Knowledge Management Tools: Component Technologies Essay

The internet provides a multitude of vendors promising to transform our concern. But , we deport to know which approaches should be adopt to examine the factor technologies that make up a noesis way system or suite. The analogy of hi-fi is utilize where each item has a certain responsibility or purpose. The multitude of KM system on offer in the marketplace is seen as a composite variation of a number of these circumstances technologies. Firms may decide to buy different component-of-the-shelf or mature their own tools to meet their penurys.Organising friendship toolsOntology and Taxonomy Grubber (1993) defines ontology as a formal explicit of sh ard conceptualism. It helps us on preventing wide variations on fancying or perspective to the same subject. Therefore, we possess to developed ontology to amend our level of information organization, management, and understanding. In the context of KM tools, the term ontology is often characterd interchangeability with taxon omy. To get through the distinction, its important to recognize that an ontology is overall conceptualism whereas taxonomy is a scientifically based scheme of straighten outification. An ontology may have non taxonomic conceptual relationship such as has part relationship between concepts. In contrast, fellowship taxonomy generate hierarchical family unitification of term that argon structured to show relationship between them.When it comes conviction to implement ontologies and taxonomies on that point are three options develop the ontology hence develop the supporting taxonomy. develop taxonomy and whence develop the over-arching ontology develop the two in parallel. make your backclothThe first step in evolution the combined ontology and taxonomy is to clear scope the labour. A clearly defined scope is critical to the success of the effort. The question that can best help shape the scope of the effort is simply, what purpose go out the combined ontology and taxon omy go to? The answer to this question serves several purposes It sets bounds on the effort. These bounds are necessary to answering the rudimentary managerial questions of how long will it sign up, and how much will it cost. It helps identify the primary domains and perspectives to be included. It should identify the unique(predicate) business activities that will make direct use of theontologies and taxonomies and how the resulting knowledge will be used to achieve their mission.Normally the answer to this question will croak into one of three categories To serve as a common framework for knowledge sharing. To enable apply of alert domain knowledge. To a better understand what the organization knows by separating domain knowledge from the useable knowledge and making assumptions explicit.The first two of these, knowledge sharing and reuse are at the stub of most KM initiatives. Answers falling into the third kinsperson are indicative of advanced KM or academic init iatives. The following steps are applicable to all three scenarios and are specifically targeted toward those efforts management on knowledge sharing and reuse.Check for vivacious Ontologies and TaxonomiesBusiness operations today are in addition often dependent on, or required to split to one or much industry standards and may interface with applications that make use of existing ontologies or controlled vocabularies. For that reason, it is often best to use preexisting taxonomies and ontologies in the lead launching into an extensive and possibly expensive growing effort.Identify Important TermsIf it is determined that existing ontologies and taxonomies are insufficient to meet the scope of the effort, then(prenominal) it is duration to start collecting the raw materials for the refreshing structures. This starts with identifying the key terms that are used to discourse the knowledge needed to enable specific business activities. At this point, it is important to list o f all terms used to make statements or to explain to someone else what is needed to accomplish the business activities included deep down the scope of the effort. These can commonly be run aground in corporate policy or usable instructions and from lot with expertise in the activities. maculation gathering these terms it is important to stay indoors the scope of the effort. Incorporating the full lexicon for a large multi-national tangled may look like a major accomplishment, but it will not help variety an effective knowledge environment if the scope of the effort is smaller. Rather, the broader scope will make it more troublesome to marry the concepts of the field to those used by the people you are trying to support.Define the Class pecking orderArmed with the terms and concepts that are critical to educeing the knowledge needed to enable those business activities to be supported, the succeeding(prenominal) step is to define a class hierarchy. Again, there are thre e ways to do this black market from the top down. Start by identifying the general concepts (super-class identification) and then determine which of the others fall within those categories (subclass identification). crap from the diffuse up . Start by developing practice bundling of related concepts (subclass grouping) and then look for the higher-order concepts that under which a given cluster of concepts might fall (super-class identification) Work from the top down and bottom up. This starts with the identification of the more important concepts first and then generalize and pin down them appropriately. The authors have found that this approach is the easiest to follow and has a lower risk of getting mired in the semantic swamp. When organizing terms and concepts the basic formula isIf a class A is a super class of class B, then every instance of B is also an instance of A. In other words, the class B represents a concept that is a course of A. As the class structure for your domain begins to take shape, check how well it expresses the way the people that are veridically snarled in the associated activates actually babble out about what they are doing. Make sure that it reflects the actual context in which it will be used. The manner of speaking of practical ontology or taxonomy should not to require the user to stop and translate between the way they normally think about things and the official term. This is also the time to make sure that the vocabulary used to express the hierarchical class structure agrees with the real-world (and agreed upon) vocabulary and accurately serves to classify the information that will need to be exchanged between the people and applications involved in meeting the targeted activities. When these conditions occur, the class hierarchical efficaciously becomes the upper-layers of the taxonomy. This is a critical factor in insuring on-going semantic alignment between the resulting ontology and taxonomy.