Today's SPIN conference in Montreal was a real treat. Eduardo Miranda (Ericsson) and Anders Hemre (interKnowledge Technologies) explained how they managed to ensure the uniformity of Ericsson's worldwide engineering processes while allowing for innovation and local adaptations to take place.
Their approach combines the discipline of CMMI(TM) high-maturity process management (level 4 and 5) with the concepts and human-centric hindsight of Knowledge Management. They showed how research on informal communication networks and tacit vs explicit knowledge inspire them to implement a three-tiered to involve and tap into the intellectual capacity of an organization:
- Communities of practice: Groups of people sharing a concern or a passion about a topic and who deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis.
- Councils: Groups of people entrusted with a level of authority over the knowledge domain and who steward its practice
- Process Groups: Collections of appointed specialists that facilitates the definition, maintenance and improvement of the processes.
They went on discussing some universal challenges organizations face when dealing with the "human ware" side of process improvement, such as status, recognition, incentives and beliefs system. On this last topic, here's a highly relevant quote of Epictetus used by Anders Hemre:
"A man cannot learn what he thinks he already knows"
Thanks again Eduardo and Anders for a refreshing and insightful view!
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