What is the first step in developing a knowledge management system is to?

The first step in developing a knowledge management system is to set clear goals. What’s the main purpose of your knowledge base? Is it to serve customers or manage your own departments? Once you have a clear goal, you can find the right KMS based on different types of knowledge bases.

In addition to capturing explicit information assets, knowledge management systems must be structured to capture tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the hand-on skills and experiences of individuals and it is most often the key to the effective solution of many critical business problems.

For example, the customer support department can use an expert knowledge system to quickly find answers to common customer problems. This type of knowledge bases includes expert guides made on specific topics. Just as the name suggests, document management systems are knowledge bases for managing documents.

Therefore a knowledge management team leader requires not only project management skills, but a broad knowledge of the organization and excellent people skills. Since knowledge management practices can not be imposed on employees, the team leader should ideally have skills and experience in change management.