Selecting KM pilots to address non-Quality

Among many interesting discussions at the KAConnect 2018 conference was one on selecting KM pilots focused on reducing the cost of non-quality. 

Participants at KA connect 2018

The conversation was, as many KM conversations are, about Value.

The annual KAConnect conference is for the Architecture and Engineering community, and many of the architects were struggling to find value measures that KM could help with, especially as many of them are billed on a day-rate basis, and so have no direct incentives to be more efficient. Helping them to deliver their work faster would save the client money, but would not impact the profits of the firm.

One insightful suggestion was to address the cost of non-quality, which we discussed on this blog last week. Non-quality, in architectural terms, results in write-offs (doing extra work at the firms expense to correct errors), rework and change requests. A Knowledge Management pilot project aimed at reducing write-offs and rework would deliver real value to the organisation, and act as a proof-of-concept for KM.

This pilot would need to look analyse the causes of write-offs and rework, identify how many of these causes were knowledge-related, identify the critical knowledge which would reduce write-offs and rework, and then put in place an approach to ensure this knowledge was available to the teams at the point of need. The approach need not be complex – a “minimum viable” solution may be enough – but provided it was targeted at the critical knowledge, and focused on reducing the cost of non-quality, it could be an excellent showcase for the value of KM.