Top Knowledge Management Journals

Students often ask for suggestions regarding academic sources for their papers. Although using keyword or subject searches in the library's online databases is where we should begin, it can also be helpful to browse journals in order to discover new topics in a field of study. It would be wonderful if we could identify several journals as primary sources to browse.

Since I have a strong interest in knowledge management (KM)/ intellectual capital (IC), and teach a course in this field, I was excited to see a fairly recent article ranking the top KM/IC journals. The authors used a combination of expert ranking and citation rate to rank the journals in the field. Using this measure, the top 25 journals were identified.

Although the authors identified 25 journals, there was a significant drop in score after the 12th ranked journal so below is my summary of the top 12 KM/IC as determined by Serenko and Bontis (2013).

1. Journal of Knowledge Management
2. Journal of Intellectual Capital
3. The Learning Organization
4. Knowledge Management Research & Practice
5. Knowledge and Process Management: The Journal of Corporate Transformation
6. International Journal of Knowledge Management
7. Journal of Information and Knowledge Management
8. Journal of Knowledge Management Practice
9. Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management
10. International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital
11. International Journal of Knowledge and Learning
12. VINE: The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems

Reference:
Serenko, A., & Bontis, N. (2013). Global ranking of knowledge management and intellectual capital academic journals: 2013 update. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(2), 307-326.

Case Studies in IT

Most of my posts are related to IT, knowledge management, or project management. However, today I'm sharing an academic topic but it is still related to IT.

This week I discovered a great resources for my graduate courses. The Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases is a great online journal providing descriptive case studies. These cases are are perfect for exercises in my classes where students get to see the topics we cover applied to a business setting and are required to develop a response to the presented case.

I'm very excited to use a few of these cases in my next class. I though I would share this resource so others may get a chance to use these cases too.

We are not Ready for Big Data

Organizations are investing in big data. While the benefits can be promising, many organizations are not able to realize these benefits. These organizations are not able to effectively analyze and apply the data to make meaningful changes to yield the improved performance. In other words, these organizations are trying to run before they can walk.

I came across another good article on big data that provided some insight into the challenges organizations face in using data. The key is that before even attempting to adopt big data practices, organizations must first be able to use data. There are plenty of benefits to using existing data. Organizations that are able to successfully apply evidence-based decision making tend to be more profitable and follow a few best practices. These practices include:

• Use a single and agreed upon data source across the organization
• Provide ALL decision makers near real-time information to make changes at all levels of the organization
• Define business rules and use data to continually evaluate and redefine business rules
• Include coaching as part of the transition to a data-centric decision making approach to help decision makers effectively use data and develop new data-centered habits

This is not to say that big data won't deliver results. Rather, organizations must first become proficient in analyzing and applying data before investing in larger data practices. If the organization cannot make changes based on existing business intelligence tools and data warehouses, they certainly won't be able to extract value from the big data investments.

Organizations must first adopt evidence-based decision making practices before investing further in decision making systems like big data initiatives.

Scope Exchange Approach to Managing the Project Scope

Over the past few months I presented workshops on project change management. I made note of this workshop here and here. In this workshop I discuss strategies for dealing with change in the project environment. One of the types of change we encounter is change to the project scope. These changes may be significant changes or smaller changes realized through scope creep or feature creep.

Today, I read an article in PMNework discussing the value proposition of our projects. The author pointed out that, as project managers, we must understand how the deliverables within the scope of the project enable the organization to realize value. Similar to what I explain in my workshops, the author argued that the project scope at the end of the project rarely resembles the scope at the beginning of the project; change happens and a new or revised scope is adopted.

While changes to project scope is nothing new, what I found interesting is the author's take on the other side of scope change. We typically view scope change as adding new requirements or deliverables to the project and this change typically results in increased budget and schedule. However, we also need to look at the value of the previous scope to see if any of the previous scope no longer offers value to the organization. We shouldn't always simply add to the project scope but, perhaps look to exchange project scope so that we can maintain our baseline budget and schedule.

If we truly understand the value offered by our project we can better help our stakeholders evaluate new scope as it is introduced as well as the existing scope. Using the scope exchange approach we can better assess the project to remove or replace scope rather than always adding to the scope. We are still able to offer flexibility to our stakeholders by accommodating change but we better absorb this change if we look at opportunities to reduce or remove scope in other areas of the project.