Towards characterizing Knowledge Intensive Processes

Knowledge Intensive Processes (KIP) focus on the dynamic conversion of knowledge among the participants involved in the execution of a business process, and typically comprises tacit and constantly changing pieces of knowledge supported by CSCW tools. Despite their key role for organizational Knowledge Management, existing methods for Business Processes Modeling do not adequately address the representation of key elements denoting these pieces of knowledge, thus making it hard to come up with a process model through which other participants may understand the knowledge intensive process. This paper proposes a set of properties needed to understand and consequently organize KTPs. The proposed properties are structured into a KIP Ontology, as a first and necessary step of any approach, method or tool for adequately addressing this important class of processes.