What do you find to be the most challenging part of knowledge management?

[ItzJulia]

Whether you are using Service-Now or not, we all have things that come up with knowledge management that makes the job tough.   What is the most challenging task you face?

For us, it is maintaining the content to ensure it is still accurate.   The renewal process for us is still some what manual and getting the SMEs to find the time to review documents is a challenge.   Especially since they are often involved in day to day support or project work with deadlines.  

[StephLindorff]

This is a tough one for us too.   The Help Desk here is well established and the kb is very new.   I've been working on making sure the HD sees how the kb is growing.   I've also set the rule that they need to at least search for knowledge before assigning the incident to another group (my KAs always indicate the "support path" so at least incidents are getting assigned correctly).

[Linda Kendrick]

Finding the most challenging part are 2 things.

1. First is trying to restrict article. Can't do by group as not everyone is in one and can't go by role as again not everyone has a role. A user would be in a Division from the LDAP record but doesn't look like an easy to way to implement this way.

2. Getting buy in how the KB is helpful.

[danielbilling]

Totally agree on point 2. Writing a business case and communicating with organisation for Knowledge Management is tough task

[SimonDunsmoor]

Great answers and good to know that we're not the only ones having concerns about knowledge adoption.

We are about to start our Quick Start and though we have touched on Knowledge (and it will be included in the Start to some extent), Jeff Smith said it right, it feels as though KM is taking a back seat to the other "major processes".   I do want to note that I was very pleased at the comments our internal SNow team made during all of the implementation meetings though.   They do have "my back" but it will be on day 1.5.

I agree that buy-in from Executive level management is crucial to KM's success in an organization.   We are very lucky to have that level of buy-in.   However, with that buy-in I think we need mandates.   Such as Julia Lloyd's suggestion to make searching the KB mandatory.   Our current system doesn't provide the best metrics to support this process, SNow will and at that point it becomes a serious discussion.   To her other point, I agree 100% and have been taking advantage of the "newbies" for 9 months now!!   "Help me help you" is a phrase I use no less than 10 times in my training of the new Desk analysts.   We have seen an increase in Desk use of the KB (Our largest consumer of course) driven by these new associates.

In terms of managing the KB, we have KB Authors "embedded" in various groups who have agreed to take on the responsibility of publishing for their group.   These KBAs work with their respective SMEs to make sure the information is accurate, then publish.   This again would be where an Executive mandate would be helpful.   These KBAs and SMEs have their full-time work and sometimes that pushes Knowledge to the side.   I discuss with them and their supervisors that Knowledge work should be considered a priority 1.5 in their daily routine.   P1 items are those emergencies or high profile items that require immediate attention.   P2 items are important, but can wait.   If you insert Knowledge items in between then you're leveraging one KBA or SME's time to assist all of Customer Support.   This is usually a compelling enough argument to put things back on track, but its one I sometimes have to reiterate from time to time.  

[jero]

Very interesting thread!

I do agree with Fredrik Palmqvist that getting users on the KB is the most interesting challenge, but for me this exists especially in creating such content and especially structure in that content that users are more eager to go look into the KB for that information.

There is in our company a plethora of products and services that are all intertwined. So for me the challenge is to GUIDE them to the correct knowledge, through the correct knowledge. So I am really looking forward to the Fuji release in our company, because it seems it has quite a few features that would help me accomplish or at least get me nearer to my goal.