Struggle with arbitrary knowledge

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 15:27:00 +0000

This post is about a thought I wanted to process and thus wrote it down.

At work I often find myself to be exhausted from dealing with intensive thinking patterns. In my definition intensive thinking patterns are caused by issues which occur often, cannot be solved easily and require a sustainable solution. This sounds very broad, let me give you an example.

I am currently working on a big software development project. As I joined the project only recently, I managed to grasp only a small part of the whole. While working on tasks I often have to navigate a huge file tree with complex dependencies. Doing so always requires a lot of attention and caution. Moreover, there a various build processes in place which make the project even more obfuscating. Inconsistent naming within files and code increases complexity and in result the chance of me doing mistakes. However, from experience I know, that a file or data structure with a strict syntax and taxonomy can be handled much easier. By defining naming conventions and providing a certain degree of predictability for naming concepts, complexity can be reduced drastically. On the opposite if a project has less restrictions on naming conventions, a long history of changes and dealt with various opinions, I find myself to struggle working with it.

A random encounter introduced to me to the term “arbitrary knowledge”. And I think this term describes the challenge I am facing very well. Arbitrary knowledge is knowledge which is difficult to acquire. It takes more time and effort to understand something or learn about a new topic. The unpredictability of arbitrary knowledge prevents your thought process from connecting the dots easier. So if you end up working on a complex project and find yourself struggling, it may may not be caused by a lack of effort or abilities, but on the very fact that you have to deal with arbitrary knowledge. But how can you deal with such a situation? I have thought about a few steps which help reducing the need for arbitrary knowledge and thus decrease complexity.

Simple steps to reduce arbitrary knowledge

Avoid Abbreviations

Working with abbreviations increases productivity within a closed group, but makes it much harder for new members to tap in.

Avoid Generics

Generics are common in programming, but are also used in other disciplines. Generic terms are more likely used to describe something. We tend to abstract concepts and systems, especially in software development. But often for no obvious reason. Re-usability is not supposed be a first class-citizen when writing code.

Reuse Naming Concepts

On the other hand what should be reused are naming concepts. At best there are concepts in place at a corporate level and they do not have to be defined for each project.

Communicate Standards

No standard is worth something if people are not aware of it. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Often you build standards yourself while solving an issue, but never communicate these standards to your team members. Make sure they aware of them.

How I manage knowledge

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 16:40:48 +0000

So far I mostly posted about technical aspects of IT. Mainly solutions for particular problems. In future I would like to change that a bit. Not only because I am currently working on confidential projects, but also because I believe I have developed some ideas worth to be shared. One of those ideas is about knowledge management. While I never dealt with the topic on a research level, I made some experience while applying knowledge base solutions in different companies. Interest in this topic is probably cause because I often faced a frustrating situation. IT employees at company X were not incentivized to write documentations at all. Company X had not institutionalized a proper knowledge management. In result with employees leaving the company, knowledge got lost. Mistakes were repeated. Frustration increased. A vicious cycle.

It is not that easy

To solve this problem I have introduced and applied different tools to harvest and spread knowledge. One of those tools was SharePoint. SharePoint is a collaboration platform by Microsoft. It introduces advanced tools for every aspects of collaboration. However, using SharePoint comes at the cost of a vendor lock in. In that way I learned that there are extensive solutions to manage knowledge in the business environment, but at the same time many of the existing solutions do not support the idea of having knowledge data vendor-independent.

Personal approach

To be more capable at work and having more knowledge at hand, I have tried a variety of note taking tools (Evernote, OneNote, Google Notes, …). Most of them were insufficient. They either stored my content in a proprietary data format or did not provide the functionality required for my daily work. So I developed a personal workflow for managing knowledge. I will discuss my solution later on. First, I want to present my 4 rules of knowledge management.

Knowledge requires taxonomy

Taxonomy is the definition of a classification or categorization. Having a tree based structure to store knowledge makes it easier to recall specific content. Taxonomy helps to filter, navigate and explore the content of a knowledge base. Moreover, a company wide standardized taxonomy defines terms and thus makes it easier to communicate. Knowledge content must be stored in explicitly defined tree based data structure.

Knowledge needs to be accessible

Thinking happens immediately. Usually you can recall something within seconds or never. That is why access to a knowledge base content must happen fast. It all comes down to search performance. A knowledge base system must act reactive and provide the most relevant search results.

Knowledge documents must be platform-independent

Knowledge has become the most important resource for companies. Money, material and employees have become a commodity. It is important that knowledge is available after years, moves on with the company and stays relevant. This is also true with personal knowledge. You do not want store content in software that might do not exist in the near future.

The foundation of Knowledge management is encouragement

I personally believe that economic behavior incentives employees to not contribute to a knowledge base at all. People judge the effort of contribution subjectively and treat it as unnecessary work if they can not benefit career wise. That is why employees have to be incentivized to contribute in different ways. A very powerful strategy is the implementation of gamification. Rewarding people with virtual gifts and reputation has been proofed to be suitable solution.

This is how I store knowledge

For assistance at my daily work, I have developed a distinct workflow and toolbox to manage my personal knowledge. To be more precise the following technologies are involved:

Visual Studio Code
Git
Markdown

Using these tools I try to document as much as possible. Every document version is tracked via git. For every domain of my life (education, private, business) there is a knowledge base. The knowledge bases are stored in a git repository and thus can be made shared with other parties. Here is an example of working with this toolbox:

To force a taxonomy I have defined a guideline for the folder structure: https://gist.github.com/janikvonrotz/a9eeb4d5ae551073fda8b5d3743b2cfc

Knowledge-Management on Janik von Rotz