Hello all,
I am a student from Imperial College Management School doing an MBA and my
project is on Knowledge Loss in IT. For this purpose, I have prepared a
questionnaire for data collection and analysis and would very grateful if
you could kindly help by filling it out. I am willing to provide a summary
sheet of my findings to those interested. This is the link to the online
questionnaire :
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pjw4/questionnaire/questionnaire.htm
In case you have problems with the above link, you could use the following
link instead:
http://www.geocities.com/patrickwendel/questionnaire.htm
An introduction to the theme of my project is given below.
Thanking you and hoping very much for your help,
Regards,
Shalini Sewraz
---------------Project on Knowledge Loss in IT ------------------------
Project on Knowledge Loss in IT
The reason for this project is that often, due to changing technologies
and environments, useful knowledge (skills, competencies, documentation)
can get lost or become less easily accessible. To overcome this problem,
companies need to identify and retain the crucial knowledge and
competencies that will enable them to remain competitive, especially when
they redesign their Information System.
A glaring example of failures arising from knowledge loss is the case of
the London Ambulance System failure. Here, due to an upgrade in
technology, certain aspects relating to the fact that it was a
safety-critical system were 'forgotten' or ignored, and some information
relating to previous design considerations were 'lost', cummulating in a
failure. A simpler example would be when poor programming practices result
in incomprehensible code, with little documentation and so if the system
has to be upgraded or redesigned, the rationale and understanding behind
the previous design is 'lost' resulting in a considerable waste of
resources in terms of time and cost in re-analysis. Another example would
be when using a different technology, useful competencies in using the
previous technology are simply 'lost', over time - and this may only be
recognised when the need to use that previous technology arises again.
These are only some examples, and there exist other sources of knowledge
loss.
As mentioned earlier, I would be willing to send a summary sheet of my
findings to those interested and would be very grateful for your time in
filling the questionnaire.
Thanking you,
Shalini Sewraz
--"Sewraz, Shalini" <s.sewraz@ic.ac.uk>
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