# Presentation: 424087

## Transferring Knowledge Between and Within Project Teams

**Jim Lee, PMP**
*Knowledge Management Consultant*
*Lee Consulting Group*

## Learning objectives

- What is project knowledge?
- Why project archives aren’t enough
- What do you need to effectively transfer project knowledge?
- Knowledge Management within the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®)

## First, what’s Knowledge?

- Knowledge Power

## First, what’s Knowledge?

- Knowledge Power
- Time = $

## First, what’s Knowledge?

- Knowledge Power
- Time = $
- Therefore,
- Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

- Power = Work (W) / Time (T)

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

- Power = Work (W) / Time (T)
- Work = Force (F) x Distance (d)

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

- Power = Work (W) / Time (T)
- Work = Force (F) x Distance (d)
- Force = Mass (m) x Acceleration (a)

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

- Power = Work (W) / Time (T)
- Work = Force (F) x Distance (d)
- Force = Mass (m) x Acceleration (a)
- Accel = Distance (d) x Time (t)2
- so, Power = md2 / t3

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

- Power = Work (W) / Time (T)
- Work = Force (F) x Distance (d)
- Force = Mass (m) x Acceleration (a)
- Accel = Distance (d) x Time (t)2
- so, Power = md2 / t3
- hence, the substitution is
- Knowledge (K) = md2 / Money ($)3

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

- Also, Since distance *lends* enchantment  and enchantment is* magical *(*), we can write:

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

- Also, Since distance *lends* enchantment  and enchantment is* magical *(*), we can write:
- K = mdi *2/$3  where i is the interest rate for lending

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

- Also, Since distance *lends* enchantment  and enchantment is* magical *(*), we can write:
- K = mdi *2/$3  where i is the interest rate for lending
- so, $ = cube root (mdi*2/K)

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

- Also, Since distance *lends* enchantment  and enchantment is* magical *(*), we can write:
- K = mdi *2/$3  where i is the interest rate for lending
- so, $ = cube root (mdi*2/K)
- from which we can deduce that:

## Knowledgef(Power & Time)$

*Interesting things create Knowledge*
*Making $ requires some degree of magic*

## What’s Project Knowledge?

- What knowledge do you collect:
**	**About projects?
- 	For projects?
- 	From projects?

## Project Knowledge ?

- Re-usable
- Shareable
- Repeatable
- Contextual

## Aren’t project archives enough?

- What’s in it?
- Who does it?
- When do you do it?
- What do you do with it?

## Why Knowledge? Why now?

- Search for competitive advantage and differentiation
- High cost processes
- Leveraging an organization’s entire staff
- “corporate amnesia”
- Rapidly changing technology

## What’s Knowledge Management?

- “Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, managing and sharing all of an enterprise’s information needs.** **

- 1 GartnerGroup Research Note, October 11, 1996

## What’s Knowledge Management?

- “Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, managing and sharing all of an enterprise’s information needs.  These information assets may include databases, documents, policies and procedures

- 1 GartnerGroup Research Note, October 11, 1996

## What’s Knowledge Management?

- “Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, managing and sharing all of an enterprise’s information needs.  These information assets may include databases, documents, policies and procedures as well as previously unarticulated expertise and experience resident in individual workers.”1

- 1 GartnerGroup Research Note, October 11, 1996

## What’s Knowledge Management?

- “Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, managing and sharing all of an enterprise’s information needs.  These information assets may include databases, documents, policies and procedures as well as previously unarticulated expertise and experience resident in individual workers.”1

- 1 GartnerGroup Research Note, October 11, 1996

## What does KM require?

***“******People are our most important asset.”***

- innumerable managers throughout the ages

## What does KM require?

***“******I wish we knew what we know at HP.”***

- Lew Platt, Hewlett-Packard

## What does KM require?

***“******Process? We don’t need no stinkin’ process.”***

- with apologies to Cheech and Chong

## What does KM require?

***“******Wire it and they will  come.” ****

- James Earl Jones (not)

- * Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth

## So putting it all together...

**Content**

**People**

**Technology**

**Process**

## KM isn’t practiced everywhere

- There’s not a knowledge sharing culture within the firm:
- People paid on how much “more” they know
- “Experts” are most highly valued
- No process for collaboration
- Too difficult to determine “costs” of Knowledge Management
- Technical infrastructure “too costly”

## Community of Practice (CoP)

## Synchronous collaboration

## Project Team collaboration

## KM meets the PMBOK

- Integration management
- Scope management
- Time management
- Cost management
- Quality management
- Human resources management
- Communications management
- Risk management
- Procurement management

## Integration management

- WBS of similar projects
- Re-use of elements of previous project plans such as performance records and project charters
- Sharing stakeholder skills and knowledge
- Change control systems and configuration management
- Lessons learned

## Scope management

- Previous project selection decisions
- Decision modeling and expert judgment
- Previous project deliverables
- Previous errors and omissions
- WBS templates
- Lessons learned

## Time management

- Activities from previous projects
- Activity and WBS templates
- Discretionary dependencies, or “best practices”
- Network templates, or “fragnets”
- Duration estimates and actual performance from previous projects
- Lessons learned

## Cost management

- Specialized resource knowledge; skills required on previous projects
- Using expert judgment to assist with resource planning
- Re-using previous projects’ actual costs in analogous, or “top-down” estimating
- Lessons learned

## Quality management

- Systems: ISO9000, PDCA
- Benchmarking against previous or similar projects
- Checklists
- Quality improvement, or “working smarter, not harder”
- Lessons learned from quality audits

## Human resource management

- Personal and organizational relationships often temporary and new in projects
- Project interfaces: organizational, technical, interpersonal
- Templates and HR policies
- Training for performance improvement

## Communications management

- Technology as enablers to project communications
- Information retrieval and distribution systems
- Project archives
- Lessons learned

## Risk management

- Historical information from previous projects, such as project archives
- Project team knowledge
- Checklists
- Mitigating risk using expert judgment
- Previous contingency plans against risk events

## Procurement management

- Using expert judgment to assist with procurement planning
- Contracts from similar, previous project procurement activities
- Standard forms, such as RFP, RFQs
- Contract change control system
- Lessons learned from performance audits

## What we’ve learned

- The definition of project knowledge
- Why project archives aren’t enough
- How to effectively transfer project knowledge
- KM and the PMBOK

## Why Knowledge Management?

***Why Knowledge Management?***

- 1

## Why Knowledge Management?

***Why Knowledge Management?***

- Sean O’Keefe, NASA administrator
- testifying at a Senate subcommittee hearing

- 1 The Plain Dealer, March 7, 2003

- 1

## Questions?