Automate
Institutional knowledge that leaves when people do.
Systems that make an organization's own documented knowledge usable at the moment of the decision.
You may recognize
The situation is usually specific before it is strategic.
- Policy, precedent, or procedure spread across drives, wikis, and inboxes.
- New staff who take a year to become effective for reasons no one can name.
- The same question answered repeatedly by the same three people.
How Septiva approaches it
Working software early. Evidence before the commitment grows.
- Source discipline
- Answers should be traceable to a document a person can open and verify.
- Respect existing permissions
- Retrieval must not become an access-control bypass.
- Measure usefulness, not usage
- The question is whether the answer changed what someone did next.
Where this may not be the answer
If the underlying documentation is wrong, a retrieval system distributes the error more efficiently.
The first move
Challenge the assumptions. Then decide.
Bring the initiative and the estimate or timeline attached to it.