Organizing Knowledge - A Knowledge Manager’s Primer to Taxonomy Development Attribution: Thanks to Patrick Lambe, author, Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organizational Effectiveness, Chandos Publishing 2007 for much of the content in this presentation.

1. Organizing Knowledge
A Knowledge Manager’s Primer to Taxonomy
Development
Art Schlussel, January 3, 2011

2. Why Organize Knowledge?
¢ Knowledge organization is a fundamental
precondition for managing knowledge effectively.
(Lambe, Organising Knowledge 2007)
¢ Taxonomies play an integral role in organizing
knowledge.

3. What Taxonomies Do
¢ Structure and organize.
— Taxonomies organize knowledge and information, as well as
work and resources.
¢ Help establish common ground.
— Taxonomies provide standardized vocabularies and public,
consistent ways of organizing information.
¢ Help span boundaries between groups.
— Taxonomies act as boundary objects if they form a common
frame of reference for two or more distinctive communities.
¢ Help in sense-making.
— Taxonomies can draw our attention to important, actionable,
and relevant things.
¢ Aid in the discovery of risk and opportunity.
— The process of developing a taxonomy (taxonomy work)
helps the organization to recognize its knowledge and
information in context.

4. Taxonomies are
¢ The science, laws, or principles of classification
(thefreedictionary.com)
¢ For the purposes of Knowledge Management (KM)
an effective taxonomy has three key attributes:
— A taxonomy is a classification scheme
— A taxonomy is semantic
— A taxonomy is a knowledge map

5. Classification Schemes
¢ Classification schemes are designed to group
related things together so that if you find one thing
within a category it is easy to find other related
things in that category.
¢ Classification schemes can be informal and ad-hoc
(like organizing your DVD collection) or formal and
standardized (like the Dewey Decimal Classification
System)

6. Semantic
¢ Taxonomies in KM are primarily semantic, meaning
they provide a fixed vocabulary to describe their
knowledge and information assets (as opposed to
codes or numbers)
¢ Taxonomies express the relationships between
terms in the taxonomy.
¢ If you take all the labels in a taxonomy and put
them in alphabetical order you have a controlled
vocabulary.
¢ If you take each term in your controlled vocabulary
and describe its relationships with other terms in
the taxonomy you get a thesaurus.

7. Knowledge Map
¢ A good taxonomy should provide the user an
immediate grasp of the overall structure of the
knowledge domain, and the ability to accurately
anticipate what resources might be found.
¢ The taxonomy should be comprehensive,
predictable and easy to navigate.
The combined features of classified, semantic, and a knowledge
domain map makes a taxonomy act as an artificial memory device

8. Taxonomy Work
¢ Taxonomies are products that can be used,
however the processes that produce them are more
important than the taxonomies themselves
because the organization must closely examine its
knowledge and information in context.
¢ Taxonomies are comprised of the following work:
— Listing, creating and modifying categories of knowledge
domains.
— Standardizing, mapping, representing and discovering
native vocabularies and categories within those
domains.
— Negotiating common norms across the enterprise.

9. Taxonomy Forms
¢ Lists ¢ Matrices
— The most basic form and a — Most effective when
foundation for more categorizing along two or
complex ways of three dimensions.
representing taxonomies. ¢ Facets
¢ Trees — A base taxonomy
— A command structure that comprising only one of the
represents the transition fundamental dimensions in
from general to specific or which content can be
from whole to part. analyzed.
¢ Hierarchies ¢ System maps
— A very specific kind of tree — Visual representations of
structure that is consistent knowledge domains where
and predictable. proximity and connections
between entities are used
to express their
relationships.
There are practical implications of the different taxonomy forms, and it is
necessary to know when to use each form, and the issues that can arise
from their use

10. Taxonomy Project Steps
q Step 1 – Meet project sponsor q Step 8 – Facet analysis
q Get the sense of purpose and rationale; map
the project scope including knowledge domains q Identifying those subject area aspects that
and stakeholders resonate with the majority of stakeholders
q Step 2 – Engage stakeholders q Step 9 – Test and observe
q Validate project map and understand their q Validate the structure (content and design)
needs
q Conduct a pilot
q Step 3 – Refine the project purpose
q Get the sponsor’s agreement q Step 10 – Plan the instantiation of your
q Step 4 – Design your approach taxonomy
q Build or buy; simple or complex; form q Determine the tools needed to support the
q Step 5 – Build your communication plan instantiation and anticipate usability issues
q Identify the benefits, audience, approach q Step 11 – Integrate the taxonomy into the
q Step 6 – Start the process for taxonomy existing infrastructure
governance q Plan how and where to infuse the taxonomy;
q Governance mechanism is a body of
stakeholders involved in design, validation, integrate with KM, Records Management,
communications and change management others; implement change management plan
activities
q Step 12 – Secure the governance process
q Step 7 – Collect vocabularies and organizing
q Periodically review the taxonomy and make
principles
q Includes mapping, observation and evidence
adjustments as needed
gathering

11. Taxonomy Work and KM
¢ Most taxonomy work must be weaved into the broader
knowledge and information infrastructure.
¢ Since that infrastructure is complex and ever changing,
the task of the taxonomist is to optimize taxonomy
effectiveness:
— Taxonomy consistency and standardization must be
sufficient for effectiveness and the meeting of your goals, but
no more.
¢ An effective taxonomy sits between Chaos and Order
and mediates the two.
¢ The goal is to help create that which allows collectives
of people to work together effectively, to organize and
exploit their knowledge for common use and to discover
new things.
Thanks to Patrick Lambe, author, Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies,
Knowledge and Organizational Effectiveness, Chandos Publishing
2007 for much of the content in this presentation.