Assembling The Project Compendium - Computing Technical ...

Knowledge management and learning are affected by the situational context conditions of
the project (Ajmal and Koskinen, 2008; Sense, 2007b). Often project members have never
had a relationship with each other, therefore documented knowledge via components can
provide avenues for knowledge transfer where social interaction is limited. Components
may suit the cognitive learning styles of some people more than others. Components
support a structured approach to learning which leads to better quality and quantity of
learning as opposed to learning under an unstructured approach (Sense, 2007b).
Components may help to mitigate some major knowledge risks to projects such as failure to
learn from past projects, inadequate knowledge integration, incomplete knowledge transfer,
loss of knowledge when team members leave, loss of knowledge between phases and failure
to capture lessons learnt (Reich, 2007).
One of the major obstacles to knowledge management is the propensity of people wanting
to hold back information rather than share it (Ajmal and Koskinen, 2008; Jewels, 2006). For
effective knowledge transfer an environment that supports social interaction should be
established in conjunction with the compendium (Reich, 2007). Project participants are
dependent upon both codification (capturing and storing of knowledge) and personal forms
of knowledge flow for effective learning (Sense, 2008).
Knowledge management is complicated through increased prevalence of project teams being
dispersed at various locations around the world. A structure to represent knowledge is
becoming increasingly important (Raghu and Vinze, 2007). Project team members need to
collaborate across different geographical sites, time zones, organisations and cultures.
Knowledge management within global teams brings additional complexities from a cultural
perspective. For example, the propensity to share knowledge is different in cultures with a
high as opposed to low sense of collectivism (Burchell and Gilden, 2008). Sharing
knowledge in distributed teams situated at various locations can be facilitated by
collaborative software. Collaborative software supports codification and storage of
knowledge which are key functions of components and they can lead to improved
collaboration decreased costs and increased productivity (Hedgebeth, 2007; Henry et al.,
2007; Romano et al., 2002).
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