Knowledge management may serve many purposes. It is vital to create knowledge assets for an organization, intellectual capital, and patents. Projects should have a base of previous learnings they can reuse, avoid mistakes, and become quicker. For individuals, it is a source to learn from and contribute to building their own reputation. Knowledge management goes beyond documentation as tacit knowledge needs human interaction to be transferred.
1. Yes, the more knowledge you take in, the better the certainty can be. Having multiple perspectives and options is beneficial in an explorative phase. On the other hand, remember the saying that the more I know, the more I know I know nothing (too much knowledge can confuse).
2. Knowledge management can trigger the need to seek experts. If knowledge assets are available, they can be reused, saving effort and time.
3. Certain knowledge assets include lessons learned, avoiding pitfalls, or mitigating certain risk events. I have seen a comprehensive spreadsheet asking for symptoms that were observed in past projects and providing risk mitigation suggestions.
4. Interesting question. Knowledge management may be implemented based on rational thinking. It creates sustainability, while management styles are based on behaviours and culture and are mostly irrational.
