Lessons learned - a tool for sharing knowledge in project management

Abstract:

Knowledge sharing is one of the most important and crucial activities to an organisation’s operation and survival and ought to be a part of the organisation’s projects. However – knowledge sharing is often neglected, downsized and/or mitigated in said organisation’s projects. Knowledge sharing occurs both before, during and after projects (e.g. through the utilization of the tool lessons learned).

Knowledge constitutes a highly useful resource in order to gain competitive advantage hence making knowledge sharing of great value to the organisation. The success of knowledge sharing depends on a lot factors within the organisation such as culture, technology, incentives and trust. The most significant challenge to have a successful knowledge sharing culture is the transference of knowledge where this article aims to highlight the issues and give insight in how to overcome these issues. The issues to overcome depends on the type of knowledge whether it is explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge or embedded knowledge, the organisation must realise what kind of knowledge needed to be shared in the specific project and the importance of it in order to benefit the most, optimise the project process and have a successful outcome thus improving the organisation's opportunities to gain competitive advantage.