Bipin Lekshmanan PMPProject Manager| Wipro TechnologiesEdison, Nj, United States
How can we capture the real and relevant tacit knowledge from an organization standpoint as many times the key employees would leave with a fair amount of experience and knowledge (unknown to the organization) and the new guy/team again reinvents the wheel? Saving Changes...
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Jim BlackCEO| OnePagerCentennial, Co, United States
Bipin,
You might look at the TimeArrow toolset at www.chroniclegraphics.com. These allow you to capture the changing plans and unexpected events that happen in each project. Seeing how the project team responded to challenges is a good way of capturing a lot of the tacit knowledge. Saving Changes...
Tacit are like "war stories", where they're experienced, unwritten, and "locked" within the heads of the bearer. Any knowledge that can be readily codified using computer applications like that suggested by Jim Black is, by definition, *not* tacit knowledge - a common misunderstanding on what knowledge management is.
One way to help transfer (or generate, depending on your academic inclination) of tacit knowledge is by encouraging people to talk to each other more. Create a conducive environment for this (e.g., comfortable sitting area near the coffee pot, and in proximity to whiteboards and markers). This way tacit knowledge of an individual is transferred to the group, and when the new person joins, be transferred to this person as well. Do note this is more of an organisational culture issue, therefore a process-centric approach (e.g., by having formal meetings, mandating documentation procedures) is ineffective.
I speak not as an academic, but an experienced IT professional with prior KM training. Saving Changes...
Bipin Lekshmanan PMPProject Manager| Wipro TechnologiesEdison, Nj, United States
Thank you, Jake. Sorry about the late reply. Saving Changes...
Jim BlackCEO| OnePagerCentennial, Co, United States
Sorry for the long delay in responding to Jake Ashburn's post! I just got a notification today. I agree that "tacit" means "locked away in someone's head" but I think there are ways to capture and express such "war story" knowledge with the help of software. Just like a novelist captures and expresses insight by creating a fictional narrative using software like Microsoft Word, a project manager can capture and express tacit knowledge by authoring a "project war-story" in software like TimeArrow. We're not talking about mere codification here. We're talking about taking a sequence of project events and wrapping an insightful narrative around it. What the software does is to help the author get her facts straight so that the narrative has a solid underpinning. Then the author adds all the observations, thoughts, and experiences that are in her head. When others play this story back, they experience something that transfers some of that tacit knowledge into their heads. Does this make sense? Saving Changes...
Firstly, I'd like to declare this reply is from a knowledge management perspective, and not from a project management perspective.
The problem with tacit knowledge is in the rich details. From experience it is economically not feasible to capture it in a written form. Basically there is just too much to write, and sometimes quite impossible to describe. E.g. how do you sufficiently record the collective reaction of a project team against a design decision, where the reaction arises from the interaction between people in the team, as well as between the team (as a whole and individually) and the surrounding environment (i.e., the context). Also, the time and discipline required from all parties to contribute to this is simply not sustainable.
Software such as TimeArrow is perhaps effective in capturing some of the knowledge on a project management (i.e., higher) level. The operative word here is "some", as the author (project manager, PM) will have his/her biases, and some facts may not be made known to the PM either intentionally or unintentionally. Therefore the (war-)story that is told in this case is that just from the PM's perspective. The accuracy and objectivity of the story/narration are always questionable; the environmental context (such as pressure from other projects, or the PM's own personal problems) in which an event took place can be a big factor on how it is reported and recorded.
This is not to say you should not use software such as TimeArrow. It depends on what you want to get out of it. Having not used it myself before, it may be a perfectly effective tool for project management. In my opinion, however, talking and collaboration are still the best ways for tacit knowledge transfer.
You have to keep an open mind when looking for a system that will help improve knowledge management. It can be an online Q&A forum, with an organisational culture that encourages participation coupled with an effective search or data mining tool. It can even be just a set of walkie-talkies! See http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_edu/seelybrown/ for an account of how Xerox photocopier engineers shared their knowledge, which resulted in the introduction of 2-way radios:
"When they come back to the home office, they sit around playing cribbage, drinking coffee, swapping war stories. Amazing amounts of learning were happening in the telling of and listening to these war stories. In telling a story, the story gets refined. In listening to the story, fragments of past stories get reorganized and refined and so on and so forth. Learning was happening in a fantastic way in terms of telling and listening to stories."
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Gary SlaterHead of Business Systems| BLNESeaham, United Kingdom
Embrace Web 2.0 technologies and the behaviours of social networkers and you will have the toolkit to capture tacit knowledge. 1 million pages on Wikipedia is testament to that..... Saving Changes...
Cindie PridySr. Project Manager Global Benchmarking| PTAIMissouri City, Tx, United States
This is an important topic to sustaining competitive advantage as the knowledge in individual''s heads is lost when they leave the company. In project-based organizations the same thing can occur as projects disband and the collective project knowledge goes different directions.
Knowledge transfer across projects, knowledge assimilation, and project performance are the key areas of my doctorial dissertation that I am conducting at Capella University. If you would like to help by taking a short (15 minute) survey it would be greatly appreciated. The survey is located at:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9TWNK27
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
You do not that unless to start a knowledge management environment. To do that you need to work on critical things like organizational culture. As @Cindie stated above is critical to sustain competitive advantage and is critical to gain organizational agility (does menas to implement agile in the whole company). Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Since tacit knowledge is in people's head, your process is to get that knowledge transferred into a more permanent and accessible medium.
Make documentation mandatory for every team member, including yourself. All processes, checklists, lessons learned should be captured and shared. Saving Changes...
Brian MukoyiProjects Manager| J R Goddard ContractingBulawayo, Zimbabwe
great contributions from other writers. It depends on the depth and level the organisation in implementing knowledge management. collaborative approaches can unlock such. allowing more of "field day" demonstrations by skilled employees may also help to unlock that knowledge. it should be noted the most important aspect is the transfer of that knowledge and it can be done to workmates rather retained into an IT system. the value of that knowledge is in retention and use by others for continuous improvement. Saving Changes...
