Lost Knowledge in KDE

How the hell did we make pyramids again?


Kevin Ottens

Knowledge Loss

How can it look like?

Maybe something less dramatic?

Warning: quotes coming…

Organizational knowledge loss can be defined as the intentional or unintentional evaporation of knowledge that accumulates from learning and from individual and collective actions (Perrott, 2007).

Understanding and Managing Knowledge Loss

Journal of Knowledge Management 2013

The HR literature has studied knowledge loss from an employee turnover perspective. HR practices such as motivation and reward systems (Menon and Pfeffer, 2003) were mentioned among suggested retention strategies to reduce knowledge loss in organizations.

Understanding and Managing Knowledge Loss

Journal of Knowledge Management 2013

Departing employees take with them subject-matter expertise, routines explaining why decisions are made, awareness about work practices and routines and knowledge about company’s failures and successes.

Understanding and Managing Knowledge Loss

Journal of Knowledge Management 2013

Do we have organizational Alzheimer’s?

Forgotten Technologies We Could Use More

ki18n is ridiculously amazing!

David Edmundson

Pology was our in-house application for managing PO files

Sébastien Renard

More people should know about Andreas Hartmetz’s dferry

David Faure

The KParts concept still makes sense in many cases!

David Faure

KConfig has a bunch of secret things that are useful to a distro

David Edmundson

KAuthorized is an interesting piece of forgotten API

David Edmundson

KCModules should rely on KConfigXT

Kevin Ottens

Forgotten Technologies Invented Before Everyone Else

Remote Data Engines, today it could be called an IoT protocol

Marco Martin

Plasma Active was an attempt to go on mobile while staying out of the race of who has the most applications

Marco Martin

Forgotten Organizational

Practices

Translations were almost to a point where all teams converged to a common tool…

Sébastien Renard

People have forgotten what the FLA is

Alumn Anonymous

The “KDE e.V. is not the community” mantra keeps popping up

Alumn Anonymous

What I’m missing the most nowadays is paced communication at large scale

Aleix Pol

OK… So what?

Well at least now you’re aware of it

The results of the study indicate that knowledge loss can lead to significant and widespread performance implications for an organization. They show that strategies that target the retention of tacit knowledge and its inclusion in firm’s routines are effective to mitigate knowledge loss.

Understanding and Managing Knowledge Loss

Journal of Knowledge Management 2013

What can we do about it?

Knowledge Management

Documentation!

Documentation!

Documentation?

Storytelling

Retention / Continuation

Questions ?