Appendix A2: Interview Guide—Stakeholder Interviews

The Iknow project team used the following interview guide for the stakeholder interviews.

Interview Guide

Assessing and Measuring the Business Value of Knowledge Management
NCHRP Project #23-17.

Project Background

The National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) is sponsoring a research project titled NCHRP Project 23-17, “Assessing and Measuring the Business Value of Knowledge Management.” The objective of this research is to create a guidebook that will help state DOTs:

1. Develop KM assessment and measurement methods relevant to state DOT business practices;
2. Improve agency leadership’s understanding of KM connections to other organizational practices;
3. Identify options for placement of KM programs within organizational structures; and
4. Foster internal partnerships that support knowledge retention, sharing, and development in state DOTs.

Iknow LLC was awarded the contract to perform this work. We’re currently interviewing people in state DOTs across the United States to get their input on these four research topics.

Thank you for agreeing to speak with us. We are excited to get your ideas and perspectives.

Job Title and Responsibilities

Please tell us a little bit about you and your current position.

1. What is your job title? What are your current roles and responsibilities? What do you and your group do?
2. How long have you been with the DOT? How long have you been in this role?
3. What outputs/deliverables do you produce in your job role? Please start with the most important one.

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Let’s start by telling us about the size and scope of your KM function.

1. Who heads the KM function in your DOT?
2. What is their job title?
3. Please describe how this position is classified (e.g., executive management, senior management, management, professional).
4. How many direct reports does this person have? How many FTEs?
5. To whom does the KM head report? Please give the job title/position. Or does the KM function report to an information or knowledge governance team or committee?
6. What was the rationale for aligning the KM unit under this person?
7. When was this organization alignment initially made?
8. Does this alignment make sense today? If not, where do you think the KM function should report (job title/position)? Why?
9. Who decides where the KM function should report?
10. Is there a business rationale for recommending the KM function be moved to this new position?
11. What is the organizational span of control covered by the KM group? Please describe.
12. Are KM functions or activities performed in other organizational departments or functions within the DOT? Please explain.
13. Does the DOT have a KM advisory group or committee? If yes, please describe its purpose, number of members, meeting frequency, and job title of the committee chair.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

We want to understand KM’s mission, vision, and charter.

1. Why was the KM function set up?
2. In what year was your KM group formed/launched?
3. What is its mission, vision, and charter?
4. What are the strategy and goals of your KM function or program?
5. What is the focus of your KM program?
6. What are you working on today? Please explain and provide some examples. For each example, please describe:
   • - What business problem are/were you trying to solve?
   • - Who suggested that KM should play a role in solving this problem? Why did they think KM could help?
   • - Please describe the project approach.
   • - How long did the project take?
   • - Please describe the outcomes.
   • - Did KM play a primary or secondary role in achieving these outcomes? Why?
   • - Please provide the name and contact information of the project owner. We’d like to follow up with them to collect some additional information.
7. How is the KM group’s time spent? Please break down the group’s total labor hours by percent.

DOT Strategy and Metrics

Let’s switch gears a bit and talk about strategy.

1. What are your DOT’s strategic goals?
2. Do you have explicit enterprise-level performance metrics for your DOT? If yes, what are they?
3. Do you have explicit targets for the performance metrics? If yes, what are they?
4. Did your organization use a framework or methodology for setting up these performance metrics? If yes, what was it?

KM Metrics

Now, let’s explore the strategy and metrics for knowledge management.

1. How does KM support the DOT’s business strategies?
2. Do you have explicit performance metrics for KM? If yes, what are they? What performance metrics do you use to measure your knowledge management program? For each metric, please state its name,

2. describe its purpose, define the measurement and the numerator and denominator (if a ratio), measurement frequency, the most recent value, and its target value.
3. Who established these metrics? When did you first start tracking data?
4. What was your approach to arrive at this portfolio of metrics?
5. How has the metrics portfolio changed over time?
6. Who sets the targets for your KM metrics?
7. What is your most important metric for measuring KM?
8. Can you think of other performance metrics for knowledge management that might be better for your organization? What are they? Why would they be better?

Business Value from KM

The next questions will explore the business value you get from your KM program.

1. How does the DOT measure the business value from KM?
2. Have the KM function’s contributions been converted into DOT metrics and targets? For example, KM has helped save 200 lives in motor vehicle accidents. Or KM has cut ten months from the average time for building a new stretch of highway.
3. Has your organization done any benchmarking against other KM functions in other organizations? If yes, please describe. Were the organizations in other state DOTs? Other State governments? Public or private companies? Other? What did you learn from the benchmarking exercise?
4. Do you create business cases to support your internal requests for funding for KM projects? If yes,
   • - What business justification approach is used?
   • - What benefits are quantified?
   • - How do you estimate the benefits, especially for intangible benefits like better collaboration, improved morale, and greater job satisfaction?
5. Does your KM function perform post-project reviews to see if the business value was actually achieved? Please describe one example where this was done.
6. Please describe KM’s connections to core business processes in your DOT.
   • - What core business processes are most closely tied to KM?
   • - What is KM’s role in supporting the business processes?
   • - Is KM closely integrated into your core business processes? Why or why not?
7. Please describe KM’s connections to organizational practices in your DOT.
   • - What organizational practices are most closely tied to KM?

7. • - What is KM’s role in supporting the organizational practices?
   • - Is KM closely integrated into your organizational practices? Why or why not?
8. Does the DOT’s leadership understand the business contribution of KM? Why or why not?
9. How could you improve the agency leadership’s understanding of KM (Specifically, the understanding of KM’s connections to other organizational processes and practices.)?
10. Does your KM function have an outreach and engagement plan?

Organizational Culture and KM

We now want to learn a bit about the DOT’s internal culture.

1. How would you describe your organization’s culture? Please pick three adjectives that best describe the culture.
2. Has your organization conducted any assessments of its culture? If yes, what were the results?
3. Does the culture support KM? How?
4. How does the DOT’s senior leadership support knowledge management? Please provide a few examples.
5. What reward and recognition programs are in place for achieving your KM targets? Please describe each one.
6. Does KM have an impact on the organization’s culture? If yes, please describe.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

We now want to examine the partnerships you have with other internal functions.

1. With which internal DOT functions does the KM group spend its time? Why?
2. What is the focus of these internal partnerships?
3. Please list all the internal partnerships the KM group has had in the last six months.
4. Please describe how these internal partnerships work. For example, who is the internal client? Who places work requests? Who sets the scope of work? Who provides the staffing and other resources?
5. Who gets the credit for the accomplishments?
6. Please describe how knowledge capture is performed in the DOT.

7. Please describe how knowledge retention is performed in the DOT.
8. Please describe how knowledge sharing is performed in the DOT.

For the last three questions, ask:

• - What approaches are used?
• - In your opinion, how effective are these approaches?
• - What other approaches have you tried?

9. What types of knowledge repositories does your DOT use? Please list them all.
10. Is the DOT doing any enterprise-wide initiatives for knowledge capture? If yes, please describe.

The Future

1. What are the strengths of your current KM Program?
2. What are the weaknesses of your current KM Program?
3. What changes would you like to see in your organization’s KM Program over the next five years? Why? Please rank your responses from one to five, where one indicates the highest priority.

Other

1. What haven’t we covered that you think might be relevant to this NCHRP Project?

Thank you.