{"id":2596,"date":"2009-06-17T07:00:58","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T14:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=2596"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:31:11","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:31:11","slug":"project-management-on-knowledge-management-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=2596","title":{"rendered":"Project Management on Knowledge Management projects"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"photo<\/a>
photo by nutmeg66<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My first two guest posts were about the intersection of Knowledge Management and Project Management; in this post I would like to talk about what I think are some of the peculiarities of Knowledge Management projects.<\/p>\n

For the most part Knowledge Management projects are just like any other projects, tasks have to be delineated, risk managed, status reports given, you know the drill. What I think is different about knowledge management projects is that they tend to touch on more of the organization, often they are enterprise wide and no one wants to own them in part because they don\u2019t understand them.<\/p>\n

If an owner or owners are identified and a management change occurs it can throw the whole project into question. The success of the project often comes down to influence and sustained management support from one person at least for the first little while, until the business case is proven. Although even then I have seen successful projects shut-down because the new management team didn\u2019t understand the value of the initiative.<\/p>\n

There are often multiple stakeholders on both the business and IT side, with IT taking a lead. IT taking the lead is a problem. Technology is an enabler and a critical part of the project, but the project needs to be lead by the business. Technology ultimately needs to enable business processes, not be some extra \u201cnice to have.\u201d This only happens if business takes the lead and ensures that the technology is supporting business processes, not hampering them. When business leads they focus on the people and process part of the equation, and work to provide a balanced solution, not a technology-centric one.<\/p>\n

The value of Knowledge Management is often hard to measure, in tangible ways. Connecting people to the knowledge they need to do their jobs is often described as an opportunity cost. How can I measure something if I don\u2019t know the value of having it? For example, what if I \u201crecreate the wheel\u201d because I didn\u2019t know a colleague in another region had already \u201ccreated the wheel\u201d? You never know you\u2019ve recreated something, so can\u2019t measure the cost\/benefit.<\/p>\n

One project I did was like that, a team in Asia-Pacific had found a solution to their ISO 9000 document management needs, it had taken them 6 months. Another team in North America was starting out on finding a solution to the same problem. I connected the two teams and the second one took 3 weeks to get their documentation sorted out because they could re-use what the first team had done. If the connection hadn\u2019t been made, the second team could have taken six months or even longer to resolve the issue, but would never have known the difference.<\/p>\n

Those are what I think are the main oddities about Knowledge Management projects, they aren\u2019t reasons not to do them, just issues to be aware of and monitor closely throughout the project lifecycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first two guest posts were about the intersection of Knowledge Management and Project Management; in this post I would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1487,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-communications","category-risk-management"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14261,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions\/14261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}