
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Identify gaps in explicit knowledge that can be filled by externalization of implicit knowledge possessed by employees. Capture this knowledge by, for instance, individual interview sessions and group sessions.
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Identify additional gaps in knowledge that is needed for the retained IT organization (mapping of IT systems and their link with business) and the business (depending on divide that is agreed upon)