Why knowledge management is important

Scenario One:

You go to work today, like any other day. Today you have a deadline for a project that was planned weeks ago. Suddenly you get a message on your phone. An important member of your team is sick! He can’t even sit in front of his laptop. Your manager also sent you a message, asking if everything is ok for today’s launch.

Scenario Two

You have a new staff member who is joining your company today. After the standard induction, you pass him his first task and you leave him alone.

 

A few hours/days later you ask about the progress on the task. He is stressed. He simply didn’t make any progress because he hasn’t done that type of task before and no one guided him with how to do them. You are both upset about the valuable time that has been wasted.

Scenario Three

You worked hard on your startup and after a few years of growth, now it’s time for scaling it up, but wait, do you have all/most of your processes documented?

 

The bottom line

 

These are the scenarios I hear from clients all the time. My answer is always the same, “Start a knowledge management system.”

 

In the beginning, it doesn’t matter what system you use for capturing knowledge within your organisation. Often I see companies start with free software such as Trello, which is a good step forward from not having any knowledge management system.

 

I personally suggest using Confluence. It’s a knowledge management system developed by Atlassian and can be merged easily with Jira Agile.