Knowledge Matters

Understanding knowledge relationships

Adobe pdf file Network project management: Visualising collective knowledge to better understand and model a project-portfolio . This is my PhD thesis which was accepted in January 2012. The abstract reads as follows.

This research contributes to the bodies of knowledge in the general management, knowledge management, project management, network analysis, and system dynamics disciplines. The primary contribution is the proof of a holistic business methodology that elicits the capacity of an organisation to engage effectively in its activities, particularly within project-program and project-portfolio environments. The methodology, which I have called Business Network Analysis™, bridges the instrumental and social action management discourses to help managers mobilise and leverage knowledge assets, and to understand their knowledge landscape. It provides any combination of quantitative, qualitative, and graphical answers across the ‘know-how, know-what, know-why, know-who, know-where, know-when, and know-how-much’ business knowledge components.

In project-program and project-portfolio environments the methodology can be used at the level of artefacts, processes, individuals, teams, departments, or organisations to:

Conspicuous Service CrossToday is Australia Day and I’m in Wellington, New Zealand. Today I was awarded a Conspicuous Service Cross within the Australian National Honours System. The citation reads in part “… for outstanding achievement in project management, strategic reform agenda implementation, and the development and acquisition of an e-health system for Defence”.

I’m very humbled to be recognised with such an honour, because as almost anyone who has received similar awards will tell you the effort was not solely theirs. Many people contribute and they go unrecognised. This was most certainly the case for my award.

Naturally I’m also very proud to be recognised in such a way: more so because I used the Business Network Analysis™ methodology described elsewhere on this website and in my PhD thesis as part of my project management approach, and in particular for the e-health system.

I've done a good deal of reading lately around my usual themes of knowledge management, project management, and network analysis. I've also been reading a good deal about chaos, complexity, and systems, which are other areas of interest. In synthesising all of these disciplines I've come to realise just how useful Dave Snowden's Cynefin Framework actually is, and I have decided to incorporate it into my doctoral thesis. I just wish Dave would publish his long promised and overdue book. So I can gain a greater understanding of his framework I've decided to enrol in his next course in Australia , but I digress.

In an earlier blog I mentioned of Remington and Pollack's book "Tools for Complex Projects ". They classify projects as being structurally complex, technically complex, directionally complex, and/or temporarily complex. Now it seems to me their classification and the Cynefin Framework fit together very nicely, as shown in the illustration.

Cynefin Framework and Project Management

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