Infosys Technologies, Limited 303Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without writtenQuality metrics of high knowledge-sharing projects were compared with those of average
knowledge-sharing projects. Initial results indicated a 15% less defect rate in the former
projects. These projects were also found to be 13% lower on cost of quality metrics.
Project leaders were also queried for possible insights. They reported saving over four
man-days per person in the first six months as a direct benefit of knowledge reuse. These
benefits, when highlighted across the organization, impressed the professional strata
that had, until now, stayed away from the KM initiative.
Consolidating Applications
By this time, the majority of the employees were hitched to the KM bandwagon.
Riding the popularity wave, the KM Group made the critical move to consolidate the
stand-alone applications that were left untouched initially. These applications were
originally developed and used by specialized communities of highly educated profes-
sionals, and the KM Group was hesitant of integrating them into the mainstream KM
system before winning the interest of these communities. The applications included:
- The Integrated Project Management (IPM) tool, which had a twin functionality as
a tool for project life-cycle management and as a huge repository for project-related
information - The Employee Skill System (ESS), which, unlike the People Knowledge Map (PKM),
was maintained by the human resource department. It kept mandatory records of
employee competencies as they changed over time - Various online forums for technical discussions
Consolidating these applications still involved a host of behavioral and proprietary
issues and Nandan would not allow any official persuasion. The problems were most
pronounced in the case of the bulletin board. Infosys typically had a single mammoth
bulletin board, which most of the employees would keep open all day. But it lacked any
archival and search capabilities, and after detailed discussions with various user groups,
the bulletin board was finally split into 45 separate domain-specific discussion forums,
and integrated with the KM portal. The initial resentment by some employees petered out
once benefits of having technology-specific forums became evident.
By the end of the second round of consolidation, employees could visit the KM
portal to access BoKs, case studies, technical white papers, project snapshots, virtual
classroom, reusable code, project leader toolkit, and previous client presentations and
proposals. They could identify and query experts in various fields and visit bulletin
boards to view and participate in various discussions. They could also search the
archives for previous discussion threads.
Enabling Knowledge Creation
Although knowledge creation was identified as employees’ responsibility, Nandan
realized that management had a critical role to play in the overall goal of building Infosys
as a knowledge-based company. He explained, “Employees in this industry work in
domains defined by the periphery of corporate strategy. So, the knowledge created at
their end is limited to these areas. Scalability strategy demands constant upgrading in
areas of operation, and it is management’s obligation to create appropriate knowledge