Frictionless Innovative Slick® Process to Keep Track of Companies’ Knowledge

Abstract

Processing and sharing knowledge is a common problem for any kind of company. Software companies, and more in general companies whose main business is based on continuous and innovative evolution in knowledge, this problem can be critical. Developing the Slick® methodology IdeaTech decided to face this problem using the A3 approach (Saad et al. in A3 thinking approach to support problem solving in lean product and process development, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, England [1]) to problem solving, with the aim of define a management process to all levels of knowledge and the different levels of knowledge awareness. We started analyzing the Unknown Unknown level—the situation in which people do not know what they not know, then we investigated the Known Unknown level—the situation in which awareness come to mind, even though the knowledge is still missing, than we studied the Known Known level—the situation in which one is aware of knowing. We finally describe a process to guide team members from a UU level to KK level and a methodology to track all the knowledge that reached the KK level using an efficient, frictionless, low-footprint process.