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| Knowledge Management: How One Group Plows New Ground September 2000 MITRE's Systems Engineering Process Office (SEPO) is a resource that makes knowledge about systems engineering and acquisition reform available to everyone at MITRE. SEPO staff members spend at least half their time in the field working on MITRE projects, where they provide knowledge about systems engineering and, at the same time, gather new knowledge. SEPO staff make this new knowledge available to the entire corporation and, when possible, to the public. This article describes how SEPO plows new ground in knowledge management. A core value for SEPO involves "systems thinking"—to help projects maintain a systems perspective. Peter Senge, author and senior lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes systems thinking as, "A discipline for seeing wholes...a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static 'snapshots'...a set of general principles (and) a set of specific tools and techniques." SEPO specializes in this type of knowledge. Today, Senge, Stephen Covey, Cliff Havener, and others suggest that organizations need to stop thinking in terms of mechanical metaphors (the "company as a machine") and start thinking more like biologists, and acting more like gardeners. Senge says, "The most universal challenge we face is the transition from seeing our human institutions as machines to seeing them as embodiments of nature." This metaphor seems to be a paradox for an engineering company like MITRE; yet, as SEPO demonstrates, the metaphor works. "If we define knowledge management as the way the company generates, communicates, and leverages its intellectual assets, I think the gardening metaphor fits how we deal with knowledge in SEPO," says Curt Gates, a knowledge worker in SEPO. "We have a set of overall knowledge management processes (mechanical), but our effectiveness comes from managing knowledge like gardeners—Covey's law of the farm. The projects are where we sow, cultivate, and harvest. We owe it to MITRE and our sponsors to maintain a situational awareness of today's dynamic business and technical environment—not the one we got used to 20 years ago, or even two years ago." The Crops: Knowledge vs Information According to Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak in their book Working Knowledge, "Knowledge is broader, deeper, and richer than data or information. It is a mix of experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. Knowledge comes from people, either individuals or groups of 'knowers.' For information to be knowledge, it has to be placed in a context that relates it to the life of the user." For example, "How does the information compare with other situations that we have known? What do other people think of this information?" Because SEPO staff members are out working on MITRE projects, their information comes directly from "knowers" with practical knowledge. SEPO's mission is to help its customers use this knowledge to make decisions and take actions. And in the process of dialogue and publishing, bits of knowledge are related to others and filtered through what others think of the information. It's a continuous process of preparing ground, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and distributing. SEPO Director Lynda Rosa says, "I would add one more question to the knowledge environment—how can we combine pieces of discrete information into packets of knowledge for immediate application to today's and tomorrow's challenges? Like a garden, knowledge management does not happen by spontaneous combustion—nor retain productivity through benign neglect. It requires investment and continuous vigilance. That is a primary mission of SEPO and we are heavily invested in knowledge discovery, capture, integration, and refresh. We are working hard to develop a knowledge management environment in SEPO that works for everyone." Fields of Gold In a recent magazine article, author and business expert Tom Peters wrote, "To a real life-in-the-projects person, everything is a golden learning opportunity." Lynda Rosa, SEPO's director, describes these opportunities: "Staff members spend at least half of their time out working with program offices and a variety of MITRE customers on real-world problems. They go out to share the knowledge they already have, and in the process they learn how the systems engineering world is changing and how to change and adapt in response. In turn, they communicate these practical lessons-learned and make them available to the entire MITRE community, including MITRE's customers, using everything from face-to-face conversations to the Internet." Pam Engert, a SEPO staff member, says, "We leverage off each other; we network; we match skill sets; we use e-mail, cell phones, faxes—and sometimes we even yell back and forth down the hall! We know our customers; we are in the fires with them. What we learn is not just theory." Engert continues, "We do a lot of collaboration. We go out there and work the real issues every day. Mike Bloom (another SEPO staff member) recently helped one of MITRE's centers develop an interorganizational risk management program and a fleet antimine warfare concept of operations for a Navy customer. We were able to implement our theories on team risk management, evaluate another risk management tool, and develop a continuing risk management program—that is, extend our typically one-shot risk assessment process into a continuing risk management process. It gave us significant insight into user requirements definition for a system-of-systems that we are incorporating in our evolving requirements processes. "We worked with the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University on a program manager's handbook about commercial-off-the-shelf products. We're out there touching and exploring a lot of different things, she adds. "We're involved in spiral development. Anne Willhite and Curt Gates are currently on a team to collect and distribute knowledge about spiral development. We know about risk and risk management, requirements and requirements management—how all of these fit into the new Department of Defense business model—acquisition reform. We help introduce new strategies to reduce the cost of doing business." Rosa adds, "When people contact us in SEPO, we learn as much as
we can about their projects, their challenges, and where their program
fits into their overall operational or business environment. Through use
of formal staff meetings, impromptu meetings, e-mail, etc., SEPO staff
share and compare this information with our knowledge base developed from
past and current program involvement. Our knowledge network branches out
to the entire corporation through our colleagues, affiliates, and friends
in the program offices and specialty centers—our knowledge partners." Got Knowledge? Let's Talk Business expert Tom Peters describes the value of face-to-face dialogue in knowledge management: "In the new economy, conversations are the most important form of work. Conversations are the way knowledge workers discover what they know, share it with their colleagues, and in the process create new knowledge for the organization. The panoply of modern information and communications technology—for example, computers, faxes, e-mail—can help knowledge workers in this process. But all depends on the quality of the conversations that such technologies support." In SEPO, communication is dynamic and focused on both internal and external customers, as well as their peers in industry. Staff member Pam Engert says, "A perfect example happened recently. I received an e-mail from somebody who wanted to know more about Command and Control Product Line (CCPL). He had read one of my recent technotes in which I mention CCPL as a potential contractual vehicle. I consulted with Mike Bloom, a SEPO staff member who has much experience in architecting contracts. Mike identified information on CCPL from our online Systems Engineering Process Library (SEPL), so we were able to provide immediate access. We named our CCPL expert, Thom Little, as a primary contact on this subject. "Mike knew there was information in the SEPL because he had created it. So I was able to provide not only a point of contact, but also ready information I knew would clearly give him lessons learned in the area he wanted. That's one example of how we distribute our knowledge. Most libraries just have the books. SEPO has the books, the authors, and the field experience!" Signs of a Learning Organization Jeff Higginson, SEPO Associate Director, has built a new systems engineering course that helps MITRE's staff learn how to deal with today's acquisition world, which is a totally different environment from the acquisition world of two years ago. SEPO Director Lynda Rosa says, "The Air Force, especially the Electronic Systems Center (ESC), has been very aggressive in developing new acquisition models and processes. Major tenets for ESC are to reduce cycle times, respond to budget demands, maintain high levels of operational effectiveness, pace technology, and allow more flexibility in requirements and delivered functionality. Most companies are investing in knowledge management to stay ahead of their competitors. We have to do the same for all our customers to give them a competitive edge." Higginson's course covers today's whirlwind of acquisition reform processes, and it gives the students a cohesive understanding of the early program development processes and the tools available to support these processes—tools such as DOORS for requirements management and Risk Matrix for risk assessment and management. The course is also an opportunity to network with peers and experts in other areas at MITRE and learn and benefit from these collaborations. Also, it's an opportunity for the students to refine their technical leadership and teamwork skills through interaction with workgroups and peers. The course is one of many ways SEPO distributes knowledge. Commenting
on SEPO's influence, Rosa says, "Although SEPO is a very small organization,
we have a broad reach throughout MITRE, ESC, other services, user organizations,
industry, and academia thanks to our 'affiliate' staff and our involvement
in key professional societies such as INCOSE and IEEE Computer Society." How E-Commerce Ate the Farm Stand SEPO is now developing ways to make its knowledge management process more efficient, to quickly identify frequently asked questions (trends in knowledge needs), make the requested knowledge available faster and more completely, and anticipate what customers will want in the future; in effect, getting the crops to market and letting SEPO's "gardeners" spend more time tending the crops and less time distributing the harvest. One approach to leveraging knowledge is to improve SEPO's online delivery system and change its metaphor away from that of a library. "We are changing the metaphor of how we are making information available online," says SEPO staff member Jen Anderson. "Currently, we make knowledge available in our online library, the SEPL, which has categories akin to the Dewey decimal system. If you want something about risk, you go to the risk section. The problem is that some valuable information on risk might also be in another section. So we are in the process of making knowledge available in the same way that a search engine does. Soon you will type in what you want to know, and you will probably get what you want, no matter where it is in our collection. But in addition to the general capabilities that a search engine provides, we will also have categories that reflect our specialized areas of knowledge. We are going to call this SEKR, or System Engineering Knowledge Resource. To develop SEKR, we used metrics captured from the SEPL. The metrics helped us reorganize the collection and determine what's hot and what's missing. Whether the name is SEPL or SEKR, it's an excellent resource." "We're moving toward a knowledge resource that leverages our capabilities more effectively," says SEPO Director Lynda Rosa. "It is no longer acceptable or practical to depend on our memories or inefficient methods of searching volumes of information to meet the demands of knowledge flow today. We have been working on implementing the Learning Process Model. We're working on the problem of how to stay one step ahead of the demand. And, we're working on ways to have more people contribute information, as opposed to our going out and getting it, valuable knowledge-nuggets such as lessons learned and best practices. Among the most difficult challenges facing the knowledge manager is creating a real learning organization in which information is easily shared and accessed across the enterprise, lessons learned are readily contributed, and information is synthesized continuously into new knowledge." Resources
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