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> Long term, that can become a form of institutional knowledge (risk) This is a bit of a tangent but it's something I find surprising in tech (at least the meg
by Youden 5y ago
> Long term, that can become a form of institutional knowledge (risk)
This is a bit of a tangent but it's something I find surprising in tech (at least the megacorp I work in): institutional knowledge is kept inside people's heads and when they leave, the knowledge is lost and not much is done to stop it.
"That's obvious" you might think but in the US Army for example, there's an organisation [0] that debriefs soldiers returned from deployment and collects their experiences and lessons to disseminate them to the rest of the military (and there are sister organisations in other countries e.g. Australia [1]).
There's an entire field of study dedicated to knowledge management [2] and I know it's present in some large companies but I'm really surprised you never really see it in tech.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Center_for_Army_Lessons_Learned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Center_for_Army_Less...
[1]: https://cove.army.gov.au/bio/army-knowledge-centre https://cove.army.gov.au/bio/army-knowledge-centre
[2]: https://www.kmworld.com/About/What_is_Knowledge_Management https://www.kmworld.com/About/What_is_Knowledge_Management
- vasco 5y agoAnd lots of companies have offboarding processes that usually include hand overs and an exit interview to serve similar purpose. If most companies were paid billions to kill kids around the world I'm sure they could also afford a whole department just for this too.
- llampx 5y agoIf you wait until the employee has given their notice to begin their knowledge transfer, the company has completely lost the plot. Not only are you asking to compress years of learning into a couple of weeks or months in the best case that they remember everything and want to turn over that knowledge, worst case is sometimes the person is just not available or has forgotten important chunks. And that's not even mentioning layoffs and firings. Companies don't pay attention to knowledge transfer for the same reason they don't pay attention to technical debt and scope creep - no incentives to do so for the managers who would have to dedicate engineer time to it.
- ponow 5y agoWay to misrepresent the _purpose_ of the US military.
- nickpeterson 5y agoI agree, his tone is flippant and outdated. Nowadays the purpose is to give jobs to red states that don’t fund education and drone strike foreign woman and children. Also they tacitly assist when a sitting president starts to try and dismantle our democracy. He really gave our military the short shrift.
- Youden 5y agoSorry, my post wasn't clear. These organisations do a lot more than exit interviews, those are just one kind of input. And knowledge management isn't limited to the military, I just don't know other examples off the top of my head.
- astura 5y agoKnowledge transfer/documentation should take place regularly and be a continuous ongoing process - not happen only when someone leaves.
- Mezzie 5y agoGodspeed, man; I'm gearing up to have the knowledge management discussion with my organization. 'Chaos' is not an information management strategy!