Roles and Knowledge Management (RKM) is a Microsoft Services engagement that has been available to customers for the last several years.   It was originally developed by Microsoft Denmark and known as the “Operations Information Framework”.    The engagement focuses on roles and responsibilities and helps Microsoft customers with IT Service Management and includes implementation of a custom SharePoint 2010 application known as the “Operations Center.”   This application is used by the customer to schedule proactive operations tasks and track completion, which aids incontinual IT Service improvement.   RKM engagements have been delivered throughout the globe and the customer base has doubled every year for the last four years.   We’re creating the RKM blog for those customers that have completed an RKM engagement and are leveraging the Operations Center application in their day-to-day IT Service operations.    Posts will contain information (links/tips/techniques/tools/etc.) that may be useful to RKM customers.  Potential RKM customers will also visit this blog for information and I want to begin things with a description of the RKM solution and why it is provides so much value.            An RKM engagement is typically a two to four week engagement with the duration depending upon the complexity of the IT Service being addressed.   Delivery resources provided by Microsoft consist of an experienced operations consultant and subject matter expert(s) for the technologies involved.  The operations consultant leads the engagement and takes the customer through a series of interactive sessions to assess the current operations role coverage, plan the necessary changes, and implement those changes-leveraging content and technology provided with RKM.  Assessing the current operations starts with decomposing the IT Service into its components (Hardware, Software, Settings,Services and Customers).  This exercise, known as service mapping, allows the customer to understand the various dependencies and escalation paths.   A tool is leveraged to create the service map, which can be saved as a Visio diagram.  This tool is left with the customer and can be used to maintain the service map as it evolves over time, and used to map other customer IT Services.  In addition to service mapping, the operations consultant leads sessions with the different organizations involved in operating the IT Service.  In these sessions, it is determined which individuals are responsible, accountable, consulted or iinformed, for different operational responsibilities.   An analysis is done on this information to determine gaps or overlap for the various roles.  The information gained from the assessment activities is used in determining the responsibility areas, and what roles within those responsibility areas will be needed.  The Operations Center application will be configured with those roles and responsibilities to organize the knowledge and schedule operations tasks

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Welcome to the Roles and Knowledge Management Blog!