miscellaneous

The Definitional Conundrum

graham durant-law — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:45:26 -0500

I've been reading a lot about management, knowledge management and project management lately. Instrumental accounts of management are dominant in the literature. By this I mean management is viewed as a rational technical activity consisting of the skilled application of authority and "scientifically-based" techniques to achieve a desired end purpose. One definition of management could be:

"Management is a trans-disciplinary approach that integrates tools, techniques, and strategies to retain, organise, share, analyse, improve, and apply business expertise (Groff & Jones 2003, p. 2). It is disciplined, deliberate, purposeful, and conscious, and of necessity involves the design, implementation and review of processes to improve knowledge creation and sharing behaviours" (Standards Australia 2005, p. 2).

Now here's the problem. The definition above is actually for knowledge management, but how does it differ in any way from management? Now insert the word project: ...

Working Wikily

graham durant-law — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:22:53 -0500

Every now and again I come across a website or blog that grabs my attention. Working Wikily is one such site. It is the site of the Monitor Institute and is dedicated to network analysis. Specifically their objective is:

"to describe the new ways that people are applying network theory and networked technology to do the work they've always done in a more collaborative form and also to begin working in new ways altogether". ...

The Invisible Discipline

graham durant-law — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:44:26 -0400

I've just finished two days at KM Singapore 2008. The first day included awards, prizes, book launches, a knowledge cafe, and a panel discussion. The second day consisted of four workshops. It was a pretty good event, but I was struck by the invisible nature of knowledge management. Not one person in the panel or in open discussion was prepared to call the discipline knowledge management! Why?

Well the stock answer was it's perceived by senior management and workers as a fad, or something that adds to their burden, so if we call it something else and disguise the fact we are trying to do knowledge management then we can do what we want to do. Even the professor chairing the panel, who runs a knowledge management course, was not prepared to call it knowledge management! This really is a bit sad and some might even argue downright dishonest.

I think the real problem is we claim almost anything to be knowledge management. We can play games and that's knowledge management. ...

The Philosophical Trinity

graham durant-law — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:13:55 -0400

I haven't been blogging lately - sorry! The reasons are I have been quite ill and have only just gotten over it; I am overwhelmed at work; and I have been trying to write my PhD thesis. I have neglected the thesis for most of the year, and decided it was getting away from me, so my discipline is to write something every day, which means blogging takes a back seat. Today I thought I would share with you a concept I call the Philosophical Trinity.

Choosing an appropriate research strategy is difficult. It requires a deep and honest reflection of one's own beliefs. It requires commitment to the relationship between the philosophical trinity, the research paradigm, and the research methodology or methodologies. The philosophical trinity answers the questions ‘What exists?', ‘How do I know?', and ‘What is valuable? Each question is a discipline in its own right, respectively known as ontology, epistemology and axiology. The philosophical trinity is depicted below.

Ontology is the philosophy of the world view of reality. Sometimes, and in particular in the systems thinking schools, world view is called ‘weltanschauung'. The seminal ontological question for a researcher is - ‘Is there a "real" world out there that is independent of our knowledge of it?' The answer to this question firmly positions the researcher into one of two schools. The first school is often known as the essentialist or foundationalist school, and the second rather unimaginatively as the anti-foundationalist school.

The essentialist school argues that there are fundamental and enduring differences in social phenomena that exist in all contexts and across time. Such a position means that social phenomena can in essence be decomposed to constituent parts. ...

Stupid Surveys

graham durant-law — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:23:50 -0400

Some months ago I engaged in a somewhat vitriolic discussion with David Snowden on the worth of surveys . My position was, and remains, that surveys have their place in research. David's position at the time was - "I do think that in the vast majority of cases randomly completing surveys has equal validity to attempting honesty ...". Now I do try to be honest when completing a survey and I diligently respond to almost every survey I receive. However last Friday I adopted the David Snowden random completion method! Why? ...

Knowing Projects

graham durant-law — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:55:29 -0400

In my opinion one of the best blogs on the web is Better Projects by Craig Brown; closely followed by Impacted Nurses by Ian Miller. The content on both sites is quite different, but always entertaining and informative. I think Craig is about to be challenged by Pat Byrne's Knowing Projects . Pat has been threatening to enter the blogosphere for some time, so I am really pleased to see he has finally found the time.

His second entry is called "A Melody not a Hip=Hop (01) ". Now I suspect my son or daughter, who like rap and hip hop may not like his metaphor, but it resonates with me. Pat says hip hop is "blocky" - that is to say each musical phrase it is not connected in a smooth way. He says the same about two project methodologies - PRINCE2 and PMBOK. To quote Pat: ...

Connectivity Paralysis

graham durant-law — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:18:50 -0400

I've not blogged for almost a month for several reasons. First my current employer has some restrictions concerning blog topics, and I've been working out just what this means. Second I'm so connected that I'm paralysed!

My employer has provided me with a laptop and token that allows secure access to two corporate intranets. I have a Blackberry so if I'm not on, or monitoring, the Intranets then I receive the e-mails any way. And of course I'm still contactable by telephone of which I have four numbers - my office number, a secure mobile, my personal mobile, and my home number. I have two work e-mails and one semi-private address, as well as the address on this site. If people still can't find me my wife has an office number and mobile. In short I am so connected that I can find few ways of escaping, short of turning everything off and answering nothing. Why would I want Twitter, Doppler or any other social connectivity tool?

I've written before about connectivity enabling Pavlovian work-practices . By this I mean one stops doing what they are doing and responds to the electronic stimuli immediately and often uncritically. If we assume an eight hour day, ...

The Power of Number Visualisation

graham durant-law — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:18:22 -0400

I don't idly web-surf very often, but today I am and it has proven fruitful. I like numbers and I like visualisations even more, so naturally I like the web site of Chris Jordon which is called Running the Numbers: an American Self Portrait . Chris has come up with the novel idea of depicting statistics using multiple images of the statistic in question.

For example he shows the number of people who have been arrested and held at US-run detention facilities with no trial or other due process of law by creating a montage of Abu Ghraib prisoner photographs. The montage consists of 83,000 photographs, which allegedly is the statistic! ...

A Billion Dollar Knowledge Transfer Mistake!

graham durant-law — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:19:32 -0400

The United States Air Force lost a B2 Stealth Bomber valued at $US 1.4 billion because of a failure to transfer knowledge between pilots and maintenance technicians. The bomber crashed earlier this year at Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam. Apparently water distorted pre-flight readings in three of the plane's 24 sensors, making the aircraft's control computer force the B-2 to pitch up on takeoff, resulting in a stall and subsequent crash.

The official accident investigation found that the crash probably could have been avoided if knowledge of a technique to evaporate the moisture had been disseminated throughout the B-2 command. This technique was: ...

Conference Week in Australia

graham durant-law — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:57:28 -0400

actKM 08 will be held on the 14th and 15th of October 2008 at University House, the Australian National University, Canberra. The theme is 'Managing Knowledge for Competitive Advantage', which is hardly original, but the organising committee promise it will be highly participative and interactive. They are seeking submissions at the moment with a preference for interactive or experiential activities that engage conference participants in a learning or competitive environment.

I haven't made up my mind if I will attend actKM 08 because I've been asked to present a paper on network analysis to the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers (AIPIO) annual conference . This conference is at the Holiday Inn, Adelaide from the 14th to 16th of October 2008 inclusive, and the theme is ‘Improving Tradecraft'. At the moment I think I'll write a paper that compares the various network analysis tools on the market, highlights their strengths and weaknesses, and assesses their suitability for intelligence work. Even if I don't attend AIPIO 2008 the paper can be published in their peer-reviewed journal.

Assuming I attend the AIPIO conference I will head off to Hobart to attend the Australian Military Medicine Association's annual conference . ...