Seventy-four percent of organizations do not have a formal process for capturing and retaining knowledge1 which, when lost, results in decreased productivity, increased risk, and money out the door. You need to:

• Build a strategic roadmap to retain and share knowledge.
• Build a knowledge transfer strategy based on your organization’s business goals.
• Increase departmental efficiencies through increased collaboration.
• Retain key IT knowledge
• Improve junior employee engagement by creating development opportunities.

• Don’t follow a one-size fits all approach. Right-size your approach based on your organizational goals.
• Prioritize knowledge transfer candidates based on their likelihood of departure and the impact of losing that knowledge.
• What you’re transferring impacts how you should transfer it. Select knowledge transfer tactics based on the type of knowledge that needs to be captured – explicit or tacit.

Our client-tested methodology and project steps allow you to tailor your knowledge transfer plan to any size of organization, across industries. Successful completion of the IT knowledge transfer project will result in the following outcomes:

• Approval for IT knowledge transfer project obtained.
• Knowledge and stakeholder risks identified.
• Effective knowledge transfer plans built.
• Knowledge transfer roadmap built.
• Knowledge transfer roadmap communicated.

Inefficiency due to “reinvention of the wheel.” When older workers leave and don’t effectively transfer their knowledge, younger generations duplicate effort to solve problems and find solutions.

Loss of competitive advantage. What and who you know is a tremendous source of competitive edge. Losing knowledge and/or established client relationships hurts your asset base and stifles growth, especially in terms of proprietary or unique knowledge.

Reduced capacity to innovate. Older workers know what works and what doesn’t, as well as what’s new and what’s not. They can identify the status quo faster, to make way for novel thinking.

Increased vulnerability. One thing that comes with knowledge is a deeper understanding of risk. Losing knowledge can impede your organizational ability to identify, understand, and mitigate risks. You’ll have to learn through experience all over again.

the average age of mainframe workers – making close to 50% of workers over 60.2

of Fortune 100 companies still use mainframes3 requiring. specialized skills and knowledge

of CIOs report mainframe applications will remain a key asset in the next decade.1

is the cost of mainframe outages for an average enterprise.1

• A rapidly growing organization's key Senior System Architect unexpectedly fell ill and needed to leave the organization.
• This individual had been with the organization for more than 25 years and was the primary person in IT responsible for several mission-critical systems.

• Following this individual’s departure, one of the systems unexpectedly went down.
• As this individual had always been the go-to person for the system, and issues were few and far between, no one had thought to document key system elements and no knowledge transfer had taken place.

• The failed system cost the organization more than a million dollars in lost revenue.
• The organization needed to hire a forensic development team to reverse engineer the system.
• This cost the organization another $200k in consulting fees plus the additional cost of training existing employees on a system which they had originally been hoping to upgrade.

✗ Increased training and development costs when key stakeholders leave the organization.

✗ Decreased efficiency through long development cycles.

✗ Late projects that tie up IT resources longer than planned, and cost overruns that come out of the IT budget.

✗ Lost relationships with key stakeholders within and outside the organization.

✗ Inconsistent project/task execution, leading to inconsistent outcomes.

✗ IT losing its credibility due to system or project failure from lost information.

✗ Customer dissatisfaction from inconsistent service.

✓ Mitigated risks and costs from talent leaving the organization.

✓ Business continuity through redundancies preventing service interruptions and project delays.

✓ Operational efficiency through increased productivity by never having to start projects from scratch.

✓ Increased engagement from junior staff through development planning.

✓ Innovation by capitalizing on collective knowledge.

✓ Increased ability to adapt to change and save time-to-market.

✓ IT teams that drive process improvement and improved execution.

✓ Project scope is much more manageable.

✓ Communication and planning can be more manageable.

✓ Fewer knowledge sources and receivers can clarify prioritization needs.

✓ Project scope is more manageable.

✓ Moderate budget for knowledge transfer activities.

✓ Communication and enforcement is easier.

✓ Budget available to knowledge transfer initiatives.

✓ In-house expertise may be available.

✗ Limited resources for the project.

✗ In-house expertise is unlikely.

✗ Knowledge transfer may be informal and not documented.

✗ Limited overlap in responsibilities, resulting in fewer redundancies.

✗ Limited staff with knowledge transfer experience for the project.

✗ Knowledge assets are less likely to be documented.

✗ Knowledge transfer may be a lower priority and difficult to generate buy-in.

✗ More staff to manage knowledge transfer for, and much larger scope for the project.

✗ Impact of poor knowledge transfer can result in much higher costs.

✗Geographically dispersed business units make collaboration and communication difficult.

✗ Vast amounts of historical knowledge to capture.

Explicit

Tacit

• “What knowledge” – knowledge can be articulated, codified, and easily communicated.
• Easily explained and captured – documents, memos, speeches, books, manuals, process diagrams, facts, etc.
• Learn through reading or being told.

• “How knowledge” – intangible knowledge from an individual’s experience that is more from the process of learning, understanding, and applying information (insights, judgments, and intuition).
• Hard to verbalize, and difficult to capture and quantify.
• Learn through observation, imitation, and practice.

Types of explicit knowledge

Types of tacit knowledge

Information

• Specialized technical knowledge.
• Unique design capabilities/ methods/ models.
• Legacy systems, details, passwords.
• Special formulas/algorithms/ techniques/contacts.

Process

• Specialized research and development processes.
• Proprietary production processes.
• Decision-making processes.
• Legacy systems.
• Variations from documented processes.

Skills

• Techniques for executing on processes.
• Relationship management.
• Competencies built through deliberate practice enabling someone to act effectively.

Expertise

• Company history and values.
• Relationships with key stakeholders.
• Tips and tricks.
• Competitor history and differentiators.

Examples: reading music, building a bike, knowing the alphabet, watching a YouTube video on karate.

Examples: playing the piano, riding a bike, reading or speaking a language, earning a black belt in karate.

No formal knowledge transfer program exists; knowledge transfer is ad hoc, or may be conducted through an exit interview only.

74% of organizations are at level 0.1

At level one, knowledge transfer is focused around ensuring that high risk, explicit knowledge is covered for all high-risk stakeholders.

Organizations have knowledge transfer plans for all high-risk knowledge to ensure redundancies exist and leverage this to drive process improvements, effectiveness, and employee engagement.

Increase end-user satisfaction and create a knowledge value center by leveraging the collective knowledge to solve repeat customer issues and drive new product innovation.

…has witnessed that new employees have recently left or are preparing to leave the organization, and worries that we don’t have their knowledge captured anywhere.

…previously had to cut down our IT department, and as a result there is a lack of redundancy for tasks. If someone leaves, we don’t have the information we need to continue operating effectively.

…is worried that the IT department has no succession planning in place and that we’re opening ourselves up to risk.

…feels like we are losing productivity because the same problems are being solved differently multiple times.

…worries that different employees have unique knowledge which is critical to performance and that they are the only ones who know about it.

…has noticed that the processes people are using are different from the ones that are written down.

…feels like the IT department is constantly starting projects from scratch, and employees aren’t leveraging each other’s information, which is causing inefficiencies.

…feels like new employees take too long to get up to speed.

…knows that we have undocumented systems and more are being built each day.

…feels like we’re losing out on opportunities to innovate because we’re not sharing information, learning from others’ mistakes, or capitalizing on their successes.

…notices that staff don’t have a platform to share information on a regular basis, and believes if we brought that information together, we would be able to improve customer service and drive product innovation.

…wants to create a culture where employees are valued for their competencies and motivated to learn.

…values knowledge and the contributions of my team.

• As a large electronics and engineering global company, Siemens was facing increased global competition.
• There was an emphasized need for agility and specialized knowledge to remain competitive.
• The new company strategy to address competitive forces focused on becoming a knowledge enterprise and improving knowledge-sharing processes.

• New leadership roles were created to develop a knowledge management culture.
• “Communities of practice” were created with the goal of “connecting people to people” by allowing them to share best practices and information across departments.
• An internal information-sharing program was launched that combined chat, database, and search engine capabilities for 12,000 employees.

• Employees were able to better focus on customer needs based on offering services and products with high knowledge content.
• With the improved customer focus, sales increased by $122 million and there was a return of $10-$20 per dollar spent on investment in the communities of practice.

Info-Tech tools and templates to help you complete your project deliverables

Project Stakeholder Register Template

IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool

IT Knowledge Identification Interview Guide Template

Project Planning and Monitoring Tool

IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation Template

IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter Template

IT Knowledge Transfer Plan Template

Your completed project deliverables

IT Knowledge Transfer Plans

IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation

IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap

1. Obtain approval for IT knowledge transfer project.
2. Identify your knowledge and stakeholder risks.

1. Build knowledge transfer plans.
2. Build your knowledge transfer roadmap.

1. Communicate your knowledge transfer roadmap to stakeholders.

• Approval for IT knowledge transfer project obtained.
• Knowledge and stakeholder risks identified.
• IT knowledge transfer project charter created.

• Tactics for individuals’ knowledge transfer identified.
• Knowledge transfer roadmap built.
• IT knowledge transfer plans established.

• IT Knowledge transfer roadmap presented.
• Knowledge transfer roadmap approved.

IT Knowledge Transfer Project Charter

Establish a clear project scope, decision rights, and executive sponsorship for the project.

IT Knowledge Transfer Risk Assessment Tool

Identify and assess the knowledge and individual risk of key knowledge holders.

IT Knowledge Identification Interview Guide

Extract information about the type of knowledge sources have.

IT Knowledge Transfer Roadmap Presentation

Communicate IT knowledge transfer recommendations to stakeholders to gain buy-in.

IT Benefits

Business Benefits

• Business continuity through redundancies preventing service interruptions and project delays.
• Operational efficiency through increased productivity by never having to start projects from scratch.
• Increased engagement from junior staff through development planning.
• IT teams that drive process improvement and improved execution.

• Mitigated risks and costs from talent leaving the organization.
• Innovation by capitalizing on collective knowledge.
• Increased ability to adapt to change and save time-to-market.

Call #1: Structure the project. Discuss transfer maturity goal and metrics.

Call #2: Build knowledge transfer plans.

Call #3: Identify priorities & review risk assessment tool.

Call #4: Build knowledge transfer roadmap. Determine logistics of implementation.

Call #5: Determine logistics of implementation.

Define the Current and Target State

Identify Knowledge Priorities

Build Knowledge Transfer Plans

Define the Knowledge Transfer Roadmap

Next Steps and
Wrap-Up (offsite)

1.1 Have knowledge transfer fireside chat.

1.2 Identify current and target maturity.

1.3 Identify knowledge transfer metrics

1.4 Identify knowledge transfer project stakeholders

2.1 Identify your knowledge sources.

2.2 Complete a knowledge risk assessment.

2.3 Identify knowledge sources’ level of knowledge risk.

3.1 Build an interview guide.

3.2 Interview knowledge holders.

4.1 Prioritize the sequence of initiatives.

4.2 Complete the project roadmap.

4.3 Prepare communication presentation.

5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days.

5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps.

1. Organizational benefits and current pain points of knowledge transfer.
2. Identification of target state of maturity.
3. Metrics for knowledge transfer.
4. Project stakeholder register.

1. List of high risk knowledge sources.
2. Departure analysis.
3. Knowledge risk analysis.

1. Knowledge transfer interview guide.
2. Itemized knowledge assets.

1. Prioritized sequence based on target state maturity goals.
2. Project roadmap.
3. Communication deck.