Exam 8: Knowledge Sharing Systems

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Some of the criteria for success of knowledge sharing systems are the active presentation of relevant information, collection of information from various sources, and fitting in to the standard workflow. Pull versus push technologies may be evaluated with regard to these two criteria. Pull technologies are useful for allowing a user to actively search for information at a time when the information is needed. Further more, pull technologies enable users to filter and evaluate the success of their information search strategies, which can lead to more efficient searches in the future. However, a user may not be aware of possible information resources and would not know to go looking to pull from these resources. Furthermore, depending on the extent of integration with existing workflow and technologies, the pull process may be outside of the normal workflow and thus negatively impact the user's performance. Push technologies require an understanding of the user's information needs at various times, which is currently very difficult to anticipate and as such may miss opportunities to provide relevant problem solving information. Push technologies are able however to find relevant information from across all organizational explicit knowledge resources. Push technologies should also be integrated well into the standard workflow and thus be less disruptive to the user's performance. Another drawback of push technologies is the means used to determine if information is relevant for pushing to a user, typically done through some type of keyword or concept mapping. Push technologies can actually cause information overload by pushing information that was thought to be relevant, but turns out not to be.