Template-driven Documentation of Best Practices

Abstract: Knowledge Management has become a key instrument for identifying, creating and sharing organizational knowledge assets. An attractive means for sharing knowledge is Best Practices (BPs), which are proven as well as efficient and effective solutions to recurring problems. BPs can offer significant benefits, including improved performance, reduced re-work and cost savings. However, it is challenging to share and use BP Documents (BPDs) in organizations, which is the overall problem addressed in this thesis. More precisely, the thesis focuses on two sub-problems: 1) The difficulty of finding and selecting appropriate BPs in large collections of BPs impedes the use of BPs, and 2) The low quality of BPDs impedes the use of BPs. Related to these problems, the thesis addresses two sub-goals. The first one is to design a BP Annotation Template for supporting the identification and selection of BPs in BP repositories. The template can be used for organizing and indexing the contents of BPDs independent of domain. The second sub-goal is to design a BP Document Template for supporting the creation, use and evaluation of BP documentation. The BP Document Template offers a structure for describing BPs in a detailed and systematic way. The research methodology applied is design science, which is the scientific study and creation of artifacts as they are developed and used by people with the goal of solving practical problems. The first artifact, the BP Annotation Template, has been designed and developed based on a literature study and evaluated using expert interviews. The second artifact, the BP Document Template, has been designed and developed based on a literature study using grounded theory as well as on interviews with KM experts. The BP Document Template has been evaluated using expert interviews and demonstrated by being applied in three real-life cases. By basing the two artifacts on literature studies, the two artifacts consolidate, integrate and extend previous work on BP documentation. The evaluations indicate that the BP Annotation Template provides a strong foundation for identifying and selecting BPs, independent of domain, and that the BP Document Template can support the structuring of BP documents so that they become complete, uniform and easy-to-use. An identified drawback of the two artifacts is the need for extensive resources for implementing and applying them since they may be complex and time-consuming to use. The artifacts are expected to support BP designers as well as BP managers and BP users.