Knowledge management is the process that enables collective and systematic creation, sharing and application of knowledge among individuals, teams, organizations and networks in order to achieve their operational and strategic goals ( North & Kumta, 2018). With the competitiveness in today’s economy, knowledge management in projects is a crucial factor in maintaining competitive advantage. Below is an insight on how knowledge management is applicable in project management.
To enhance competitiveness and in order to achieve business strategies and company's objectives, it is necessary for organizations to acquire knowledge both from within and outside the organization. Knowledge management facilitates organizations in achieving such information. There are four stages which are applicable to both knowledge management and project management namely; identification of knowledge, capturing the identified knowledge, sharing with project partners and stakeholders, application in the project and combining with existing knowledge (Ranf & Herman, 2018).
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New knowledge needs to be distributed to project managers for use in developing the projects. According to (Ranf & Herman, 2018), this can be done in two main ways. The first way is through project management procedures and the other way is through the project management community which consists of project beneficiaries, developers and all stakeholders. However, there is loss of information at every step of this process resulting to loss of about two thirds of ideas that are useful to the project (Ranf & Herman, 2018). To overcome this, the following strategies can be adopted; the project management office must take up the responsibility of correlation of results from review, and, the use of intranet should be adopted for storage and distribution of new ideas (Ranf & Herman, 2018).
Knowledge can be considered as an important strategic resource in developing and managing projects. Failure to adopt knowledge system and supporting culture does not only make identification of critical knowledge a challenge but could also result in loss of knowledge assets during a project’s life cycle. Knowledge management is therefore very critical in successful project management.
References
North, K., & Kumta, G. (2018). Knowledge management: Value creation through organizational learning . Springer.
Ranf, D. E., & Herman, R. (2018). Knowledge Management Contributions in Project Management. Land Forces Academy Review , 23 (4), 288-293.
