> "Can someone find this without asking a person?"
^discoverability
## Resolution
> The property of a knowledge artefact being findable by someone who knows the topic but not the location, without having to ask a person or scan every artefact.
^definition
In a knowledge management system, discoverability closes the gap between "the knowledge exists somewhere" and "I can reach it". It depends on the store's organising principles - indexes, tags, links, embeddings - and on the requester's ability to express the topic. Discoverability is the Findable property in the [[FAIR principles]].
## In practice
```
$ wiki search "onboarding checklist" --limit 1
docs/onboarding/checklist.md
```
A topic phrase is named, one matching artefact returns. The cost is matching one criterion, not interrupting a person.
## Discovery questions
Customer-facing prompts that surface this attribute being missing, grouped by the pain each probes.
### From [[Feeling lost in own work]] (P)
![[Feeling lost in own work#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Cannot find my own notes]] (P)
![[Cannot find my own notes#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[My notes scattered across apps]] (P)
![[My notes scattered across apps#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Cannot find what the org knows]] (C)
![[Cannot find what the org knows#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Tribal knowledge dominance]] (C)
![[Tribal knowledge dominance#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Org knowledge scattered across stores]] (C)
![[Org knowledge scattered across stores#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[KM does not scale]] (C)
![[KM does not scale#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Cross-team coordination missing]] (C)
![[Cross-team coordination missing#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[My chat messages are my notes]] (P)
![[My chat messages are my notes#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[My notes are buried in clutter]] (P)
![[My notes are buried in clutter#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Reinventing things I have done before]] (P)
![[Reinventing things I have done before#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Decisions live in chat scrollback]] (C)
![[Decisions live in chat scrollback#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Our wiki answers the wrong questions]] (C)
![[Our wiki answers the wrong questions#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Cannot find who knows what]] (C)
![[Cannot find who knows what#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Documentation buried in clutter]] (C)
![[Documentation buried in clutter#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Teams reinvent what others built]] (C)
![[Teams reinvent what others built#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Reorg lost institutional memory]] (C)
![[Reorg lost institutional memory#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Onboarding takes too long]] (C)
![[Onboarding takes too long#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Nobody knows how legacy systems work]] (C)
![[Nobody knows how legacy systems work#^discovery-questions]]
### From [[Nobody uses the KM system we built]] (C)
![[Nobody uses the KM system we built#^discovery-questions]]