KCS Glossary

[A]

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.

[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]

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

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.

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

[D]

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 from knowledge and patterns generated in the Solve Loop.

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]

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.

[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 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.

[L]

Licensed Users
KCS Contributors and KCS Publishers

Linked
Attaching content that solves an issue from a request.

[N]

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.

[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.