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The fundamental engineering of the Knowledge Worker Framework, that is, a framework for the knowledge worker, came about during the early 1980s. A government agency commissioned Whitemarsh to formally develop a database project methodology. Whitemarsh employed the database administration and database project work it had developed for Yourdon, Inc during the late 1970s.
It had become clear by then that a very structured approach to database engineering and database-centric business information system was possible. Whitemarsh's four product organization pillars that focus on database are: Logical Database, Physical Database, Interrogation, and System Control. Analysis show that these four pillars were applicable along four dimensions: [DBMS] Technology, Staffing, [Database] Projects, and DBMS.
Whitemarsh's database project methodology, formally engineered in 1981 was employed all through the 1980s on a number of very successful database projects. With every project the methodology was updated.
During the early 1990s, while Whitemarsh was working with The MITRE Corporation, Whitemarsh developed the six columns of the Knowledge Worker Framework as a consequence of an in-depth analysis of the Whitemarsh database project methodology. The six columns that focus on the work products accomplished by the Knowledge Worker are: Mission, Database Object Classes, Business Information Systems, Business Event, Business Function, and Business Organization.
The rows of the Knowledge Worker Framework were taken directly from the Zachman Framework for Information Systems Development that was developed in the late 1980s. The 36 cells (6 rows and 6 columns) of the Knowledge Worker Framework contain the names of the work products accomplished during Knowledge Worker efforts.
Validation of the correctness of the Knowledge Worker Framework was accomplished through a detailed review of more than 10 multi $100 million U.S. Government Accountability Office "autopsy reports" of failed U.S. Government agency business information system development efforts.
The GAO identified business information system fatal errors were allocated to the Knowledge Worker Framework cell-based work products, and were combined across all the U.S. Government agency business information system development efforts and transformed into "GAO error percents."
If the errors associated with the cells are mitigated, it follows that the business information system will be successful. The work products within the cells thus set proper scope, focus and attention to the nature and sequence of accomplishing business information system development work.
It is not enough, however, to have a valid, reliable and repeatable database project methodology properly set within a framework for the Knowledge Worker. Also essential is a very sophisticated and comprehensive database and supporting work-enhancement system to develop, record, report and to evolve all the database and business information system work products.
These work products, as database-stored data is just metadata. It is integrated, interoperable, and non-redundant across projects, business functions, and the entire enterprise. In Whitemarsh, this work product metadata-database and supporting information system is a metadata management system and is called the Metabase.
At the highest level of Knowledge Worker Framework abstraction the three broadest classes of work are:
Next to each of these Knowledge Worker Framework broad classes of work is the probability (in percent (e.g., 40%)) that errors in this work category will prove fatal to a business information system or database effort. It is therefore that getting the work products within these broad classes of work correct must be obvious and essential to success objective. A column from the Whitemarsh client projects table shows where the Metabase System, in one of its many forms, starting in the middle 1980s, has been used to record, integrate, interrelate, and make non redundant Knowledge Worker work-products.
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