PIM Technologies and Knowledge Management Systems

Introduction : Individuals and KM : Role of PIM : PIM & the Knowledge Worker : Design Considerations : References

Introduction top

This paper examines the role of personal information management systems as they relate to knowledge work and knowledge management systems. It proposes that the individual knowledge worker's role within knowledge management has the potential to be expanded, as has been predicted, as more sophisticated electronic personal information management tools emerge. Using existing research on knowledge workers and personal information management (PIM) systems, I will examine how what we already know about the nature of knowledge work and personal information management systems can inform the design of more successful tools in this arena.

Individuals and Knowledge Management top

Knowledge management literature often describes knowledge management systems in terms of broad organizational ecologies referring to collective unified concepts such as organizational learning, organizational knowledge and organizational intelligence (Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Choo, 2002). The individual's role in these large systems, which are devised to identify, share, retain and make active use of knowledge, is often less clear. It has been acknowledged that knowledge management owes some of its history to theories of human capital, widely written about by Gary Becker among others, which identifies the importance of investing in education for individual workers (Prusak, 2001; Becker, 1964). According to Laurence Prusak, knowledge management still holds as one of its core tenants to, "continue making the value of human capital clear to organizational leaders while developing tools and techniques for investing and reaping benefits from it" (Prusak, 2001, 26 ). Despite this, it is usually understood that knowledge management is "more concerned with group knowledge and the processes of social capital that undergird group knowledge" (Prusak, 2001, 27).

Within the knowledge management framework there are specific roles laid out for individuals working in such systems, people commonly referred to as knowledge workers. The term knowledge worker was first advanced by Peter Drucker, who defined a knowledge worker as one who "puts to work what he has learned in systematic education, that is, concepts, ideas, and theories, rather than the man who puts to work manual skill or muscle" (Drucker, 1973, pg. 32). Different knowledge management theorists view organizational knowledge, knowledge work and the specific roles of knowledge workers differently (Choo, 2002). However, it is generally acknowledge that most people within an organization are somehow involved in the creation of knowledge while others are better suited to roles such as "knowledge integrators" or "information specialists" (Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Choo, 2002). These people serve to "extract knowledge from those who have it, put it in structured form, and maintain or refine it over time" (Davenport & Prusak, 1998, pg. 110). These roles exist primarily because there is a recognition that not everyone involved in a work scenario has the time nor the knowledge, skills and abilities to describe and preserve information about the work they are engaged in (Davenport & Prusak, 1998).

Despite this differentiation among knowledge worker roles, it has been predicted that successful knowledge management firms in the future "will make knowledge management every employee's responsibility not just that of a select few" (Davenport, 1995, 7). In order for this to happen, it seems necessary that the divisions among knowledge roles must be diminished to the point where individual workers themselves begin to serve in some small part in capacities that have previously been the domain of "knowledge integrators" and "information specialists". One way that this change may be ushered in is through development and adoption of new personal information management technologies.

The Role of Personal Information Management top

Knowledge in organizations has been described as being "embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms" (Davenport & Prusak, 1998, pg. 5). Along the same lines, individuals too have complex information habitats with unique routines, processes and practices that they use to manage knowledge at a personal level. If knowledge "originates and is applied in the minds of knowers", then surely the personal information systems developed by knowledge workers should be considered as an active and necessary part of a knowledge management system (Davenport & Prusak, 1998, pg. 5).

Missing in the discussions of knowledge acquisition and management is the idea that a great deal of what is known and learned within an organization comes from individuals who depend on their own personal information management and knowledge management systems. Beneath the larger organization knowledge structure, reside systems unique to each individual that are acquiring, filtering and storing the knowledge that goes into the organization. These systems should be viewed as fundamental building blocks on which organizational knowledge management may someday rest. In fact, in most cases it seems necessary that before knowledge can become an organizational asset, the process of knowledge gathering, maintenance and sharing has to occur on a personal level. It seems also very likely that personal information management systems could complement larger organizational and social knowledge management systems, or at least it would seem worthwhile to understand more about the way these two systems interact. It is the individuals and the interactions they have with each other's shared knowledge resources that ultimately makes up a large part of what we mean by organizational knowledge. If we are to have any impact on managing organizational knowledge, I think it is imperative that we first understand how personal information contributes to the larger knowledge management structure.

I am advocating that personal information management is indeed a fundamental building block to any kind of organizational knowledge management because it reflects how people are informing themselves, how easily what they have stored can be transferred to others, and in large part, defines what the organization itself would be capable of retaining. I am not suggesting that personal information systems completely support all organizational knowledge management systems, but they are certainly key factors in how well tacit knowledge is retained and how transferable information and knowledge is among sources in a given environment. As an example, if I can not locate or if I am unable to make sense of an information asset at a personal level, I am not capable of contributing that asset to the larger working knowledge of an organization. How can an organization expect to capitalize on employee knowledge if those employees' systems don't integrate with the organizational scheme? Or at the very least, wouldn't the broader knowledge management structure be optimized if it were?

There are numerous examples of ways in which a personal information management system can come into play in a larger collaborative and organizational context. Personal information search, retrieval and storage play significant role in organizational memory and knowledge. Consider an exchange one colleague might have with another via email. The first person sends an email with a Website attachment indicating a site he/she felt was worthwhile for consideration on a project they were working on. The email has a beginning message that indicates where and why this particular site is of interest. The idea is that the personal very quickly becomes the collaborative that in turn becomes organizational knowledge and information. There is really no separating out personal systems from organizational systems.

PIM Tools and the Knowledge Worker top

A tremendous amount of research has been done examining how knowledge workers use personal information stores in paper and electronic forms as well as how they work with electronic personal information management tools. These studies provide a great deal of insight into specific characteristics of knowledge workers' personal information management habits and habitats. I am choosing to purposefully avoid drawing a distinction between electronic PIM tools and PIM in general in this paper because I am interested in how people work with information regardless of format. The differences between handling paper and electronic documents as it affects user behavior is well documented elsewhere and is not of concern here. What is important for my purposes is discovering patterns of behavior related to personal information management and identifying how those behaviors may inform the design of better electronic personal information management tools.

The following are four broad themes I have identified from research that has explored the nature of knowledge work and personal information management:

1. Personal Information Management encompasses a wide range of activities and these activities support diverse goals
   Regardless of whether or not individuals are dealing with vast amounts of paper documents or working in a virtual desktop with electronic PIM tools, research suggests that there are specific identifiable activities that knowledge workers engage in with their information stores that support specific goals. The core information activities of knowledge workers have been defined as: 1. creating information 2. changing information 3. storing information 4. retrieving information 5. integrating information 6. making decisions using information 7. communicating with others 8. and discarding information (Etzel, B. and P. Thomas,1996).
   
   These activities in turn drive specific goals. Knowledge workers have been shown to use their personal information stores to provide contextual clues about ongoing work and activities (Whittaker & Hirschberg, 2001). They also use information to serve as an indication of progress on something, as a reflection of particular mental model or perception of events and as triggers for actions (Kidd, 1994).


2. Management schemes are dynamic and focused on quick access
   Many studies have identified that knowledge workers often have doubts as to where to file and organize documents as they are collected (Kidd, 1994, Ducheneaut & Bellotti, 2001). Filing information is not something that is easily done when "they cannot reliably say when they will want to use a particular piece of information or to which of their future outputs it will relate" (Kidd, 1994, pg. 187). Knowledge workers also tend to make a lot of ad hoc decisions about how manage information based on a given moment in time. There is not much systematic management that comes directly from the individual; instead the management is informed by specific contexts of work, moments in time and personal views and perceptions as they exist at that moment.
   
   Views on how to manage information may change with each new circumstance. Research has also shown that knowledge workers frequently come up with novel and unexpected methods for managing their personal information. For example, "knowledge workers tend to embed personal information management directly into their favorite workspaces" (Ducheneaut, N. and Bellotti, V., 2001, pg. 30). The way that people choose to manage information in their systems tends to favor the method that provides the most convenient and ready access (Ducheneaut, N. and Bellotti, V., 2001). Information also gets used and reused and people develop unquie ways of making things accessible in a manner that keeps them close at hand and on their minds such as emailing annotated web links to themselves (Jones,W., Bruce, H., and Dumais, S., 2001). Individual habits are diverse but users generally tend to want portability, universal access, enduring information, sharing, integrating, easily maintained (Jones,W., Bruce, H., and Dumais, S., 2001).


3. PIM is very different depending on who is doing it
   Individual differences, occupation types and organization types all contribute to different ways in which files are managed and different kinds of interactions with information stores. There are a wide range of individual differences and habits that reinforce specific memories and events for a given user, but not necessarily others. In addition to the different methods individuals employ for managing information, individuals tend to invest different amounts of time working on managing personal information (Wilson, P., 2001).


4. PIM is different for different kinds of applications and can occur on numerous devices
   PIM needs vary based on the tasks and applications in use. The way that information is managed in an email client may not be the same as information that has been gathered on the Web or that was acquired in an online chat session. PIM needs change depending on the goals of the user, the applications the individual is working in as well as the type of documents that people are using (Sellen, Abigail J., Murphy, Rachel, Shaw, Kate L., 2002). Different kinds of activities engaged in by knowledge workers on various applications might require different kinds of features. For example, tracking a Web browsing session and making it available for later use might require different features than a collection of electronic documents. Additional research points out that personal information is managed on many different devices and in many different environments and places. These differences must also be accounted for in PIM design (Goncalves, 2003).

Design Considerations for PIM Technologies top

The following design ideas for PIM technologies are based on what I have regarded as some of the key findings from what existing research tells us about how knowledge workers work and how they go about performing personal information management. I feel that these are important design considerations that developers of personal information management technologies should bear in mind when they are developing PIM tools.

1. Avoid creating completely new operating paradigms
   I think it is a safe assumption that in most cases people will have already developed some kind of routine and personal information management habits within whatever given environment they already happen to be working in. For PIM designers, I think it is important to plan to work within whatever operating paradigm the user is currently engaged in (e.g. desktop metaphor, email client, Web browser) and not attempt to create an entirely new operating paradigm for them. We know that knowledge workers do not want to have to leave one application to manage information in another, therefore it would be best for designers to study users and make attempts to imbed PIM functionality within their current environments much like the user is already seeking to do.
   
2. Tools could be made to be smaller and less ambitious
   Several existing PIM tools take the form of stand-alone applications that users engage to manage their entire personal information collections. Given the fact that research has identified both individual and domain specific differences for personal information management as well as a diverse set of tasks and goals, I think it is more appropriate to consider designing smaller simplified tools that seek to augment existing PIM habits that extend on the way in which users already work with their information. Designers should have specific goals in mind when they create these smaller elegant tools. Some example goals might include:
   
   • Produce a tool that is ready when the user needs it, easily engaged, easily exited, prompts the user based on a schedule or at key times such as shut down, start up or odd hours.
     
   • Create a product that does not attempt to figure too much information out on its own. It should never assume without either asking first or clearly reporting decision that was made without the user.
     
3. Tools could be made to be more context and domain aware
   PIM technologies should seek out ways to integrate context and domain information so that they can anticipate without having to require the user to explicitly go in and provide input. The design goal should be implicit information gathering for the most part with minimal interruption of tasks. PIM tools should seek out ways to leverage what the system is already capable of capturing and attempt to cross reference relevant information. For example, if a user has an information store of calendar events, it would advantageous to use this information to help provide context to new information that comes into the system. Email systems, web browsing sessions, chats and any saved documents could easily be attributed to a temporal and subject context based on available calendar information. Others ways that context could be applied to electronic PIM tools would be to isolate information such as where a person works, job tasks, and existing personal information management styles. Smaller PIM tools should focus on these contexts of use and seek to find out things such as:
   
   • the nature of the job(s) a user is engaged in what information,
     
   • what has his employer or organization already shown me about his projects, schedules, roles, contacts, obligations, etc. what are his work hours,
     
   • what are some of his work patterns that I could most likely anticipate,
     
   • who is he likely to be sharing information with,
     
   • what terms have I been populated with so that I can prompt him for ideas about how to organize, send, receive or otherwise manage information he's gathered today,
     
   • how can I report back to him the course of things he's done in a day and ask him to show me how they might be organized based on what I already know.
     
4. PIM Technologies must have flexible document management options with a high degree of self-selection
   Information management is a process and knowledge workers need assistance in determining optimal methods for organizing and managing their information. We know that users do not often know exactly how to file a given piece of information when they first come into contact with it, therefore PIM systems should offer many different techniques for enabling users to organize information in ways that are meaningful to them. To some degree, systems could prompt the user in order to help them organize, but the system should not try and make too many assumptions about how a user should organize their information. Prompts could be minimally invasive and easily avoided, but they should enable you to use downtime or dedicate time to organizing some things in your personal information stores.
   
   Tools should be developed that intervene in the management scheme during critical points in the management process to avoid errors and train a system to anticipate what you want it do. Some of these critical juncture points might include choosing where to save files, choosing where to organize things like bookmarks, and deciding where and how to filter email. The goals of the tools should be to be unobtrusive by operating during times when the user is seeking to manage a file, leverage multiple annotation sources (e.g. time/date, topics either pushed down from another source or user derived). Smaller tools that enable a user to begin managing information on a day forward basis may then be able to go back and retroactively apply some of what has been learned, but that would not be a necessity.

References top

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