How many KM pilots do you run at once?

Knowledge Management pilot projects are a core componment of KM implementation. As we explained last month, a pilot project uses KM to solve a business problem in order to test and demonstrate that KM can do what it is supposed to do, and so that you can learn enough to improve and enhance the framework using experience from the pilot.

But how many pilots do you need, and how many can you run at once?

The answer is – you need enough pilots with enough positive results and enough learning that

• you have fully tested your Knowledge Management Framework, and
• you have enough evidence to convince both senior management and the knowledge workers that KM adds enough value to be adopted.

As for how many you can run at once, that depends on the level of coaching, mentoring and support resources you have available. Do as many pilots as you can handle, and no more. The process you need to decide which pilots to undertake is as follows:

1. Canvas the business to find out a list of business issues which KM can help solve. This blog post gives you some pointers which business issues to look at, and you should be able to come up with a long list. 
2. Rank the pilots against the 4 criteria of potential measurable impact, management support, doability and abiklity to upscale (see blog post for more guidance).
3. Starting with the top ranking ones, select as many as you can support given the time and resources.
4. Also try to select a portfolio of pilots that will test all elements of the KM framework.

In BP, for example, with our central team of 12 full-time KM staff, we ran 4 pilots at once. In Mars, with a smaller team, they ran 2 a year.

Choose your pilots wisely and run as many as you can handle until KM is tested, refined and proven