Use of Knowledge Management Systems in Successful Project Management
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
Ask about the availability of the thesis by sending email to the Aalto University Learning Centre oppimiskeskus@aalto.fi
Authors
Date
2017
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
89
Series
Abstract
This thesis studied the use of knowledge management systems in project environment, both the current situation and requirements for the future. The best practices and current issues of using knowledge management systems in project management were first searched from the literature and then empirically studied in the interviewed organizations. The findings are discussed in relation to the literature, and recommendations for managerial actions are given. Limitations of the study also get consideration. Suggestions for future research directions are given at the end. The research questions were about how knowledge management systems can contribute to competence and knowledge management in projects, and what kind of specific requirements project managers have for knowledge management systems to be useful. This study did not restrict the view only on organization's internal issues, but also tried to cover inter-organizational issues and opportunities for improvement. Main parts of this thesis are the literature review and the empirical part. In the literature review firstly matters related to project management, its best practices, and known issues are covered in the knowledge management context. Then central and current studies in knowledge management including knowledge management systems are explored. This is the framework used in formulating the questions for the empirical part. The empirical part consists of interviews of persons with hands-on experience in software consultancy projects. In total 6 interviews were conducted featuring organizations of different sizes. The interviews were semi-structured and of exploratory nature in order to uncover interesting issues. Also definition of a knowledge management system presented some problems for a fully structured questionnaire to be viable. It was found that rarely software consultancy companies have an actual knowledge management strategy, and they rely on separate guides and inherited practices. Also no single tool exists for the whole knowledge management concept, but all organizations have multiple tools that may be used how ever seen fit by the project teams. Benefits from using these systems are attainable, but difficult to measure. Communication enabling tools are good for all phases of a project, the tendering phase can use references to previous project documents, and on-going projects would require competence development to be linked to the daily work. A lessons learned session at the end of a project can help to transfer knowledge, but is often overlooked due to time restrictions. Especially the multitude of knowledge management tools and skipping of the lessons learned session can lead an organization to forget valuable knowledge. Future improvements in knowledge management systems for project use would include better visualization of knowledge, a feedback loop to new project introduction, and better integration capabilities to other tools. Still, even with these improvements, tacit knowledge is going to be hard to transfer.Description
Thesis advisor
Rossi, MattiKeywords
knowledge, management, system, project, competence, software, consultancy