Managing At-Risk Knowledge Adds Value

  Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Knowledge Shelf  

Project team members and other key resources involved in the project are knowledge carriers. If you, as the project manager, knew you were going to lose one of your knowledge carriers from one day to the next, with no forewarning, how would you feel? Well, for loss of some of the person’s knowledge, you probably wouldn’t give a second thought; other knowledge and experience, on the other hand, might cause you sleepless nights. Quite clearly comprehensive, proactive risk management needs to also address the knowledge dimension of a project.

Project risk management needs to address the risk of resources not being available when they are supposed to work for the project. But when does project risk management become effective? Once the identified risks have been analyzed, the appropriate responses are planned and put into action. By this time, realistically, most of the planning processes for the project have been carried out and the project management plan has been established to a large degree. Considering how decisive the quality of the project management plan can be on the successful completion of the project, what would happen if we lost our senior project manager (who has managed several similar projects in the past) before we even get the subsidiary plans drafted?

This article promotes a structured approach to managing the knowledge risk and is aligned with…

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