Capability Maturity

IntroductIon The dependence of any organization on knowledge management is clearly understood. Actually, we should distinguish between knowledge management (KM) and knowledge engineering (KE): KM is to define and support organizational structure, allocate personnel to tasks, and monitor knowledge engineering activities; KE is concerned with technical matters, such as tools for knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation, and data mining. We shall use the designation KMKE for knowledge management and knowledge engineering collectively. KM is a very young area—the three articles termed " classic works " in Morey, Maybury, and Thuraisingham (2000) date from 1990, 1995, and 1996, respectively. We could regard 1991 as the start of institutionalized KM. This is when the Skandia AFS insurance company appointed a director of intellectual capital. KE has a longer history—expert systems have been in place for many years. Because of its recent origin, KMKE is characterized by rapid change. To deal with the change, we need to come to a good understanding of the nature of KMKE. One of the lasting contributions of the business reengineering movement is the view that an enterprise is to be regarded as a set of well-defined processes (Davenport, 1993; Berztiss, 1996). This implies that KMKE also should be a process. Implementation of a process has two aspects: there is need for a procedural definition, and for an understanding of the resources and capabilities needed to implement the procedures and manage the process. Here, we will not be considering the procedures. Our purpose is to set up a model that identifies the capabilities needed to define, implement , and maintain the KMKE process. The Background section of this article introduces capability models. In the Focus section, we define a capability model for KMKE in general terms and look at the management and engineering sides of this model. Then, we look into the future and offer a conclusion.