KCS Glossary

[A]

Activities
Leading indicators that count activity (# of articles created or reused). Activity alone is not an indicator of value.

Add it
Creating a new KCS article in the workflow, if one does not exist. 

Article Audience
Audience that the article is available to. Internal, Customer, Partner, Public.  Formerly called article visibility.

Article Confidence
The process a article undergoes as it matures (work in progress, not validated, validated, archived).  Article confidence indicates how sure we are in the resolution and content standard of the article.

Article Governance
User or user group who can create and edit articles.

Article State
A combination of article confidence, audience (formerly visibility), and governance.

Average work time to resolve
Number of minutes consumed per incident in developing an answer, fix, bypass or workaround.
Determined by dividing the total minutes worked by the number of incidents resolved.

[B]

Balanced Scorecard
A method of goals and metrics that links individual and organization goals. Examines performance from multiple points of view. (see The Balanced Scorecard by Kaplan and Norton)

[C]

Candidate Knowledge
Search words become part of the knowledge base as standalone article or part of an existing article.

Capture
A Solve Loop practice. While solving the problem, the knowledge worker captures the customer's context.

Cause
The underlying or root cause of the problem.

Citation
Reuse of your articles by others

Closed loop feedback
Insight generated by the Evolve Loop that continuously improves the customer experience as well as the information in the knowledge base.

Coach
KCS role that supports the development of KCS Candidates and KCS Contributors.

Communication Effectiveness Indicators
Used to assess the level of buy-in and understanding across the organization

Competency profile
Percentage of knowledge workers at each level of the KCS competencies: KCS Candidate, KCS Contributor, and KCS Publisher.

Content
Knowledge that is captured and findable. Knowledge content may be in the form of text, pictures, animation, audio or multi-media (video with audio). Various forms of content that solve a specific issue, including KCS articles, white papers, documentation etc. This content must be searchable, answer the specific issue in the context of the audience asking, and in a maintained repository.

Content Health
An Evolve Loop practice focused on article structure, content standards, content quality, and article life cycles.

Content Standard
A formal document which describes decisions the organization has made about KCS article content and structure.

Content Standard Checklist
Provides the structure to ensure a KCS Contributor understands and can create articles based on the criteria defined in the KCS Content Standard.

Contribution Indicators
How often a knowledge worker is reusing, modifying, or creating a new knowledge article.

Contribution Index
The ratio of the number of times a knowledge worker appropriately contributed as a percentage of their total opportunity to contribute.

Context
Captured in the Solve Loop, it is the description of the needs and experiences of the requestor in their own terms.

Cultural Health
Knowledge workers' attitude with respect to trust, commitment, conflict resolution, accountability, and focus on results.  Measured through surveys.  See Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

[D]

Data
Unorganized words or numbers.

Demand-Driven Visibility
As articles are found and used they are improved. Articles are migrated to a broader audience as they are proven accurate and useful.

Environment
An element of a KCS article that contains product information or technology (hardware, software,network, etc.) the customer has that is relevant to the issue. Has anything been changed recently?

[E]

Evolve Loop content
Content that is created outside of the workflow from a collection of articles created in the Solve Loop. Includes FAQ's, Hot articles, and Root Cause Analysis.

Exception
Any type of issue including:

• "How to" or Q&A
• Interoperability issues
• Configuration issues
• Defects
• Diagnostic procedures
• Procedural

External
Indicates a KCS article is available outside an organization. The audience metadata field is set to either partner, customer, or public.

Fix it
A KCS Contributor or Publisher modifying an existing article in the workflow.

Flag it
A non-licensed user commenting on an article so that an authorized knowledge worker can modify it.

[I]

Incident
A request for an answer to an exception or issue, tracked through an incident management system, CRM, or call-tracking tool.

Information
Organized data without an associated action

Issue
A question, problem, exception. The motivation for people to interact. A field in a KCS article template where the question from requestor is recorded. Any type of interaction or exception including:

• "How To" or Q&A
• Interoperability issues
• Configuration issues
• Defects
• Diagnostic procedures
• Procedural

Just-in-Time article quality
Everyone interacting with the knowledge base is responsible for the quality of the articles; the articles are updated as they are being used to solve an issue.

[K]

KCS Candidate
Provisional contributor to the knowledge base; a basic user of the knowledge base who is familiar with capturing and structuring content. Can create internal articles and modify their own but cannot modify others.

KCS Contributor
Creates, modifies, and reviews articles for publishing to a defined audience.

KCS Council
A cross-functional group that meets on a regular basis providing a forum for the continued improvement to the content standard, workflow, technology integration, and feedback systems.  Early in the adoption process, they are focused on the implementation activities.  Later on the journey, they are focused on continuous improvement.

KCS Publisher
Publishes content to an external audience.

Knowledge
Knowledge is the by-product of an interaction and information upon which we can act. Information that has an action associated with it and a context and experience related to its use. Information becomes knowledge at the moment of use. Gained through interaction and experience. Attributes of knowledge include: Constantly changing, Never 100% complete or 100% accurate, validated through use, experience, and interaction.

Knowledge Domain Analysis (KDA)    
Evolve Loop activities performed to maintain knowledge base health and assess and increase knowledge base impact.

Knowledge Domain Expert (KDE)
Looks after the health of the knowledge base, has both technical expertise and extensive understanding of KCS processes.

Knowledge worker
People whose responsibilities include the use of information to make decisions and take action. Anyone who does intellectual work as opposed to physical work. People who use data and information to make judgments and decisions and/or take action. Knowledge workers can play the role of responder or requestor. Often used to refer to people doing Solve Loop work. 

[L]

Lagging indicators
Qualitative outcomes: a measure of value.

Leaders
Define the vision of success within the organization; they support knowledge workers in determining the workflow and the content standard.

Leadership & Communication
An Evolve Loop practice concerned with communication, promoting an understanding of KCS, and the performance assessment model.

Leading indicators
Quantifiable activities: should be measured only to identify trends.

Legacy Data
Old knowledge content, usually stored in disparate systems and not structured according to KCS standards.

Licensed Users
KCS Contributors and KCS Publishers

Linked
Attaching content that solves an issue from a request.

[M]

Metadata
Additional fields in KCS articles used to capture information such as article state (confidence, audience, governance), date created, number of times modified, history, number of times article has been reused etc.

[N]

Network
The collection of people and content who would benefit from interaction and shared experiences, not limited by any artificial boundaries or structure like role, department, division, or company. Intended to include all relevant people and content in the domain including employees, partners, customers and others.

Not Validated
A KCS article state that indicates low confidence in the article content or structure.

[P]

Practice
The KCS Practices organize what we need to do. The Practices are the application or use of the principles and core concepts in organizing the activities.

• Practices help us organize the techniques (how)
• Practice include examples of how to do things (like implementing a balanced scorecard or value footprint) that are applicable across multiple techniques or functions, ie. tech support, HR, financial services.
• Practices are made up of a definition and techniques. Techniques are details of the Practices that can often be accomplished in many different ways.

[R]

Ratio of known to new
Reuse of existing articles versus new articles created in the knowledge base.

Requestor
A knowledge worker seeking information/knowledge or resolution to an issue.

Responder
A knowledge worker offering knowledge or providing a resolution to an issue or assisting in the development of a resolution to an issue.

Reuse
How many times an article has been applied. Article reuse is a valuable method of measuring an article's value.

[S]

Search Indicators
A indication if a knowledge worker is searching early  and often.

Searching is Creating
Content used for searching is saved and is used to enhance existing articles or frame new articles.

Self-service success
The percentage of time users find what they need on their own through a self-service mechanism.

Service
We use the term “service” in its broadest and most generic form.  Service is the business of helping others be successful and productive in their endeavors. In the process of getting work done, there is network of interactions: “requester - responder” or “customer - supplier” relationships. These interactions happen within and across all business functions. The interactions are not bounded by company boundaries or individual roles; they happen between companies, customers, and partners across all information-intensive industries and institutions.

System of record
A case, incident, email, and any type of recorded interaction of a request and response.

[T]

Tacit Knowledge
Implicit information that should become explicit in during the conversation with the requestor.

Triangulation
Reflects the intangible nature of value - the idea that the creation of knowledge cannot be directly measured or counted. Involves looking at things from at least three different perspectives: Trends in Activity, Results/Outcomes, and the Article Quality Index.

[V]

Validated
A KCS article that is considered complete and reusable. We have confidence in the resolution and it complies with the content standard.

[W]

Work- in-progress (WIP)
An incomplete KCS article. The problem or question has been captured but the resolution is not known.