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Knowledge Management in IT Projects. Hazel Taylor. History of PM Research. 1970’s – Tools & Techniques E.g. critical path analysis 1980’s – Success Factors Can’t choose appropriate tools till you know what factors you’re aiming for 1990’s – Success Criteria
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Knowledge Management in IT Projects Hazel Taylor
History of PM Research • 1970’s – Tools & Techniques • E.g. critical path analysis • 1980’s – Success Factors • Can’t choose appropriate tools till you know what factors you’re aiming for • 1990’s – Success Criteria • Can’t choose success factors till you know how success will be measured • Result: Measurable improvement in performance • Success rates doubled from 1/3 to 2/3 of projects • (Not so good though for IT projects) IMT 589 KM Institute
Next Research Challenge • Project context • Relationships between project management, organization management, organization as client, external & internal stakeholders • Key part of project environment • Management of knowledge within and between all the actors • “Knowledge is information applied in a particular context” (Baker & Barker, 1997) IMT 589 KM Institute
KM in Projects & Project-based Organizations • Problematic! • Contrast with Functional Organizations • New ideas created within the function • Successful ideas chosen for reuse • Knowledge stored within the function where it can be reused • Project-based Organizations • New ideas created in temporary projects • Can’t select and reuse knowledge within the project (project ends – what happens to the knowledge?) • Therefore, must find ways to address knowledge steps 1-3, AND add fourth step – disseminate to new projects IMT 589 KM Institute
Key Points of Difficulty • Temporary organization within the firm • No ‘organizational memory’ within a project • Uniqueness of the undertaking • Time, budget, output constraints • Degree of transience of team membership • Have they worked together before? • Does the team change through the project? • Are they geographically dispersed? • Do they have very different backgrounds, cultures (even within the firm)? • Number of ‘external’ groups to work with IMT 589 KM Institute
Knowledge “Traps” in IT Projects Project Process Volatility in Governance Team Lack of Role Knowledge Project Outputs Project Inputs 5 4 What did We Learn? Plan Transactive Memory –who knows what 2 7 Team Selection Design 10 6 1 Lessons Learned Build Configure /Test Knowledge Integration or Transfer within team and external How Did We Do It? Exit & Entry Of Team Members 3 Implement 11 8 Loss between Phases - Explicit; TK 9 Lack of Process Knowledge Adapted from: Reich, B. (2004) Knowledge “Traps” in IT Projects. Project Management World Today. www.pmforum.org/pmwt/archives/pmwt04/papers04-1112more2.htm
Knowledge ‘Traps’ in IT Projects • We know some things about the importance of these traps e.g. • Volatility in team members increases cost and time • Executive sponsors without adequate role knowledge – PM, IT, domain – increase cost and time • But less about how to manage the knowledge to avoid the traps • Much of specialized PM research has focused on construction and R & D projects • Mostly case study research and practitioner reports IMT 589 KM Institute
Major KM Exposures • Lack of knowledge • No previous lessons learned (KT 1, 10, 11) • Executive sponsor not up to speed (KT 5) • Team not ‘on the same page’ (KT 2, 5, 7, 9) • No knowledge sharing culture (KT 6) • Loss of knowledge • Loss of major player (exec sponsor, PM) (KT 4) • Change in team members (KT 3) • Handovers between phases (KT 8) • Problematic knowledge transfer/integration (KT 6) • Between: users and team; external vendors/consultants and internal team; team members; sponsors and team • Co-location vs. geographic dispersion • Overarching: intensifies all the KTs IMT 589 KM Institute
Knowledge “Trap” 6 • The more we can integrate business application domain knowledge with technical knowledge, the better the s/w development outcomes • Requires success in two integration/transfer tasks • Internally within the team • Externally from and to stakeholders • Get internal integration right first! Tiwana, 2004 Grant, 1996;Hislop, 2003 IMT 589 KM Institute
Knowledge “Trap” 6 (Internal) • Internal knowledge sharing and collaboration facilitated by team building • Depends on level of common knowledge • Importance of bonding within team to establish shared behavioral norms and facilitate understanding • For geographically distributed teams, development of social ties and shared norms is important • Virtual introduction activities before F2F meeting • F2F team building exercises early on • Visits to remote locations • Key contact person at each site • Established communication channels Huang & Newell, 2003; Newell et al. 2004 Kotlarsky & Oshri, 2005 IMT 589 KM Institute
Knowledge “Trap” 6 (External) • Transfer from external parties (clients) into the team depends on • Clients’ willingness to be involved (motivation) • Existence of a shared language and understanding • Team’s willingness to recognize external knowledge holders and receive knowledge from them • Transfer to external parties from the team depends on • Extent to which external parties want to learn and whether they see value in learning • Transfers are facilitated by strong social network ties • A referral process can help to extend the network Huang & Newell, 2003; Newell et al. 2004; Szulanski, 2000 IMT 589 KM Institute
Barriers to Knowledge Integration • Lack of mutual understanding • Communication, common language, shared culture • Failure to share and retain contextual knowledge • Tendency to share and discuss commonly held information and to overlook uniquely held information • Inflexibility of organizational ties • Weak ties between team members from different units • Constraints on development of transactive memory (KT 7) • Physical distance, lack of collaborative history, team diversity Alavi, M., & Tiwana, A. (2002). IMT 589 KM Institute
Knowledge “Trap” 7 • Transactive memory • Who knows what, where is the knowledge held • Transactive memory develops over time through direct interactions • Failure to develop transactive memory impacts on knowledge integration • Early development of transactive memory by the team improves performance • Established through communication, but requires specific attention to development of team memory (different from team building/bonding activities) • Teams need to form mental maps of who knows what, to allocate the work accordingly • KMS can help: knowledge repositories, ‘yellow pages’, community of practice support Yoo & Kanawattanachai, 2001 IMT 589 KM Institute
Knowledge “Trap” 7 continued • From transactive memory to expertise coordination • Teams not only need transactive memory, they also need to recognize when certain knowledge is needed, and to be able to tap into the expertise • Managing expertise coordination improves the chance of project success (effectiveness) • Within the team, both development of transactive memory and team bonding are needed to facilitate expertise application. • Externally, social networks and boundary spanning are required to tap into expertise outside the project team Faraj and Sproull (2000) IMT 589 KM Institute
KT 10,11,1 Post-Project Reviews Best practice: capture and storage of lessons learned e.g. NASA Public Lessons Learned • Problem 1: timeliness of knowledge transfer • Best practice recommendation: capture and ‘push’ • Effective transfer: identify and ‘pull’ - just-in-time • Knowing who knows is key • Problem 2: emphasis on knowledge content • Best practice recommendation: what we did • Effective transfer: how we did it (think Q of sapphire) • Problem 3: ‘Artificial’ nature of many ‘lessons learned’ reviews • Project reviews in construction sector are rare, and most often focused on blame assignment for what went wrong Newell, S. (2004). Love et al. (2003) IMT 589 KM Institute
Post-project Review – Should We Bother? • Benefits for cross-team transfer? • Focus on developing social networks and communities of practice for informal sharing • FAQs, technical solutions • Benefits for within team/within team member learning? IMT 589 KM Institute
References • Alavi, M., & Tiwana, A. (2002). Knowledge integration in virtual teams: The potential role of KMS. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53(12), 1029-1037. • Baker, M. & Barker, M. (1997). Leveraging human capital. Journal of Knowledge Management, 1(1), 63-74 • Collins, H. M. (2001). Tacit knowledge, trust and the Q of sapphire. Social Studies of Science, 31(1) 71-85 • Faraj, S. & Sproull, L. (2000). Coordinating expertise in software development teams. Management Science, 46(12), 1554-1568 • Grant, R. M. (1996). Prospering in dynamically-competitive environments: Organizational capability as knowledge integration. Organization Science, 7(4), 375-387. • Huang, J. C., & Newell, S. (2003). Knowledge integration processes and dynamics within the context of cross-functional projects. International Journal of Project Management, 21, 167-176. IMT 589 KM Institute
References • Kotlarsky, J., & Oshri, I. (2005). Social ties, knowledge sharing and successful collaboration in globally distributed system development projects. European Journal of Information Systems, 14, 37-48. • Love, P., Fong, P.S.W. & Irani, Z. (eds) (2005) Management of Knowledge in Project Environments. Oxford: Elsevier • Newell, S. (2004). Enhancing Cross-Project Learning. Engineering Management Journal, 16(1), 12-20. • Szulanski, G. (2000). The process of knowledge transfer: A diachronic analysis of stickiness. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82(1), 9-27. • Tiwana, A. (2004). An empirical study of the effect of knowledge integration on software development performance. Information and Software Technology, 46(13), 899-906. • Yoo, Y. & Kanawattanachai, P. (2001). Developments of transactive memory systems and collective mind in virtual teams. The International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 9(2), 187-208 IMT 589 KM Institute