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> I can't imagine anything less likely to produce a usable knowledge base than
> frog-marching people to compliance. Some activities can be forced on people,
> undoubtedly, but when it comes to populating a knowledge base and providing
> good metadata to make the thing usable, dumb conformance is never going to
> yield good results. It is simply too easy to meet the nominal requirements
> with shoddy data.
I can: not requiring compliance. A measure of "dumb compliance" is the basis
of just about every successful document and content management system in
existence. Left to their own devices, most people will never take time out
from what they perceive as their "real jobs" to bother to fill out the simplest
form and every scrap of information in most companies would be hopelessly
lost in a hundred different file cabinets and piles of paper on peoples' desks.
In most cases, it is only long after people have been dragged kicking and
screaming toward any system of organization that they come to realize that
it has actually produced a benefit to them. Whether the results would be
"good" will depend on how well the "nominal requirements" suit the need,
and helpting define these could be a golden opportunity for the documentation
people...*if* they're not spending all their time trying to shoot down the plan.
> Only if one supposes that a corporate knowledge base is in fact a
> universally desirable thing. I don't. I think that in many cases the costs
> outweigh the benefits and that improving local repositories would probably
> yield better results in many cases.
The OP already established that she thought it was. The question asked was
not whether it was desirable, but how best to go about it. Since management
has already decided on its "grand plan," the best way to go about it is *not*
to walk around throwing up arguements against it, but to support it and then
work behind the scenes as much as possible to try to nudge it in a better
direction.
> But a knowledge base is not a "next step" after the adoption of a common
> template. The two things are completely orthogonal. And neither one is
> necessarily beneficial to the company.
It is the "next step" in the plan the OP's management has chosen. The OP's
choices are limited: either support it and try to improve it, or try to
roadblock
it, make herself some enemies in the excutive suite and possibly put herself
in line to be the next statistic in her company's high writer turnover rate.
"Lack of management support and differences in opinion" from a writer's
viewpoint is often "Lack of cooperation and teamwork" from management's.
Gene Kim-Eng
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