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Page 6 of 13
Knowledge snippets and traceability
Two simple actions could simplify both the interaction with the "thesaurisation and compliance organizations" (e.g. methodology, quality assurance, knowledge management) and the knowledge production: writing "knowledge snippets" along with each item, and defining "building maps" for the basic documents to be generated by the knowledge producers.
Traceability is a simple concept, and it is more a matter of common sense than a complete new concept.
Simply, partition your document into "atomic" (i.e. not further divisible) items, and whenever producing an update, take note of which existing item you are updating.
As described in the "Methodology" section, the management of traceability is slightly more complex, but is built around this basic rule.
Not everyone is keen on documenting in a traceable way, or interested in restructuring the documents according to different sets of requirements.
The knowledge producers should retain control of the knowledge they originated, as they are the only ones able to update it in a meaningful way.
Obviously, this implies that the knowledge producers opearate according to your own rules- and this applies both to your own staff and any external suppliers.
As it will be discussed in a later issue, you can outsource/delegate the execution, but not the responsibility.
If you define clear "roadmaps" to assemble and store knowledge items, then the thesaurisation is just a by-product of your normal activities.
Then, the knowledge producers can delegate the actual collection and formalization to resources focused on those task, usually belonging to the "thesaurisation and compliance organizations".
Knowledge producers usually need to get through some trial-and-error before they can identify the proper size of the "knowledge snippets" for their processes, but there is a low-cost option.
Ask them to define "knowledge snippets" so that they can enforce traceability.
They should start by looking at their own business processes, and check what is the minimal traceable "knowledge snippet": probably the actual size and configuration of a meaningful knowledge snippet is different across the organization.
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