People first – the secret to Knowledge Management
bling the relationship between the ARRC’s
staff (people), the ARRC’s battle rhythm (pro-
cess) and the collaborative working areas and
information stores (technology). The role of
KM is to ensure coherence across the battle
rhythm, induction and continuation training,
established ways of collaborative working,
personal terms of reference and understand-
ing of individual roles, and an intuitive IM sys-
tems design. For new staff joining HQ ARRC,
the knowledge (and training) on how the battle
rhythm works and their part in generating its
outputs, imparted by an outgoing member of
staff is as important as an intuitive design for
the websites and collaborative working areas.
Taken together these requirements form a
Knowledge Strategy.
Recognising that the existing IM process was
overly directed, hierarchical and complex, the
Central Staffs introduced an entirely new ap-
proach to the problem of enabling the ARRC’s
decision support system giving precedence
to people and their core processes (the bat-
tle rhythm), supported by the IM architecture
(technology). This evolution is shown in figure 1.
In late August 2015 a KM Development Group
(KMDG) was established with cross-branch
representation drawn from those staff officers
directly responsible for delivering the ARRC’s
Core Process, with the IM team attending to
provide technical support. The KMDG was
invested with driving forward a wide-rang-
ing change programme to improve how the
ARRC manages its knowledge. An overriding
assumption was the capability of the IM team
(supported by G6 and the ARRC’s CIS capabil-
ity) to support any desired KM solution on a
distributed command structure across NS or
MS, within the constraints of available band-
width.
Applying KM principles to
the design of the ARRC’s
operational IM system
The KMDG’s immediate priority was to rede-
sign the ‘front end’ homepage of the ARRC’s
operational IM system in order to improve the
staff’s interface with the website and build
the relationship between ARRC’s core Battle
Rhythm process of Assess, Plan, Refine and
Execute, collaborative working areas and in-
formation. The KMDG agreed the following key
design characteristics for the new ARRC Oper-
ational (Op) Web:
• All information and battle rhythm event
workspaces to be accessible in no more than
3 clicks from the ARRC Op Web homepage.
• The battle rhythm (the ARRC’s core process
of Assess, Plan, Refine and Execute shown
over time in the form of a SharePoint
calendar) would provide the centre-piece
of the website, thus placing the ARRC’s
decision making process front and centre.
• Clear separation on the home page between
Mission Information (orders, FRAGOs and
other critical information), Staff Support
Information (routine information for the staff
such as telephone directories, doctrine and
mapping) and Staff Applications (SharePoint
applications tools).
• The battle rhythm calendar events to be
directly linked to SharePoint event workspaces.
The SharePoint event workspaces provided
Figure 2 – The redesigned ARRC Op Web homepage and an example of how the ARRC’s battle rhythm is
linked to the ARRC’s Core Process and specifically designed SharePoint workspaces by way of example the
Daily Activities Synchronisation Meeting (DASM).
an area for collaborative working and were
individually tailored to the requirements of the
staff managing that part of the Battle Rhythm.
• Every battle rhythm event and workspace
to have a responsible owner identifiable by
name role and e-mail address, responsible
for the event and content of the workspace.
All workspaces and sub-webpages to be
indexed from the homepage to assist staff
unfamiliar with the ARRC’s battle rhythm
process.
• Administrative process such as compiling
distribution lists for Lync conference and
meetings would be minimised.
Battle
rhythm meeting workspaces were designed
to include tailored lists of attendees and a
single button to initiate Lync Conferences.
• The ability to enable distributed command
over military communications bearers.
Trial designs of the ARRC Op Web homepage,
supporting webpages and battle rhythm
event workspaces were developed by a small
team in the Central Staffs throughout Sep-
tember and discussed and modified by the
KMDG at its weekly meetings. Concurrently
the IM team tested the workspace concepts
(including embedded e-mail lists and the abil-
ity to generate Lync meetings from a button
on each event workspace), developed sup-
porting training packages and amended the
ARRC’s revised electronic working practices
in preparation for future user acceptance tri-
al s. Throughout this process KMDG members
back briefed their branch staff in order to cap-
ture ideas that could inform the design of the
ARRC Op Web and to build familiarity with its
concept and design. Figure 2 shows the final
design of the ARRC Op Web homepage, and
an example of how the ARRC’s battle rhythm is
linked to the ARRC’s Core Process and specif-
ically designed SharePoint workspaces in this
example the Daily Activities Synchronisation
Meeting (DASM).
HQ ARRC was briefed collectively on the final
design of ARRC Op Web in early October and
new system was released for directed user tri-
als and ARRC wide user training; before ‘going
live’ in preparation for ARRCADE FUSION 15
at the end of October 2015. The redesigned
ARRC Op Web proved highly successful and its
concept is now being used in the redesign of
the ARRC’s in barracks IM system.
Lessons in balancing the
relationship between people,
process and technology
• IM systems should be designed in the
context of KM to ensure coherence across
the battle rhythm, induction and continuation
training, established ways of collaborative
working, personal terms of reference and
understanding of individual roles.
• Websites must be intuitive and present
information in a context
understand. Layout matters.
the
staffs
• IM
systems enable internal business
processes and the staffs who own/manage
the business processes have a critical role in
designing IM systems and websites.
• Staff induction training must be sufficiently
long to allow staff time to develop confidence
in unfamiliar systems.
• Refresher training should be considered
as this minimises skill fade and allows
staff to remain familiar with systems they
may only use occasionally on exercises or
deployments. The cross-over of ARRC Op
Web’s operating concept and configuration
into the redesign of the ARRC’s in barracks
IM system will help maintain skills.
• The development of a Knowledge Strategy
is important to ensure discipline in the way
the organisation captures all knowledge,
ranging from the tacit knowledge in the head
of an experienced member of staff to formal
orders released to subordinate formations.
The ‘how we achieved this’ is as important
as recovering from the data stores, ‘what we
achieved’.
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