Globalisation and improved communications have forced companies to increase their operating efficiency. Many companies have achieved this by focusing on developing their core competencies and outsourcing non-core activities. Projects in these companies are implemented by dispersed teams of specialists forming partnerships that can span functional groups in the company, across companies and geographic boundaries.
There are four problem areas in the communication of knowledge in a distributed team environment that current communication tools do not satisfactorily address;
My Knowledge Communication and Visualisation application addresses these problems to allow corporately and/or geographically dispersed teams to effectively communicate, store, search, retrieve and make inferences from knowledge.
My design is a client-server based system. The client is a Graphical User Interface that allows team members to add questions, answers and comments to previous entries. These are displayed in a graphical organisational chart format allowing the team to see the progression of knowledge accumulation and the knowledge relationships.
Combining the features of instant messaging and e-mail client applications within the GUI, allows users to enter short answers or questions and create detailed instructions and add attachments as required, without switching applications and losing the continuity of the knowledge thread.
The server provides a permanent data store in a single location that can be accessed at any time by multiple and dispersed users.
With teams distributed geographically within a company and/or across companies, the project's importance, the commitment and the support available to different team members will vary. This requires the application to be rapidly deployable so project managers can distribute it to team members in different divisions or companies, and team members are able and willing to use it.
The server component needs to be easy to install and support, but expandable so it is able to match the requirements, capability and commitment to use of the team. It can be local to the client, (peer to peer communication), installed on a corporate P.C. or server, or hosted by a trusted third party, such as Google.
Creating an Internet browser interface would enable the system to support team members who are unable/not permitted to install the client application. It would also allow the system to be used as an improved news-groups, bulletin board, forums server.