Model of Taxonomy Development Tom Reamy Chief Knowledge Architect KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services

2 Agenda  Introduction  Infrastructure Model of Taxonomy Development – Taxonomy in 4 Contexts Content, People, Processes, Technology  Infrastructure and Theory – Beyond Search and Taxonomy Projects  Infrastructure Solutions – the Elements  Applying the Model – Practical Dimension – Starting and Resources – Infrastructure Look at Taxonomy Boot Camp  Conclusion

3 KAPS Group  Knowledge Architecture Professional Services (KAPS)  Consulting, strategy recommendations  Knowledge architecture audits  Partners – Convera, Inxight, and others  Taxonomies: Enterprise, Marketing, Insurance, etc. – Taxonomy customization  Intellectual infrastructure for organizations – Knowledge organization, technology, people and processes – Search, content management, portals, collaboration, knowledge management, e-learning, etc.

4 Infrastructure Model of Taxonomy Development Taxonomy in Basic 4 Contexts  Ideas – Content Structure – Language and Mind of your organization – Applications - exchange meaning, not data  People – Company Structure – Communities, Users, Central Team  Activities – Business processes and procedures – Central team - establish standards, facilitate  Technology / Things – CMS, Search, portals, taxonomy tools – Applications – BI, CI, Text Mining

5 Taxonomy in Context Structuring Content  All kinds of content and Content Structures – Structured and unstructured, Internet and desktop  Metadata standards – Dublin core+ – Keywords - poor performance – Need controlled vocabulary, taxonomies, semantic network  Other Metadata – Document Type Form, policy, how-to, etc. – Audience Role, function, expertise, information behaviors – Best bets metadata  Facets – entities and ideas – Wine.com

6 Taxonomy in Context: Structuring People  Individual People – Tacit knowledge, information behaviors – Advanced personalization – category priority Sales – forms ---- New Account Form Accountant ---- New Accounts ---- Forms  Communities – Variety of types – map of formal and informal – Variety of subject matter – vaccines, research, scuba – Variety of communication channels and information behaviors – Community-specific vocabularies, need for inter-community communication (Cortical organization model)

7 Taxonomy in Context: Structuring Processes and Technology  Technology: infrastructure and applications – Enterprise platforms: from creation to retrieval to application – Taxonomy as the computer network Applications – integrated meaning, not just data  Creation – content management, innovation, communities of practice (CoPs) – When, who, how, and how much structure to add – Workflow with meaning, distributed subject matter experts (SMEs) and centralized teams  Retrieval – standalone and embedded in applications and business processes – Portals, collaboration, text mining, business intelligence, CRM

8 Taxonomy in Context: The Integrating Infrastructure  Starting point: knowledge architecture audit, K-Map – Social network analysis, information behaviors  People – knowledge architecture team – Infrastructure activities – taxonomies, analytics, best bets – Facilitation – knowledge transfer, partner with SMEs  “Taxonomies” of content, people, and activities – Dynamic Dimension – complexity not chaos – Analytics based on concepts, information behaviors  Taxonomy as part of a foundation, not a project – In an Infrastructure Context

9 Infrastructure Model of Taxonomy Development Infrastructure vs. Project Approaches  Economist June 9, 2005: – Overdue and over budget, over and over again. – Companies are increasingly keen on projects. – Why? When so many of them fail.  Failure to integrate all relevant contexts  Under-developed understanding of contexts  Ideas – least developed infrastructure  Closure is an illusion.

10 Infrastructure Model of Taxonomy Development : Project Approach or Infrastructure Approach  Situation: Problem with access to information – Project Approach Publish everything on the intranet Buy a search engine Do some keyword and usability tests Buy a portal (or two) Buy content management software Try knowledge organization – taxonomy? – Infrastructure Approach “The path up and down is one and the same.” (Heraclitus)

11 Infrastructure Model of Taxonomy Development The Infrastructure Solution: Why  Immanuel Kant – Concepts without percepts are empty. – Percepts without concepts are blind.  Knowledge Management – KM/KA without applications is empty Strategy only, management fad Elegant taxonomies - unused – Applications without KA are blind IT based KM Fragmented applications

12 Infrastructure Model of Taxonomy Development The Infrastructure Solution: Why  Taxonomies are not for the timid – Software and SME’s is not the answer Example of keywords  Taxonomies not stand alone – Metadata, controlled vocabularies, synonyms, etc. – Variety of taxonomies, plus categorization, classification, etc. Important to know the differences, when to use which  Integrated Enterprise requires both an infrastructure team and distributed expertise.  Advanced Cognitive Differences – Panda, monkey, banana

13 Infrastructure Model of Taxonomy Development The Infrastructure Solution: Why  In a Word – Word  Infrastructure as Operating System – Word vs. Word Perfect – Instead of sharing clipboard, share information and knowledge.  Importance of Integration  ROI – asking the wrong question – What is ROI for having an HR department?  A Political Fable – Finding the right set of answers

14 Infrastructure Solutions: The start and foundation Knowledge Architecture Audit  Knowledge Map - Understand what you have, what you are, what you want – The foundation of the foundation  Contextual interviews, content analysis, surveys, focus groups, ethnographic studies  Category modeling – “Intertwingledness” -learning new categories influenced by other, related categories  Natural level categories mapped to communities, activities Novice prefer higher levels Balance of informative and distinctiveness  Living, breathing, evolving foundation is the goal

15 Infrastructure Solutions: Resources People and Processes: Roles and Functions  Knowledge Architect and learning object designers  Knowledge engineers and cognitive anthropologists  Knowledge facilitators and trainers and librarians  Part Time – Librarians and information architects – Corporate communication editors and writers  Partners – IT, web developers, applications programmers – Business analysts and project managers

16 Infrastructure Solutions: Resources People and Processes: Central Team  Central Team supported by software and offering services – Creating, acquiring, evaluating taxonomies, metadata standards, vocabularies – Input into technology decisions and design – content management, portals, search – Socializing the benefits of metadata, creating a content culture – Evaluating metadata quality, facilitating author metadata – Analyzing the results of using metadata, how communities are using – Research metadata theory, user centric metadata – Design content value structure – more nuanced than good / poor content.

17 Infrastructure Solutions: Resources People and Processes: Facilitating Knowledge Transfer  Need for Facilitators – Amazon hiring humans to refine recommendations – Google – humans answering queries  Facilitate projects, KM project teams – Facilitate knowledge capture in meetings, best practices  Answering online questions, facilitating online discussions, networking within a community  Design and run KM forums, education and innovation fairs  Work with content experts to develop training, incorporate intelligence into applications  Support innovation, knowledge creation in communities

18 Infrastructure Solutions: Resources People and Processes: Location of Team  KM/KA Dept. – Cross Organizational, Interdisciplinary  Balance of dedicated and virtual, partners – Library, Training, IT, HR, Corporate Communication  Balance of central and distributed  Industry variation – Pharmaceutical – dedicated department, major place in the organization – Insurance – Small central group with partners – Beans – a librarian and part time functions  Which design – knowledge architecture audit

19 Infrastructure Solutions: Resources Technology  Taxonomy Management – Text and Visualization  Entity and Fact Extraction  Text Mining  Search for professionals – Different needs, different interfaces  Integration Platform technology – Enterprise Content Management

20 Infrastructure Solutions: Taxonomy Development Initial Development / Customization  Combination of top down and bottom up (and Essences) – Top: Design an ontology, facet selection – Bottom: Vocabulary extraction – documents, search logs, interview authors and users – Develop essential examples (Prototypes) Most Intuitive Level – genus (oak, maple, rabbit) Quintessential Chair – all the essential characteristics, no more  Map the taxonomy to communities and activities – Category differences – Vocabulary differences

21 Infrastructure Solutions: Taxonomy Development Evaluate and Refine  Formal Evaluation – Quality of corpus – size, homogeneity, representative – Breadth of coverage – main ideas, outlier ideas (see next) – Structure – balance of depth and width  Practical Evaluation – Test in real life application – Test node labels with Subject Matter Experts, representative users and documents – Test with representative key concepts – Test for un-representative strange little concepts that only mean something to a few people but the people and ideas are key and are normally impossible to find

22 Infrastructure Solutions: Taxonomy Development Issues and Ideas  Enterprise Taxonomy – No single subject matter taxonomy – Need an ontology of facets or domains  Standards and Customization – Balance of corporate communication and departmental specifics – At what level are differences represented? – Customize pre-defined taxonomy – additional structure, add synonyms and acronyms and vocabulary  Enterprise Facet Model: – Actors, Events, Functions, Locations, Objects, Information Resources – Combine and map to subject domains

23 Infrastructure Approach: Taxonomy Boot Camp  Making the business case: – Sell as infrastructure, platform, foundation – not a project – Project within contexts, not end in itself  Defining the requirements – Not just for the project, but how it will fit with other projects – Criteria for decisions – strategy options, types  Developing an Enterprise Taxonomy – Decide how and when and whether to – Mix of global and local  Making the build, buy, automate decision – Make a better, deeper decision

24 Infrastructure Approach: Taxonomy Boot Camp  Building A Taxonomy – Keeping broader and multiple contexts in mind  Integration and Implementation – Major area for infrastructure approach – Applications, communication, users  Testing & Usability – Usability in different applications and user communities – Need a map of user communities, activities

25 Infrastructure Approach: Taxonomy Boot Camp  Governance & Maintenance – Part of people infrastructure – organizational issues – Partnership of central team and business, SME’s  Enterprise Taxonomy – Groundwork, Governance, Connections – Infrastructure approach doesn’t mean start big, do it all at once  Facets & Folksonomies – To Facet or not to Facet – Complexity Theory and Folksonomies – Central Group, but not management, control

26 Infrastructure Approach: Taxonomy Boot Camp  Strategies & Tools – Strategies Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast Foundation as a separate project – Tools Integration as important as features Support for all phases of taxonomy development Platform software – CMS, KM, LMS

27 Conclusion  Taxonomy development is not just a project – It has no beginning and no end  Taxonomy development is not an end in itself – It enables the accomplishment of many ends  Taxonomy development is not just about search or browse – It is about language, cognition, and applied intelligence  Strategic Vision (articulated by K Map) is important – Even for your under the radar vocabulary project  Paying attention to theory is practical – So is adapting your language to business speak

28 Conclusion  Taxonomies are part of your intellectual infrastructure – Roads, transportation systems not cars or types of cars  Taxonomies are part of creating smart organizations – Self aware, capable of learning and evolving  If we really are in a knowledge economy  We need to pay attention to –  Knowledge!

Questions? Tom Reamy KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services