Mapping Workflows and Managing Knowledge: Capturing Formal and Tacit Knowledge to Improve Performance

Workflow, process, or business process mapping has been discovered by organizations of all kinds as being a powerful tool to analyze and improve their internal processes. It has attracted major attention from software vendors, including Oracle and IBM, who market systems that are designed to map processes and quantify all aspects of their operations. These systems can be very effective at capturing the formal or explicit knowledge inherent to any workflow; however, a long-term problem with these approaches is that the full 'knowledge base' underlying these processes contains many elements which are 'tacit knowledge.' Despite being outside of the formal knowledge base, tacit knowledge must be addressed when describing the nature and functioning of processes. A key feature of the mapping method used in this book is that it makes both formal and tacit knowledge explicit in the workflow maps it produces. Much of what has been learned in the years of applying and teaching this method is that software-driven approaches are hobbled by the complications presented by tacit knowledge in workflows. Until both formal and tacit knowledge are understood these software-driven approaches cannot achieve their full potential. Consequently the mapping process here, by necessity, becomes a method for managing knowledge as well as a method of mapping the flow of materials and information. While it is a basis for process improvement in its own right, it can support development of both software-driven process mapping and the creation of dynamic programs on the basis of accurate understanding of existing workflows.

About the Author

John Kmetz is President of Transition Assistance Associates (TAA), a selective firm of professionals who assist companies and organizations in diagnosing challenges and formulating transition strategies to meet them. TAA has particular interests in helping firms meet complex performance challenges and in international work involving methods of organizing and functioning in other cultures. TAA specializes in training in workflow mapping and project management.

He is also Faculty Director of the Advanced Project Management Program, and Associate Professor in the Department of Business Administration, at the University of Delaware. He has been with the University since 1977, and teaches at both graduate and undergraduate levels. He teaches international business, management, and graduate courses on business consulting and new product development on campus and abroad; he also supervises Master’s student projects for the National Technological University. He has designed both the Basic and Advanced Project Management Certificate programs at the University, and both are registered with the Project Management Institute.

He has combined his academic interests with a wide range of experience. He spent two years as a proofreader and copyeditor in a printing company while working his way through a BS at Penn State. He took his MBA and Doctor of Business Administration at the University of Maryland. While doing his DBA he also worked with Leadership Resources, Inc., serving as Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors from 1968 to 1978. He has trained and consulted in many programs for both domestic and foreign clients since coming to Delaware.

His underlying approach to his work focuses on how organizations process information to accomplish their goals, and how their structures are related to this function. One aspect of this has been an interest in how organizations manage technology, and since 1976 this has been reflected in numerous studies and consulting projects in the aerospace and defense industries. He has completed several projects on logistics management and avionics maintenance for Naval aircraft for the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command. He has consulted with other Department of Defense organizations and the Royal Canadian Air Force to improve management of logistics systems for operations and aircraft support, and has assisted aerospace companies in preparation of technical proposals.

His other major interest has been in international business. This began with a presentation to the Science Center Berlin in 1978, and was stimulated by his service as a project manager for three USAID contracts with the University of Delaware. In the early 1980s, he managed a planning project for utilization of renewable energy in the Republic of Panama, on full-time leave to the University’s Institute of Energy Conversion for the first one and a half years of the contract. In 1991 and 1992 he also took full-time responsibility as Director of Management Training for a USAID grant to assist business and economic transition in Bulgaria. He wrote the winning proposal for a $10 million USAID contract to establish an MBA program in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, completed in 2008. He served as Faculty Director of International Programs for the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics from 2001 to 2010.

His research is derived from his technology–industry activities and his international work. In 1998 he published a book on the information processing theory of organization, another on business research in 2000, and also many works in journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters. His current manuscript is concerned with the pragmatics of knowledge management in global enterprises. He is also engaged in a major project to address the futility of most business school research.