KMap: Providing Orientation for Practitioners When Introducing Knowledge Management

One of the first question each knowledge management project faces is: Which concrete activities are referred to under the name of knowledge management and how do they relate to each other? To help answer this question and to provide guidance when introducing knowledge management we have developed KMap. KMap is an environment which supports a practitioner in the interactive exploration of a map of knowledge management activities. The interaction helps trigger interesting questions crucial to the exploration of the solution space and makes hidden argumentation lines visible. KMap is not a new theory of knowledge management but a pragmatic “object to think with” and is currently in use in two case studies.