Step 2: Identify which knowledge is to be retained, and specify how and in what form.

Now in the second phase of your discussions, you can define and decide the central and critical areas of knowledge which are to be retained in your organization. These could be expertise, products (ideas), competencies, processes, customers and / or projects. After the broad spectrum of areas has been defined, these are to be subdivided and redefined in organizational methodology. These should then be maintained in the form of a hierarchical tree structure or "mind maps". For example, in projects these could be the different phases of a project. In business processes these could be sub processes which play a major role. Or with competencies, these could well be the themes, which are important for the employees to perform their duties. This way you build a Taxonmoy, which structures the critical knowledge in your organization.

The second important part is to lay down the structure (My Structure) as how to build your knowledge units (Knowledge Documents). Thus a knowledge document describing the expertise in a project, can be stored, e.g. in the following five text fields with their notations:

• Summary
• What was the background of a project?
• What did we do ?
• What have we achieved?
• What did we learn?

For other areas of application, which are important for your individual knowledge retention solution, you should create your own specific My Structure.

You have two modules defining a solution for a specific knowledge retention problem in your organization:

·         Definition of a hierarchical tree structure (Taxonomy)

·         and the definition of knowledge documents.

Sometimes it is beneficial that the structured elements are directly used in the knowledge documents instead of Taxonomy. You should be careful and take your time while structuring, as you should be thinking about all aspects of your needs. It is better to discuss it more often with a team and get new useful ideas.  

Six Steps to successful "Sharing and Retention" of Knowledge using powerDOCUMENTS
Step 3: Definition of the Knowledge Retention Process and the role of employees to capture and manage critical and valuable knowledge.

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