BeeHive

Beehive is a system that is designed for newcomers to adapt to Thoughtworks' way of knowledge sharing. It also assists the company in collecting and transforming tacit knowledge under the devotion of newcomers that will act as floaters among organsizational units to connect knowledge, just like bees.

Beehive aims to help newcomers in Thoughtworks to rapidly fit into the company atmosphere by joining different teams every two weeks. By talking to veterans and enhancing their tacit knowledge, they can build tight connections among colleagues. Veterans in Thoughtworks are also valuable to Beehive as they act as a knowledge provider. They also produce tacit knowledge that will be collected by newcomers and transformed into a concrete assest for the company.

Knowledge sharing - especially tacit knowledge - is very meaningful for Thoughworks. Transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge is an effective methold to minimize repetitive work for the whole company, and it also helps tp decrease cost. There are two main challenges for collecting tacit knowledge. One is connected to the company's capacity to sufficiently build a comprehensive knowledge system in a short term, whilst connecting to the fact that tacit knwoledge often exists in people's mind. This is much harder record and shared in a formal format. Luckily, we have seen an opportunity to leverage the role of newcomers to take charge of communicating, collecting and spreading such tacit knowledge. They are eager to fit into the company and they can build their own network. Newcomers are often more motivated, humble and willing to participate when they can obtain extra experience for their future career.

The service contains five parts: Pecha Kucha: Newcomers attend a Pecha Kucha that is arranged by veterans in order to match the teams. Projects experience (two weeks for each): Newcomers join different teams to shadow verterans and talk to them, collecting knowledge they record onto notebooks. Uploading knowledge: Every two weeks the team members have the opportunity to discuss if the collected knowledge is precise or not and if it is valuable to be upload. The comfirmed knowledge will be then uploaded onto the knowledge sharing platform. Professional review: After a three months probation, a pannel review will be held to evaluate all the knowledge and select the most valuable bit that could be then sent into the Thoughtworks Hivemind. Party: Finally, a party will be held to reward newcomers who have contributed the most.