The Operating Model Knowledge Management project hits a major milestone this summer, with a planned go-live date of Aug. 3.
The project strengthens three areas that have long needed attention: how knowledge content is managed, how its quality is measured, and how it aligns to the WashU IT Service Portfolio. The approach is deliberate — existing content stays visible and searchable throughout, so day-to-day work isn’t disrupted.
The most significant structural change is how content owners are assigned. Gone is the ad-hoc knowledge coach model. Service owners now designate content owners to work only in areas where they have genuine expertise, creating real accountability at the portfolio level. Alongside this, a new Article Quality Index (AQI) gives the organization a consistent way to measure and enforce content standards for the first time.
The rollout follows a three-phase arc. A pilot launched April 27 with a small group from EUS, Research, and Asset Management, who are testing the new workflow and migrating content from the old knowledge base to the new WashU IT Portfolio knowledge base. Through June and July, the remaining content owners complete training and begin migrating content at their own pace. On Aug. 3, the old knowledge base becomes read-only, the new knowledge base opens to all ITIL users, and two new template fields become mandatory — fully committing the organization to the new standards.
After go-live, the Service Management Office (SMO) provides six weeks of hypercare, new dashboards give content owners and service owners operational visibility, and the team turns toward what’s next: ServiceNow AI features for knowledge management, cleanup of legacy content, and specialty template development.
When the dust settles, WashU IT will be ready to open enterprise knowledge management to the broader university — a capability this project was always designed to unlock.