TARDIS: A JOURNEY THROUGH AN ENTERPRISE KNOWLEDGE SPACE An Australian case study in applied knowledge management

This dissertation is a lebenswelt study of a knowledge management project in action: that is it details the ‘lived experience’ of the project warts and all from the perspective of the author. The project is called the ‘The ADF Requirements Development Information System’, and is otherwise known as TARDIS. TARDIS is progressively being implemented within Capability Systems Division of the Australian Defence Force, with full implementation expected to take place by December 2005. TARDIS will link Government guidance to specific unapproved projects and highlight their impact across all fundamental inputs to capability. The outcome will be the ability to record and report relationships between higher level and lower level capability requirements, the solutions that satisfy them over time, and the projects that change them. TARDIS will also assist performance measurement in the capability development and acquisition processes. TARDIS is first and foremost a soft system of integrated components comprising people solutions through TARDIS Working Groups, process through TARDIS Process, and technology through the various applications like DOORS and Microsoft Office. It employs the Project and Capability Knowledge Model as the basis for integrating Hard KM components. The technology components are integrated through the inherent software interoperability within the products, and some process solutions to overcome an imposed no coding constraint. The other components are integrated primarily through process, or more accurately discipline. TARDIS is an incredibly simple system, which takes an information and knowledge manufacturing approach rather than the search and locate approach of ‘conventional’ knowledge management systems. It provides search and locate functionality by structuring data in TARDIS Electronic Files into a known ontology and taxonomy, and employing file naming discipline. This combined with the search and locate functionality inherent in DOORS and Microsoft Windows Explorer means that information is easily located. Furthermore the open architecture means that a document is only held in one location. Ultimately however, the whole system works on the discipline of people to follow the set process – military people are inherently good at this.

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