Knowledge Matters™

For the past five years I have worked semi-permanently in an organisation that manages a portfolio of 211 projects. This naturally has led to an interest in project management, and more particularly the nexus between knowledge management and project management. The nexus between the two disciplines is interesting. Projects can be conceived as entities or sites where knowledge is created, used, shared, stored, combined, and so on. All projects have people who work with knowledge under time and budget, and other resource constraints. In fact it is easy to build a cogent argument that says knowledge gaps in a project actually are the project risks. It is just as easy to expand the argument to include knowledge management as component of project management, where project managers integrate their people, process, technology and content resources.

The project management discipline has tried to embody knowledge management by publishing its best practices in a single repository, known as the Project Management Body of Knowledge or PMBOK® for short. (A competing body of knowledge is Projects in Controlled Environments, which is usually abbreviated to PRINCE®. However, an examination of both bodies of knowledge reveals large overlaps). The PMBOK® identifies nine knowledge areas as follows:

• integration management; 
• scope management; 
• time management; 
• cost management; 
• quality management; 
• human resource management; 
• communications management; 
• risk management; and 
• procurement management.

These knowledge areas are integrated with each other through five processes, defined as initiating, planning, executing, controlling and monitoring, and closing the project. A closer examination reveals the PMBOK® to be a set of guiding principles that tell the practitioner what they might do, but generally not how to do it. Now I don’t really have a problem with this because every project is different, but I have to wonder just how useful the PMBOK® is given even the most cursory review of the project management literature reveals cost over-runs are almost the norm, schedule over-runs are commonplace, and scope creep is typical. I am left with two questions –“Where is the knowledge in the PMBOK®?” and “What is missing from practice?”.

I think I know the answer to the second question – inadequate attention to the human and social dimensions. I am less sure about the first question but examining the PMBOK® through the lens of the Six Knows Knowledge Model I think we have know what knowledge, a little know why knowledge, and almost no know how knowledge. I suggest know who, know when, and know where knowledge are probably project specific and represent the human and social dimensions.

The PMBOK® may be useful in that it provides practitioners with a common language, a set of principles, and a base level of knowledge. There is no escaping however that knowledge of the principles does not guarantee success. Experience, or the ability to tap talent, always matters.

Regards Graham