Knowledge Matters™
The Web-Pages of Durant-Law Consulting Pty Limited and Occasional Blog of Graham Durant-Law
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business network analysis™An Introduction to Network Analysis as a Research TechniqueFrom time to time I run a half-day seminar called “Introducing Network Analysis as a Research Technique ”, followed by a practical workshop that builds on the mornings activities and introduces participants to UCINET and NetDraw .
 Here are the workshop slides . The workshop is aimed at absolute beginners, and introduces participants to UCINET and NetDraw . It builds on the seminar, although attendance at the seminar is not a prerequisite.
The Shadow Organisation and Network AnalysisI recently came across this blog-post by Marc Aafjes on what he calls the Shadow Organisation. Marc says:
Now what Marc is doing is by no means new - he's weaving a network to build a community of practice! What he has done is come up with a clever name that markets his network weaving initiative. ... Network Analysis Seminar and Workshop
The seminar and workshop are offered free of charge to research students and researchers from all institutions, but priority access will be given to students and staff from participating universities. Costs may apply to other participants. If you are interested and you are in Canberra on Friday the 4th of July 2008 you can register here . The seminar is organised into three sessions. ... Understanding the Complexity of a Program of Projects
To give you a flavour of the presentation content have a look at the following blog-posts: ... Understanding the Complexity of a Program of Projects
To give you a flavour of the presentation content have a look at the following blog-posts: ... Visualising Project Programme Risk?Today I thought I would share with you two new diagrams from my doctorate, because I am actually not so sure about their utility, and would welcome any feedback you might have. That said I do feel they elicit interesting management questions. Consider the network diagram below. For a change it’s a different organisation to the one we have been looking at in previous blog-posts , but I have applied the same principles. The graph shows a programme of projects, all of which are dependent on one another for one reason or another. For example a project building an electricity distribution grid in a new town might be critically dependent on a project that is building a dam that will produce hydro-electricity.
The circles are projects coloured and grouped by business unit. This organisation assigns risk to six categories, which are shown as the red squares. The categories are real things in the real world rather than budget and schedule. ... Dollars or Links? Visualising Collective KnowledgeToday I thought I would share with you two new diagrams from my doctorate, because they elicit interesting management questions. Consider the network diagram below. The graph shows a programme of projects, all of which are dependent on one another for one reason or another. For example a project building an electricity distribution grid in a new town might be critically dependent on a project that is building a dam that will produce hydro-electricity.
The circles are projects coloured and grouped by business unit, and sized by value. The large light blue project at the bottom of the screen is obviously the project with the largest budget. The lines represent the dependency and are coloured by the importance of that dependency – red lines representing a critical dependency. As a manager where would you give priority to resource allocation? I suggest if you subscribe to the dollars view of the world the bulk of your effort would be directed to the light blue business unit. Now consider the next diagram. ... Understanding the Complexity of Program ManagementYesterday Patrick Byrne and I provided a presentation on ‘Understanding the Complexity of Program Management’ to the Melbourne Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Just over 150 project and program managers attended the session. This was the first time we have exposed our Project Knowledge Model and Business Network Analysis techniques to a public forum of our peers. ... Deconstructing ComplexityWhy am I blogging on Christmas Day? Well a bit like David Snowden I find blogging addictive, and a useful way to record my thoughts and ideas as they occur. And if that’s not enough it provides a means for an offsite backup for some elements of my doctorate. I am really enjoying my doctorate at the moment, so I thought I would share some of the work I did yesterday. I’ve called this blog Deconstructing Complexity because I think it succinctly describes the four diagrams below. (I thank Patrick Byrne for the title, which he suggested after reading my Visualising Collective Knowledge post.) Consider the network diagram below. The circles are projects coloured by project type, and sized by in-degree, that is the number of incoming links. The links show reliance by one project on another, and are directed. For example a project building an electricity distribution grid in a new town might be reliant on a project that is building a dam that will produce hydro-electricity.
Now at the moment I am sure you will agree the organisation in question is running a complex portfolio of projects. Paradoxically the detail in this diagram only allows for macro-decisions. ... Meet Tertius Iungens, the True Knowledge BrokerA week ago I introduced “Tertius Gaudens ”. Today I want to introduce “Tertius Iungens” – the true knowledge broker. You may recall Tertius Gaudens means ‘the third who benefits’. Tertius Iungens means ‘the third who joins the two’, and is a brokerage theory developed by Professor David Obstfeld . Both Gaudens and Iungens draw benefit from brokering relationships between others. The difference between them is subtle, but important for knowledge management. Consider the network diagram below, which is from my doctorate, and I used as the illustration in my “Who is Tertius Gaudens? ” blog. Recall the nodes are shaped and coloured by business unit and sized by ‘betweenness centrality’, which is a measure that signals an actor’s potential as a go-between for other actors in the network. The exception is Tertius Gaudens, who is shown as the yellow node. But is this node Tertius Gaudens or is it Tertius Iungens?
To answer this question we must first clearly understand the differences between Gaudens and Iungens. ... |
Science is built with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. |
I am running a half-day seminar followed by a half-day workshop on Friday the 4th of July 2008, called “
On Thursday the 12th of June Patrick Byrne and I will be once again present "
