OneOne Hundred Blog

An article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) entitled "Don’t Just Capture Knowledge - Put it to Work" begins 

“What’s the point of capturing organisational knowledge if it’s going to be tossed in some file and forgotten? That’s all too often what happens to lessons from post-mortems and after action reviews.”

Given the research which indicates some 70% of the projects are regarded as failures, this suggests that the lessons analysis undertaken by organisations like the NAO and Audit Commission are simply filed and forgotten.

In previous articles we examined a Learning Project Organisation. The first step in creating such an organisation is to put in place processes for capturing lessons learned. Many organisations may have an internal knowledge base or specific tools for knowledge capture - the important thing is that they are structured and used in a manner that creates value for the project delivery organisation.

To avoid the lessons learned simply being filed away, the project organisation needs to establish a knowledge management process. At its simplest this will comprise:

• Knowledge Acquisition - the capture and creation of information and lessons learned;
• Knowledge Storage - the organisation, categorisation and retrieval processes to allow access to the created knowledge;
• Knowledge Distribution - the publication mechanisms for making the knowledge available both within and outside the source project.

Knowledge Acquisition

In our last article we examined the capture of lessons learned information throughout the project lifecycle. This information will take two forms:

• Ad hoc and informal knowledge created from the handling of risks, issues and exception reports;
• Formal or systemic knowledge created through the use of formal reviews;

At the acquisition stage, the material flowing from projects into the knowledge management process will be in a raw state, and the wider lessons may not be fully appreciate by an author within the project team. So thought needs to be given to the packaging of the received information for wider consumption. For example, sometimes it is appropriate to take a sample of a new or innovative project artefact and convert it into an accelerator for use on future projects. In other instances it may be more appropriate to use the information to update or refine existing guidance or metrics.

In addition to the information generated within the organisation, an additional source is collaborative data exchange, for example from user groups, or special interest groups attached to professional bodies. Quite often the latter are responsible for developing new guidance for practitioners, e.g. the Association for Project Management (APM) Risk, Earned Value and Governance SIGs. These collaborative sources can provide useful insights, but their guidance will often need to be assimilated into the organisations project management processes before applying it to individual projects.

Knowledge Storage

For acquired information to be of practical future use, the knowledge storage process should function in a similar way to a library. Following an initial assessment of the quality, relevance and value of the new information, it needs to be categorised and catalogued. The categorisation identifies the nature and scale of projects to which the information is applicable, and provides an indication of its application across the project lifecycle. The cataloguing exercise relates the information to the organisation’s project management methodology or to a standard body of knowledge such as the APM Body of Knowledge (BoK) . The importance of cataloguing should not be under estimated, if information is misclassified it is unlikely to be retrieved by those seeking it.

The mechanisms for storing project management information have evolved significantly over the last decade. In the late 1990’s much of the project management advice was published in hardcopy and ‘pdf’ formats, e.g. the Treasury PFI Taskforce produced a set of guidance documents for PFI projects. Copies of this guidance were made available but there was limited integration of the information and rudimentary search facilities for the electronically stored information. Ten years on, there is still a lot of information stored like this, but the web-based search tools have significantly improved accessibility of the information. Increasingly such knowledge has been stored in databases, allowing for easier searching of metadata containing the categorisation and cataloguing data. But today, the issue is whether this information is still relevant and can be readily applied within a project management knowledge base.

Knowledge Distribution

The process we have described so far encompasses the collection, processing and storage of lessons learned information to allow an organisation to capitalise on its experience and improve its project delivery. For this amassed information to provide any practical benefit the knowledge distribution mechanism needs to support the user.

Distribution can typically be achieve in two ways, either through the creation of a dedicated and often proprietary knowledge management application or by the use of tools based on an open source web-based architecture to encourage collaboration and information exchange. An example of the former is a proprietary solution developed by a UK services and technology company, which encapsulates experience, knowledge and learning gained through delivery of many business change projects.  The content comprises an integrated suite of activities, processes and supporting collateral covering a wide range of project and programme management activities. The disadvantage of this solution is that it does not readily support collaboration by users and it is essentially a static library rather than a knowledge exchange.

Using Web 2.0 technology for Knowledge Distribution

The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies is having a significant impact on project and knowledge management, offering a richer and more intuitive user experience. Examples of Web 2.0 tools and technology are shown in the diagram below, and a common themes are user interaction and creation of ‘communities’.

The use of collaboration software (e.g. blogs and forums), wikis and CMS solutions (e.g. Joomla!) enables users to more readily communicate, collaborate and share knowledge. Successful organisations are using these technologies to harness individual learning and enhance corporate performance. In our experience the use of distilled expert knowledge, e.g. on the causes of project failure can significantly enhance the usefulness and user experience from these technologies. The deployment of Web 2.0 solutions is also simpler than many proprietary systems, as it usually relies on access via web browsers rather than specific desktop software.

Conclusion

This article, the third in a series on lessons learned and the development of the learning project organisation, has examined the process required to convert project lessons learned into knowledge which can benefit other projects. In order to break out of the current mould and improive project delivery - project managers need to draw upon lessons learned from project failure. By putting in place mechanisms to harvest the lessons learned throughout a project then converting this information into re-useable and accessible knowledge, we believe a step change in delivery performance can be achieved.

Ultimately as project delivery improves we need to find a more dynamic way of enhancing project methodologies to take advantage of lessons learned faster.