3. Infosys was as lnfosys Consultants
Private Limited on by a group of
. From the beginning, Infosys
relied heavily on overseas business.
One of the founders, Narayana Murthy (Murthy)
stayed in India, while the others went to the US to
carry out onsite programming for corporate clients.
One of Infosys' first clients was the US-based sports
shoe manufacturer Reebok.
4. Infosys hired its first set of employees in 1982
from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai.
These employees were provided training and
were sent abroad for onsite projects.
After its revenues started increasing, Infosys
started spending more on training and product
development.
The company's revenues in 1982 were Rs 1.2
million.
5. At that time, computers were not manufactured
in India.
A task like importing a computer required a
license and the process would take several
months.
lnfosys did not have the required space to
install many computers, so the computers it
purchased were installed on the premises of
one of its customers.
6. The revenues of Infosys grew steadily to
reach Rs 10.3 million by 1985,
Rs 19.1 million by 1987 and
Rs 25.4 million by 1989
However, the company faced several
problems mainly due to restrictions
imposed by the government on foreign
trade.
7. Some of the founders were of the
opinion that these restrictions were
hampering the company's growth
tremendously - so much so
that they even contemplated dissolving the
company. But Murthy persisted and promised
to take
the company to greater heights within five
years.
8. Till 1990, Infosys experienced moderate growth. The
company began to
grow at a significant pace after the liberalization of
the Indian economy in 199 1. The company's
revenues grew from Rs. 55 million in 1991 to Rs.
145.2 million in 1993. In the early nineties,
Infosys realized that in order to sustain growth in
the future, personnel with generic analytical
skills and high learning ability were needed.
Infosys decided to recruit such personnel and then
train them in specific job skills.
9. Towards this end, lnfosys established its in-
house Education and Research Department
(E&RD) in 1991.
The main objective of the department was to
provide high quality education and integrate it
with career growth, to conduct research which
would be of use to the company and evaluate
new technologies and tools.
10. In 1992, the E&RD encouraged lnfosys
employees to provide written documents about
their
experiences on the job, their learning on
various topics relating to software development
and use of new technologies etc. Such
information formed a part of what was called
the Body of Knowledge (BoK). The BoK was
updated regularly by the E&RD.
11. Print copies of BoK were shared among the
employees. The BoK was the first step taken by
lnfosys to bring together the knowledge gained
by employees as a part of their day-to-day work.
The E&RD was organized into four groups -
Programming Languages & Methodologies,
Operating Systems & Networking, Database
Management & Transaction Processing, and
Software Engineering.
This organization facilitated consolidation of
knowledge and building of expertise.
12. By 1995, the E&RD developed around 40
courses and had 12 faculty members.
They handled about seven batches of
fresh trainee , with each batch comprising
of 30 to 120 trainees.
The department also organized some 30
short-term courses for Infosys employees
every year.
13. By 1996, lnfosys was rapidly globalizing its
operations.
Every year more than 1000 new employees
were joining the company.
The E&RD had over 50 employees and due
to greater training needs, instructor-led
training was becoming difficult and the
department was incurring higher costs.
14. In mid-1996, the scope of the BoK had increased
with the introduction of a web based BoK.
Using the web-based BoK, the employees could
submit their contributions and search for
required information using the intranet.
The information in the BoK submitted by the
employees included their own learning, as well as
management issues, methodology and cultural
issues.
15. In 1996, lnfosys launched Sparsh, a
corporate intranet. This enabled easy
access to the BoKs and other
information to the employees.
The other contents of Sparsh
included virtual classroom, email,
technical bulletin boards etc
16. Till late 1996, the contributions to
the BoK were very few as only a few
employees came forward to share their
knowledge.
Then, the E&RD went in for an
aggressive campaign through
electronic bulletin boards and internal
promotion.
17. It also announced rewards for the best
write-ups by employees..
Still, only a few employees had the
ability to write down their experiences
and contribute to the BoK. By 1997, every
month the BoK received about ten
entries and total contributions to the
BoK stood at 400
18. However, still there was lot of
information that needed to be
shared within the organization.
In order to facilitate this sharing,
a 'Process Assets' system was
developed
19. This system captured the data filled in
by project leaders after completion of any
project.
The information included a brief
description of the project, the target
audience etc.
The project managers could also add in
additional information. This information
was made available to all employees.
20. As the number of employees in lnfosys
was increasing so were the training needs.
In order to address this issue,
technology-based learning was integrated
with regular classroom learning.
This helped to reduce the duration of
classroom sessions.
21. In order to maximize value and
maintain cost leadership in a highly
competitive scenario, it was necessary for
lnfosys to use knowledge diligently.
The company felt that knowledge
dissemination should be carried out
through a central system in order to
maintain uniformity.
These factors led to the introduction of
Kshop,
22. The Kshop was started in a small way on
five PCs which also acted as servers. Taking
the feedback from the employees, the KM
group made several changes to Kshop..
Kshop had four pillars - people, content,
process and technology. The four pillars
facilitated creation, transfer and reuse of
knowledge.
Through Kshop, the scope of BoK whose
creation and use was limited to one project
was expanded to encompass the entire
organization.
24. The business units, where all the
developmental activity was carried out, did
not have time to organize knowledge
pertaining to a particular domain or a
particular technology.
To address this issue, Infosys created two
consulting groups to capture and spread
knowledge. The two groups were:
1. Domain Competency Group (DCG)
2. Software Engineering & Technology
Laboratories (SETL).
25. The topics covered
by the DCG were
industry dynamics
& trends, key
players, regulatory
practices,
accounting
practices, etc
The focus of SETL
was on technology
competency and
technology
architecture and
framework.
26. In order to encourage employees to
use and contribute to Kshop, the KM
group introduced Knowledge Currency
Units (KCUs) in 2001.
All the employees of lnfosys who
contributed or reviewed the content of
Kshop accumulated KCUs. They could
convert KCUs into rewards.
27. Kshop also had a scoreboard of KCUs,
which displayed the amount of KCUs
accumulated by each of the employees.
With the introduction of KCUs,
employees were motivated to submit
content to Kshop.
Within one year of the introduction of
KCUs, more than 2400 knowledge assets
in the form of project proposals, case
studies, reusable code, etc were
contributed
28. One of the problem to the success of the
KCUs was information overload. This made
it difficult for employees to obtain the
required information. This sent them back
to their informal networks to retrieve the
documents quickly. The reviewers were also
too few and they were heavily burdened with
the increase in content to be reviewed.
29. It was also felt that knowledge sharing
had become a means to earn money and
so employees had stopped exchanging
knowledge informally.
Some of the project groups were not
ready to share their knowledge The KM
group realized that KM required cultural
and social change within the
organization and that superior
technology was not enough.
30. This made the KM group modify the KCU scheme
in April 2002.
The new scheme emphasized knowledge sharing
and visibility rather than monetary rewards.
Under the new scheme, a composite KCU score
was introduced; this took into consideration
usefulness and benefit of the contributed
content.
The contributions were now rated not only by the
volunteers and reviewers, but also by the actual
users.
31. In order to obtain contributions from
project teams which were important for
the KM efforts, the KM team introduced
automated tools, by modifying the forms
and templates.
Another effort started by the KM
Group was to identify knowledge
champions, who were responsible for
facilitating knowledge sharing and reuse.
32. After these changes, the number of quality
contributions to Kshop increased, while the total
number of contributions reduced by 37% after the
introduction of the new scheme. After the initial
decline, the number of contributions stabilized.
The reviewers could spend enough time on the
contributions and the quality and utility of the
knowledge assets increased.
By 2003, there were around 6,000
knowledge documents in Kshop and two
documents were being downloaded every working
minute.
33. While recruiting new employees, Infosys
paid great attention to the learning ability of
the candidate.
As of 2003, there was a central KM
group, which was responsible for internal
publicity of KM efforts. The group was also
responsible for identifying 'KM practice
champions' among the employees.
The practice champions helped the KM
group to further strengthen the KM efforts
in the organization.
34. KM processes at Infosys operated at
three levels :
Project level,
Customer level
Organizational level.
35. Each project team in Infosys was
responsible for designing, developing,
testing and implementing the project.
During the process, a lot of knowledge
was generated and exchanged within the
project team.
Another source of knowledge was the
weekly activity report (WAR). The report
had details of all the tasks that an employee
carried out during the week, on an hourly
basis.
36. Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a
set of instructions followed by an
organization to gain control over software
development process.
CMM consisted of five levels, with each
level having steps that allowed the company
to acquire knowledge and move from one
level to another. As the company moved
from one step to the next, further
improvement was reflected.
37. For implementing CMM, Infosys used a
mechanism through which the project teams
could learn from completed projects.
After completion of the project, the
members of the project team were asked to
identify what was right and what went wrong
during the project.
38. The closure reports not only created
knowledge but also served as a key
mechanism to link knowledge creation
and deployment at the work group level
with the rest of the organization.
At the end of the project, a closure
report containing important details
about the project, duration, resources
and corrective actions was written.
39. According to an internal survey in Infosys. the
projects managers believed that the
performance of their team, including quality of
work and productivity improved as a result of
KM systems, knowledge sharing practices
helped deliver definite benefits to customers,
Employees said that they saved a considerable
amount of time by using the existing
knowledge architecture, the employees were of
the opinion that KM was essential for the
company to remain competitive. KM was
considered important for upper, middle and
lower level in the Organization
40.
41. When we dole out monetary
incentives to promote any scheme, it
leads to un planned and uncontrolled
growth leading to management
problems. This sometimes leads to
inefficiency and dilution in quality
ultimately resulting in loss of credibility.
42. The KM group of Infosys first thought that by
promoting the Kshop with Knowledge Currency
Units (KCU), which could be accumulated and
exchanged for monetary rewards, would increase
the knowledge sharing on the portal.
But this led to over contribution which resulted
in employees experiencing information overload
and consequently , higher search costs for reusable
knowledge. Secondly, the explosive growth in
the no. of contributions began to place a heavy
burden on the limited number of volunteer
reviewers.
43. This lead to a lax in the quality
control of the shared knowledge, which
resulted in knowledge degradation.
Also when questionable articles
began to be rated consistently higher,
the credibility of the rating system itself
came into question.
There was also a fear that one of the
core values of the organization involving
the company’s asking culture would
deteriorate.
44.
45. To increase participation in the KM
system, the KM group at Infosys
introduced “the knowledge currency unit
(KCU)” incentive.
According to the scheme, the employees
who contributed or reviewed
contributions to KShop would be awarded
KCUs which employees could accumulate
and exchange for monetary rewards and
prizes.
46. Also to motivate the employees, their
cumulative KCUs were displayed on a
scoreboard on KShop which increased their
visibility and hence their standing in the
organization.
This served to be counterproductive as an
extremely large number of employees started
contributing material due to the monetary
gain which got published irrespective of
its quality thus leading to higher search costs
and deplorable quality.
47. The most important of corrective actions was
to distance the knowledge sharing from the
monetary incentives to protect the spirit of
community in the company by reducing the
number of KCUs awarded for reviewing
contributions and increasing the minimum
standard for cashing the KCU points.
They re evaluated the KCU score so that the
contributions were reviewed not only by
volunteer reviewers and colleagues, but also by
the end users.
48. They also began to demand tangible
proofs for any high ratings to increase the
accountability of the reviewers. These
initiatives would work as this would lead
to contributions and reviews by only
serious employees who genuinely wanted
to share knowledge.
Second set of corrective actions focused
on improving the knowledge
management practices within project
teams and practice communities.
49. These initiatives would work as they
enabled the codification and extraction
of knowledge automatically and without
much effort, even as the teams carried
out their project related tasks.
50.
51. The most prominent cause for the unsuccessful
implementation was that the employees were
unprepared and unaware of the new system of
sharing knowledge.
Change management initiatives that the KM
group should have initiated can be:
1) Educating employees about the system, how it would
work and its benefits
2) Workshops by experts in the knowledge management
field
3) Case studies and discussing examples of companies
where this system had been successfully implemented
and how it had improved its projects efficiencies
