Turning Knowledge Into Value

  Governance   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   ProjectsAtWork  

Preliminary results from an ongoing research project suggest that it is not the experience and competence of individuals that matters most to project success; rather, it is the team members’ willingness to share and combine their knowledge.

In a competitive and depressed economic climate, executives want to know that any IT project they undertake will deliver a significant return on investment. Yet to date, most IT project research has focused on understanding project performance against time and budget targets. Little is known about IT projects and their success rate in delivering business value.

A new empirical research project exploring whether knowledge management practices affect business value suggests that a project team’s ability to openly communicate and share ideas has a significant impact on attaining business value.

Researchers Dr. Blaize Horner Reich and Dr. Andrew Gemino, business professors at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), and Dr. Chris Sauer of the University of Oxford have embarked on a four-year quest to determine the drivers of business value in IT-enabled business projects. They define business value as “the achievement of a set of strategic objectives which may be long- or short-term, financial or non-financial”.

Following from their belief that difficult projects must engage…

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