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Knowledge Management in IT Projects

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

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  1. Knowledge Management in IT Projects Hazel Taylor

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. 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

  13. 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

  14. 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

  15. 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

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. 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

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