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Analysis and Development of an Online Knowledge Management Support System for a Community of Practice

The purpose of this study was to investigate how particular business practices, focusing on those occurring in multi-site non-governmental organization (NGOs), could be enhanced by use of a knowledge management system (KMS). The main objective of this KMS is to enhance business processes and save co...

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Main Author: Mafereka, Moeketsi
Other Authors: Winberg, Simon
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Electrical Engineering 2020
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access_status_str Open Access
author Mafereka, Moeketsi
author2 Winberg, Simon
author_browse Mafereka, Moeketsi
Winberg, Simon
author_facet Winberg, Simon
Mafereka, Moeketsi
author_sort Mafereka, Moeketsi
collection Thesis
description The purpose of this study was to investigate how particular business practices, focusing on those occurring in multi-site non-governmental organization (NGOs), could be enhanced by use of a knowledge management system (KMS). The main objective of this KMS is to enhance business processes and save costs for a multi-site NGO through streamlining the organizational practices of knowledge creation, storage, sharing and application. The methodology uses a multiple perspective approach, which covers exploration of the problem space and solution space. Under exploration of problem space, interviews with employees of the NGO are done to identify core problem that the organization faced. Still under exploration of problem space, organization’s knowledge management maturity was assessed through an online questionnaire. The methodology then moved on to exploration of problem space. During the exploration of problem space, the requirements gathering and definition process was done through a combination of interviews with company employees and by completing a systematic literature review of best practices. The requirements were used to design system architecture and use-case models. The prototype for a Community of Practice (COP) support website was developed and investigated in test cases. The tests showed that the prototype system was able to facilitate asynchronous communication through the creation and management of events, creation and management of collaboration groups, creation of discussion topics and creation of basic pages. Furthermore, security capabilities were tested in terms of login functionality. Lastly page load times were tested for eight different scenarios. The system performance was found to be satisfactory because the scenarios covering crucial system requirements aspects had a response time of below 11 seconds. An exception was the landing page, which after login took 26 seconds to load. It is believed that creation of a platform that enables, and records, user interaction, easy of online discussions, managing groups, topics and events, are all major contributors to a successful knowledge management approach.
format Thesis
id oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/30918
institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2020
publishDateRange 2020
publishDateSort 2020
publisher Department of Electrical Engineering
publisherStr Department of Electrical Engineering
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/30918 Analysis and Development of an Online Knowledge Management Support System for a Community of Practice Mafereka, Moeketsi Winberg, Simon Engineering The purpose of this study was to investigate how particular business practices, focusing on those occurring in multi-site non-governmental organization (NGOs), could be enhanced by use of a knowledge management system (KMS). The main objective of this KMS is to enhance business processes and save costs for a multi-site NGO through streamlining the organizational practices of knowledge creation, storage, sharing and application. The methodology uses a multiple perspective approach, which covers exploration of the problem space and solution space. Under exploration of problem space, interviews with employees of the NGO are done to identify core problem that the organization faced. Still under exploration of problem space, organization’s knowledge management maturity was assessed through an online questionnaire. The methodology then moved on to exploration of problem space. During the exploration of problem space, the requirements gathering and definition process was done through a combination of interviews with company employees and by completing a systematic literature review of best practices. The requirements were used to design system architecture and use-case models. The prototype for a Community of Practice (COP) support website was developed and investigated in test cases. The tests showed that the prototype system was able to facilitate asynchronous communication through the creation and management of events, creation and management of collaboration groups, creation of discussion topics and creation of basic pages. Furthermore, security capabilities were tested in terms of login functionality. Lastly page load times were tested for eight different scenarios. The system performance was found to be satisfactory because the scenarios covering crucial system requirements aspects had a response time of below 11 seconds. An exception was the landing page, which after login took 26 seconds to load. It is believed that creation of a platform that enables, and records, user interaction, easy of online discussions, managing groups, topics and events, are all major contributors to a successful knowledge management approach. 2020-02-07T12:06:22Z 2020-02-07T12:06:22Z 2019 2020-01-27T07:31:56Z Master Thesis Masters MSc http://hdl.handle.net/11427/30918 eng application/pdf Department of Electrical Engineering Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment
spellingShingle Engineering
Mafereka, Moeketsi
Analysis and Development of an Online Knowledge Management Support System for a Community of Practice
thesis_degree_str Master's
title Analysis and Development of an Online Knowledge Management Support System for a Community of Practice
title_full Analysis and Development of an Online Knowledge Management Support System for a Community of Practice
title_fullStr Analysis and Development of an Online Knowledge Management Support System for a Community of Practice
title_full_unstemmed Analysis and Development of an Online Knowledge Management Support System for a Community of Practice
title_short Analysis and Development of an Online Knowledge Management Support System for a Community of Practice
title_sort analysis and development of an online knowledge management support system for a community of practice
topic Engineering
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/30918
work_keys_str_mv AT maferekamoeketsi analysisanddevelopmentofanonlineknowledgemanagementsupportsystemforacommunityofpractice