KM / Knowledge Exit Interview Role-based Guidelines

Purpose

  • To provide targeted guidance in performing a role-based Knowledge Exit Interview (in addition to the core question bank)

User

  • Knowledge Management (Facilitator)
  • Departing Staff Member (Subject Matter Expert)
  • Manager / Asset Owner / Group Leader
  • Successor / Backup (if available)

Guidelines

A. Systems Administrator / Infrastructure

Focus

Stability, recovery, and hidden dependencies

  • Which systems are most fragile or failure-prone?
  • What breaks first during outages or peak load?
  • Where are backups, restores, or DR processes non-obvious?
  • What access is difficult to re-create?
  • What maintenance tasks are calendar- or person-dependent?

 

Key Artifacts

  • System inventories
  • Runbooks / recovery guides
  • Access and credential maps

B. Service Owner / Product Owner

Focus

End-to-end service health and stakeholder expectations

  • What defines “good service” from user and leadership perspectives?
  • Which SLAs matter most in practice?
  • Where does the service rely on goodwill or manual intervention?
  • What decisions are routinely escalated to you?

 

Key Artifacts

  • Service playbooks
  • Stakeholder maps
  • Decision logs

C. Identity & Access Management (IAM)

Focus

Risk, exceptions, and compliance

  • Which access rules have the most exceptions?
  • Where does policy differ from practice?
  • What requests make you uneasy — and why?
  • What audits or reviews require tribal Knowledge?

 

Key Artifacts

  • Access models
  • Exception handling guides
  • Audit evidence maps

D. Knowledge Management / ITSM

Focus

Flow of Knowledge and decision-making

  • Where do people go when documentation fails them?
  • What Knowledge is repeatedly recreated instead of reused?
  • Which processes rely on personal judgment?
  • What signals tell you Knowledge is missing or outdated?

 

Key Artifacts

  • Knowledge gap logs
  • Content standards
  • Governance decision records