KCS v6 Practices Certification Study Guide
Education and Reading List
Attending a KCS v6 Practices Workshop is recommended but not required. The following reading list is strongly recommended:
- KCS Principles and Core Concepts
- KCS v6 Practices Guide
- KCS v6 Adoption & Transformation Guide
- Measurement Matters
All documents can be accessed for free.
Exam Topics and Objectives
The exam is based on the documentation listed in the “Education and Reading List” above. No specific product or technology is covered in the exam. Specifics about individual company content standard, roles, workflow and life cycle states that are unique to an organization are not included in the exam.
The exam is based on the generic practices as described in the KCS documentation. The exam was built with the idea of answering the following question: “If you hired someone to manage or advise you on a KCS adoption what would you expect them to know?”
KCS v6 Principles
- Know that KCS in v6 stands for Knowledge-Centered Service.
- Identify how Abundance contributes to KCS success.
- Identify how Create Value contributes to KCS success.
- Identify how Demand Driven contributes to KCS success - and the key elements and benefits of working in a demand-driven way.
- Identify how Trust contributes to KCS success.
KCS Core Concepts
- Identify the value of KCS to the business and to the customers.
- Identify violations to the KCS Practices.
- Identify the differences between the KCS methodology and a Knowledge Management (KM) tool/technology.
- Identify the key elements and benefits of the “sufficient to solve” concept.
- Identify the key elements and benefits of the “just-in-time versus just-in-case” concept.
- Identify the benefits of the Double Loop Process (Solve Loop (A) and Evolve Loop (B)).
- Identify why is it important to have buy-in to the KCS Practices.
- Identify elements that drive organizational change.
- Identify the elements that sustain KCS benefits over time.
- Identify how knowledge integration impacts the benefits of KCS.
- Identify why an investment in coaching is important.
Capture
- Identify why capture in the workflow is important in a KCS environment.
- Identify the importance of the visibility of a framed or Work-In-Progress KCS article.
- Identify the criteria for determining if a statement is relevant to capture.
Structure
- Identify why structure for reuse contributes to the overall KCS process.
- Identify why “complete thoughts not complete sentences” contributes to the overall KCS process.
Reuse
- Identify why “seek to understand what we collectively know” contributes to the overall KCS process.
- Identify what needs to be known to determine if reference material (other KCS content) should be linked to a KCS article.
- Identify what needs to be known to determine if supporting/supplemental material (non-KCS content) should be attached to a KCS article.
Improve
- Identify how “reuse is review” contributes to the overall KCS process.
- Identify why “flag it or fix it” contributes to the overall KCS process.
- Identify the conditions under which it is appropriate to flag or fix a KCS article.
- Identify behaviors of collective ownership of an organization's knowledge base.
Content Health
- Identify best practices for dealing with legacy data.
- Identify the criteria for publishing to an external audience.
- Identify when to create a new article vs. update a KCS article.
- Identify the purpose of the metadata field for Article Confidence.
- Identify the purpose of the metadata field for Article Audience (formerly Article Visibility).
- Identify the purpose of the metadata field for Article Governance.
- Identify the benefits of just-in-time publishing.
- Identify the elements of the KCS methodology that contribute to the creation of quality KCS articles.
- Identify the key enablers for self-service success.
Process Integration
- Identify what is appropriate to capture for the incident and what is appropriate for the KCS article.
- Given a set of problem solving steps, identify the correct order in which the steps should be completed.
- Identify why “seek to understand before seeking to solve” is important in the problem solving process.
- Identify the value of the Process Adherence Review, or PAR (formerly Process Integration Indicators, or PII).
- Identify the elements of the the Process Adherence Review, or PAR (formerly Process Integration Indicators, or PII).
Performance Assessment, Roles, and Responsibilities
- Identify the importance of the licensing model.
- Identify the benefits of the licensing model to the individual KCS Publisher.
- Identify the characteristics, role, value, and function of a KCS Coach.
- Identify ways to promote and measure the KCS behaviors and collaboration.
- Identify the strengths of radar charts.
- Identify the characteristics of an activity measure.
- Identify the criteria and best practices for selecting coaches.
Leadership
- Identify the attributes of effective organizational change management.
- Identify the benefits of a Strategic Framework.
- Identify the benefit of having and communicating a compelling purpose.
- Identify the benefit of having explicit organizational values as an element of the organization's vision.
- Identify the benefit of having a brand promise.
- Given a scenario, identify why assessing communication effectiveness is important to a successful KCS adoption.
- Identify internal motivators.
- Identify leadership's responsibility in sustaining KCS.
KCS Adoption
- Identify the intent and benefit of adoption waves.
- Identify why the measurement system must evolve in each phase of KCS adoption.
- Identify why waves of adopters are important in a KCS adoption
- Identify why phases of adoption are important in a KCS adoption
- Identify the owners of the key deliverables of a KCS Design Session
- Identify why it is important for the knowledge workers to design and own the workflow