Eliciting User Needs for a Knowledge Management System to Align Training Programs with Processes and Policies in Large Organizations

Large organizations struggle to keep their training programs aligned with their business processes and policies. Lesson plans are often stored as static documents, which are neither readily searchable nor linked to approved processes and policies, rendering corporate training programs inefficient and outdated. A well-designed knowledge management (KM) system would be able to meet this technological need, but generating software requirements for such a system is typically a time and resource intensive process. A unique combination of requirements elicitation techniques was employed to elicit a robust set of user needs without the need for face-to-face meetings. Employees of a government agency were asked to tell their stories about the problems they experienced in training management and common themes were identified in their responses. The resulting user needs for the KM system were documented in conceptual diagrams that represent the participants' view of the current and future state of affairs. These models will serve as artifacts to be used for future requirements definition, validation, and prioritization.