Analyzing a Knowledge Management System and its Issues Regarding the Motivation to Participate Through Workflow Maps

Abstract: Knowledge is the heart of how organizations function. It holds the records of previous experiences, failures, and successes. With this knowledge, organizations can predict decisions that will lead to a higher success rate for their business. To keep this knowledge protected and easy to reach, knowledge management systems were created to manage it. However, a badly managed one could detriment the efficiency of such a system. This thesis is collaborating with Avalanche Studios Groups and it presents an approach on how to map the system in order to discover flaws. This approach uses heuristic evaluation to gather information on how knowledge flows in and out of the system. The quantitative result shows the state of the knowledge management system based on three criterias: accessibility, relevance and information quality. The qualitative result shows two categorizations on the platform and the users, and two workflow maps of knowledge sharing and knowledge searching. The workflow maps combined with the categorizations show where and when a problem arise and who it concerns. With the insight of the state of the KMS, thisanalysis can narrow down the options for the next step on how to improve the system.