The initiation of KM for PM
16-Feb-06
Project management has been growing as a discipline for decades. From basic task planning to modern complexity management, it has evolved with the society.
Today, project management is integrated in many companies and governmental organisms with strategy, via the portfolio or program management, and with the other departments, like manufacturing, human resources, legal, financial. It is a question of managing multiple products, multiple projects with interrelated resources from one or many companies, under the multiple constraints of the customers, the legal environment and the financial and market objectives.
In this context, knowledge is a key point for improvement and performance. Namely, projects are temporary, which means that they start and they finish. When they start, it is better to be able reuse previous experience, in order to repeat best practices or to avoid common tricks. When they finish, it is better to be able to save or to share these best practices and tricks.
But, the reality is different : the pressure on the project members does not allow them to take so much time as required to put on paper their experience, and this is not a funny activity. It is often in the low part of our list of priorities.
Secondly, the information is not instantly available as the project begins. The actual structures for knowledge sharing have often a problem of context description, which allows the project manager to match his project with previous ones. Namely, even if the project has the same objectives, for instance, that another one, this will not mean that experience of previous project will be useful for the new one.
Questions for knowledge management in projects could be :
- how can we efficiently and effectively keep knowledge from ongoing projects ? What is useful, value-adding, and what must not be saved ?
- what is the role of structures, like Project Management Offices, in this experience sharing process ?
- a human network is better than a database, but how can we organize and maintain a performing network for knowledge and experience sharing ? how can we avoid the perverse effects, like experts who hide their skills in order to not be solicited too much ?
- as forecasts are always wrong, how can we improve them by using experience ? Can we make more reliable estimates, curves, targets ?
I am researcher, teacher and consultant in project management. I am interested to exchange or even to collaborate with anybody interested in these subjects.
Details
- Author:
- Franck Marle
- Publisher:
- KnowledgeBoard
- Date:
- 16-Feb-06
- Categories:
- Sections:
- News
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Anecdote post about CoPs and projects
This post from Mark at Anecdote is rather interesting and relevant:
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2006/03/incubating_comm.html
my reactions
Hi,
Thanks Yang for reactions and suggestions. Do you have concrete models of categorization that work for measuring difference between actual context and previous context ? It's sure that this evaluation will allow to increase reliability.
Arturs, project described in the two publications you mentioned has given good results about portfolio management, that means the company has updated its portfolios and its portfolio management procedure, in order to keep aligned with strategy. The knowledge aspects were about project selection (knowing everywhere in the company that my genial idea had already been proposed elsewhere and was rejected, or had failed) and project initiation (putting best practices to project members).
Carol, the complexity aspects of projects are according to me everywhere, that means about complexity of interrelated objectives, complexity of project dynamics, complexity of skills networks, and so on.
All, would you like to begin some collaborations on some of these topics ?
Franck
Tough call
Questions for knowledge management in projects could be :
- how can we efficiently and effectively keep knowledge from ongoing projects ? What is useful, value-adding, and what must not be saved ?
You cannot expect the knowledge fully be kept during the course of project implmentation, as knowledge creation is happened everywhere at any time. Moreover, if the useful knowledge still remains tacit in people's minds, simple codification during this period of time will not be ideal. How to? If the organization never creates such kind of environment for people to freely share knowledge, it would be very tough at the beginning stage. PM always has an aim, which is to make sure everyone finishs the project tasks on time. That is the priority and nothing is more than that, unless he or she is told to do something else particularly, such as keeping the knowledge... Very unusual, though. He/she is sure that this KM process will contribute to the future, but the question is whether he/she has some "great" and "simple" ideas to do that without sacrificing too much. Incentive system may help. An outside or inside moderator may help. Cost including time and money should be taken into consideration. Somebody believes if you got the right group of people, everything would be easy. I agree, but it is too ideal. My belief is if you cannot, but can get help from upper management support, it would also be great, or even crucial.
What must not be saved? I am not sure, but why you raise the question instead of what must be, such as lessons or failures...? I am very interested in the reasons.
- what is the role of structures, like Project Management Offices, in this experience sharing process ?
First, you will be granted, hopefully, more money and time. If not, more importantly, kind support and understanding with negotiation. Manage them to have a bigger vision, think for the future.
- a human network is better than a database, but how can we organize and maintain a performing network for knowledge and experience sharing ? how can we avoid the perverse effects, like experts who hide their skills in order to not be solicited too much ?
Tough call. Many many answers depend on the real situation. Try institutionalize the KM process for a short period of time if none of the ideas practically works. Recent studies still believe that KM cannot be forced!
- as forecasts are always wrong, how can we improve them by using experience ? Can we make more reliable estimates, curves, targets ?
Yes, of course you can. A simple example. Although somebody does not agree, I still believe that if you categorize what you have done, such as the user, geographical factors, culture backgrounds, technical problem solutions, failtures, lessons for particular process ..., once you come across the similar thing, the previous experiences will help definitely. A white book for your own organization could be interesting, but may be not useful for others.
No invent the whell
The PmboK is important in the context of one project, but not about several projects...
Is important know this, the knowledge management enable improve the project and either improve thr portifolio of projects.
No invent the whell
The PmboK is important in the context of one project, but not about several projects...
Is important know this, the knowledge management enable improve the project and either improve thr portifolio of projects.
Next step for the SIG
Hi,
Maybe it's time for those interested in concrete research collaboration to express some research questions, more or less precise, in order to collect and see where small groups could work together on precise topics.
For example, I would like to know from Carole about his research on complexity science, as I am interested in automotive and airplane (and also construction) projects into the propagation of changes or decisions in the real complex network. We identify and quantify such interactions, in order to anticipate future consequences and/or to recognize previous similar situations (as we know what were the consequences). Projects are full of bad stories due to complexity and its poor management.
Another question that could become a collaboration project is about context definition and measurement of a distance between a project and the other projects that could be the source of information/knowledge.
I suggest that during March we collect everyone's concrete and precise ideas, in order to be able for potential SIG members to point on his/her key topics.
Integration
I think that is very important the aspect of keep the team of project in contact.
Because, it can avoid lost of knowledge about the projects, main in offices of projects.
The aspect of networking is wonderful.
People Power
Hi Frank
In ref to your question about where to invest your one euro/dollar, my answer would relate to people every time. I wanted to jump and say recruitment, but I don't mean recruitment of unknown people. Therefore, the one euro/dollar would go into maintaining networks of relationships with people with the intention of getting to know them before you work with them. I would invest the euro/dollar there because then I would know who to call when I needed to build the right team, and if you get the right people/mix on the right projects and the x factor is there, then even if you start out with zero information, the people will pull it together: where there's a will, there's a way!
Best wishes, Carol
The first step
Hi everybody
Your questions are relevant about cultural and invidual aspects of KM, and about the mix of skills and motivation.
The contextual description of a project and of an information or a knowledge is a major stake, as it involves the relevance and the usefulness of this information for the project members. Maybe we can argue that a mix of skills, motivation AND well-selected historic information should be better as without. A question could be: if I had only one euro (or dollar or whatever) to invest, would it be better to put it into recruitment, training, team-building, information system, or a balanced mix (but how to define and measure this balance ?).
For the PMI aspects, as member of the Board of a PMI Chapter, I know the PMBOK (which means Project Management BODY of Knowledge...) and its vocation to give a global structure, and not detailed tools & techniques. The concept of "lessons learned", even it is written many times in the PMBOK, does not help us in our real projects, when the question is: "how can I find these lessons, and how can I measure if they are relevant with my actual context?". This is where the PMI wants to keep generic, and not to propose some list of existing tools, softwares, or whatever.
If someone can help to pursue the work about these gap measurements between previous and actual context, it would be very useful (my opinion).
KM for PM
PM, in IT at least, has developed in a highly structured environment amongst very analytical people who have already captured a lot of knowledge and who have built KM into their processes.
In methodologies such as PRINCE the act of documenting the project before activities take place does lead to the generation of KM suitable materials. As compared to a BoK that defines common industry practice, these actual project records can then provide informaton that relates the BoK to one's own environment.
The trick is to have them filed in such a way that subsequent projects/staff can locate them easily.
Except for the small flaw that most PMs hate writing up documentation and would much rather just get on with the job.....
Regards, Samantha
new horizon
Thanks for the KM for PM SIG, and for the initiation.
These issues inspired to have insight into and understanding of "An information model in order to better manage complexity in projects" by Franck Marle, Etienne Lardeur, and "Three standard operators for contribution to a recursive planning process" by Jean-Claude Bocquet, Franck Marle. I would appreciate information on success in the research domain of 2004-2006. In my opinion, the given concepts, models and outcomes (the world knowledge society) also could be reused, applied designing and rethinking KM activities in our enterprises - e.g. how can we efficiently and effectively keep knowledge from ongoing projects ?
PMBoK ?
Do we invent the wheel again:
Look at PMBoK :
http://www.pmi.org/info/default.asp
Project Management Book of Knowledge......
Projects --> Where's the passion for the mission gone?
Hi!
Love this topic, but in terms of how the spark and excitement can be brought to a project, and not necessarily by answering the questions you raised (which are relevant of course, but it's just that I believe if you have the right mix of people and motivation on a project that all of that stuff will resolve itself naturally - ok, maybe this is too simplistic... but you get my drift). I set up a blog a few months ago at http://projectmadness.blogspot.com/ because I wanted to explore and link to stuff I found that might make projects more alive and interesting (more to do with the content and being engaged in an adventure with Indiana Jones than ticking milestones off a Gannt chart with David Brent!). As yet that blog isn't that exciting or filled with too much interesting stuff.... but I'd definitely be keen to discuss these issues (and yours) more...
Best wishes, Carol
KM and PM
It would be extremely difficult to seperate KM from the Project management activities. It should be completely integrated with the PM concepts inorder to effectively share or reuse the knowledge people gained from the projects. I dont think there is specific way of doing this in KM like defined PM methodologies. KM is people oriented and it required lot cultural approach in order to succeed.
Institutionalizing Knowledge in Projects
Check out my simple article at http://www.lpcube.com/wise/project/institutionalize.html