Benefits of Conducting Postproject Reviews to Capture Lessons Learned

Organizational learning has been a focus of scholars since 1970. Researchers have demonstrated that conducting postproject reviews to capture lessons learned significantly improves organizational learning. Guided by the concept of organizational learning, the purpose of this case study was to explore how 6 New York metropolitan organizational leaders used postproject reviews to prevent project managers from repeating the same mistakes, increasing cost and time overruns, and experiencing project failure. Semistructured face-to-face and phone interviews were conducted with a project sponsor and 5 project managers in the New York metropolitan area. Data were analyzed using the process of coding and condensing the codes, which produced 5 themes, including effective lessons learned, capturing lessons learned, benefits of lessons learned, barriers to postproject reviews, and leadership support. The findings of this study indicated that organizational leaders used standard templates and organizational policies to ensure project managers execute postproject reviews. Organizational leaders and project managers may benefit from the findings of this study by learning the advantages of conducting postproject reviews. This study may contribute to positive social change by organizations achieving cost avoidance when they reduce project failures and increase project success

Using a Knowledge Management Approach to Support Effective Succession Planning in the Civil Service

The modern workforce is highly mobile. The challenge facing organisations is how to safeguard key expertise and knowledge in the face of staff mobility and turnover. The Irish Civil Service is still recovering from the impacts of significant loss of staff, and their knowledge and expertise, as a result of cutbacks over recent years. This project will establish the potential of using a Knowledge Management approach to support effective succession planning in the Civil Service. The literature review charts the evolution of Knowledge Management from when the phrase was first coined in 1986 through to what is considered to be the latest generation of Knowledge Management enabled by Social Software. The journey has not been an easy one with challenges along the way including confusing terminology, failing initiatives, and an over-emphasis on technology not entirely suited to the human endeavour that is knowing. However, the arrival of Social Software, or Web 2.0, so heavily used by the millennial generation, has revitalised the KM field with it’s the enhanced user experience. This project was initially informed by interviews with recent appointees to their roles and a case study on the experience of one organisation in using a wiki to support knowledge management. A OneNote wiki hosted on Microsoft SharePoint was implemented and a group of 16 middle managers participated in the experiment to assess its potential as a repository to capture and share key knowledge about the organisation. The conclusions of the experiment include that succession planning is important for organisations to protect key knowledge and expertise; it is important to strike the right balance between people, process, and technology; use of overly academic or technical language should be avoided; the technology is no longer a major inhibitor; structures and rules should be in place so that only appropriate content is posted to a corporate wiki; for a wiki to be successful it needs to be relevant, have a purpose, and the content updated on an on-going basis; people are the most important dimension to succession planning and any knowledge-based endeavour

Managing technical knowledge to enhance organisational best practice

In recent years the construction industry has become increasingly aware of the potential of the technical knowledge held by construction professionals and the need to manage it effectively. However, organisations have experienced numerous problems in implementing and sustaining Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives. A key reason for this, which has been cited both within industry and academia, is a lack of understanding of the best-suited KM approaches available and how to adopt them. In particular, the importance of people-orientated KM practices, specifically in the case of construction firms who have a high level of dependence on the tacit knowledge of their employees, has been well documented with many KM authors calling for further research in this area. The research undertaken for this study was initiated in response to the need for further research and an improved understanding of KM (people-orientated KM in particular) best practice. The research was also focussed on establishing an effective KM initiative within Ramboll Whitbybird; the sponsoring organisation. The central aim of the research was therefore to “deliver a framework that facilitates the retention and reuse of knowledge, which will increase Ramboll Whitbybird’s potential to drive engineering best practice and respond appropriately to conventional and emerging business opportunities.” To achieve this an action research approach was adopted, facilitated through the use of literature reviews, interviews, focus groups, and other data collection methods, to enable the findings to be implemented within an industrial setting. Through extensive industry involvement the research highlighted the core components necessary for a successful KM initiative, and the actions necessary from those involved in implementing, managing and sustaining KM activities within construction firms. The findings demonstrated that an organisation wishing to realise effective KM needs to establish a clear definition and understanding of KM across the business, which can be achieved through the compilation of a KM strategy (statement) and action plan. It also needs to acknowledge the importance of addressing the critical factors that will determine the success of its KM initiative such as the need for KM champions and a supporting team, a fit with the way people work and an alignment with business objectives. The research also highlighted the importance of people-orientated KM practices, and that construction organisations in particular should identify and prioritise KM activities such as Communities of Practice (CoPs), due to their reliance on tacit knowledge transfer. However, in order to maximise the benefits to individuals and the business, the organisation will need to take a ‘light touch’ approach to the management of CoPs. Supporting people-based KM activities with the right technology is an important factor, particularly as organisations expand and become more geographically dispersed. To ensure that this technology is an effective supporter of KM it needs to be tailored to fit with the KM needs of the business, and will need to become de-centralised in its operation. Finally, the research outlined the importance for the organisation to consider the integration of KM within the daily operation of the business by incorporating KM effectively into communication and reporting structures, while also ensuring that it becomes a core aspect of its Quality Assurance (QA) procedures

Knowledge-Intensive Processes: Characteristics, Requirements and Analysis of Contemporary Approaches

Engineering of knowledge-intensive processes (KiPs) is far from being mastered, since they are genuinely knowledge- and data-centric, and require substantial flexibility, at both design- and run-time. In this work, starting from a scientific literature analysis in the area of KiPs and from three real-world domains and application scenarios, we provide a precise characterization of KiPs. Furthermore, we devise some general requirements related to KiPs management and execution. Such requirements contribute to the definition of an evaluation framework to assess current system support for KiPs. To this end, we present a critical analysis on a number of existing process-oriented approaches by discussing their efficacy against the requirements

Editing Team: Markus Fiedler

and contributions of the FIA community on the important research topics that should be addressed for the Framework Programme 8 research programmes broadly grouped around three main concerns; economic and business interests; societal interests and challenges; technical disruptions and capabilities. The contents of this roadmap originate with the community of researchers working on all aspects of the Future Internet and meet to share and discuss ideas through the Future Internet Assembly through an open consultation of research projects who participate in FIA. This roadmap is primarily concerned with identifying research that can be carried out in the second half of this decade and which will have an impact in 2020 and beyond. By ‘impact ’ we mean will result in products, services, systems, capabilities, that come to market and are available and deployed in that timeframe The approach adopted in this report is to integrate contributions across the entire space of future Internet research with the aim of bringing out the vision for how and where the Internet will make a significant difference in the future and identifying the broad challenges and gaps, and identifying the solutions and research needs in the future. In this report we have summarised and grouped ideas with the aim of identifying the strong themes and consistent challenges that emerge looking acros

Aggregated Causal Maps: An Approach To Elicit And Aggregate The Knowledge Of Multiple Experts

This paper presents a systematic procedure to elicit and aggregate the knowledge of multiple individual experts and represent it in the form of an Aggregated Causal Map (ACM). This procedure differs from existing methods in two ways. First, unlike other methods, this method does not rely on group interaction in eliciting knowledge of multiple experts, and, therefore, is not fraught with biases associated with group dynamics. Second, this method uses both the idiographic and nomothetic approaches while existing methods focus on nomothetic approaches to knowledge elicitation. We draw on the strengths of both approaches by using the idiographic approach to elicit and aggregate the knowledge of multiple experts and the nomothetic approach to validate the knowledge elicited. We illustrate the procedure by constructing the ACM of eight key decision makers about an enterprise system adoption decision

Improving construction site management practices through knowledge management

There are several challenging engineering and management problems that occur on construction sites. Failure in managing construction site problems results in a high proportion of rework, defects, delays, disputes and cost overruns on construction projects. In site management, knowledge is often embedded not only in documents and repositories but also in organisational routines, processes, practices and norms. However, site management teams still do not have a systematic approach to managing knowledge. Knowledge management (KM) processes can effectively be used to enable construction site managers deal with on-site problems and risks in a systematic and efficient way. With regard to these problems, the aim of this research was to investigate the improvement of construction site management practices through the integration of knowledge management processes. The research methodology adopted consisted of several methods. A literature review on site management practices and knowledge management as first undertaken . This was followed by case studies involving five construction sites which sought to investigate the key problems of site management practices and to examine existing knowledge management practices on the construction site. They also explored how KM processes could improve current site management practices. The cases tudy findings underpinned by literature results were used to develop a conceptual framework to managing construction knowledge that is entrenched in site management processes. The integrated K&4 framework (incorporating both proactive and reactive approaches) was intended to enable site managers to adopt a knowledge management approach to addressing site management problems. The framework was encapsulated in a computer-based prototype system (developed using Microsoft Visual Basic) to simplify the use of the integrated KM framework and provide construction organisations with a practical tool. Evaluation of the prototype system was carried out by industry practitioners and construction researchers to assess its appropriateness and functionality. It was established that the prototype system was highly effective in enabling site managers to address site management problems from a knowledge management perspective. Several benefits of the system were also identified. It is concluded that construction site management practices can be improved if the knowledge dimensions of the problems are well understood and appropriately managed. This research has developed an integrated KM framework that provides a structured approach to achieving this. The framework is simple to use, requires a relatively short time to implement, is scalable to any type of project and can easily be deployed on any construction site. Knowledge gains economic value when it is used to solve problems, explore opportunities and make decisions. The developed prototype system is expected to increase the ability of the site manager to learn from previous experience and to better address any site management problems that may occur. It also enables the site manager to be proactive in minimising the number of problems that occur on the construction site and to reduce the impact of those that do occur

Continuous Rationale Management

Continuous Software Engineering (CSE) is a software life cycle model open to frequent changes in requirements or technology. During CSE, software developers continuously make decisions on the requirements and design of the software or the development process. They establish essential decision knowledge, which they need to document and share so that it supports the evolution and changes of the software. The management of decision knowledge is called rationale management. Rationale management provides an opportunity to support the change process during CSE. However, rationale management is not well integrated into CSE. The overall goal of this dissertation is to provide workflows and tool support for continuous rationale management. The dissertation contributes an interview study with practitioners from the industry, which investigates rationale management problems, current practices, and features to support continuous rationale management beneficial for practitioners. Problems of rationale management in practice are threefold: First, documenting decision knowledge is intrusive in the development process and an additional effort. Second, the high amount of distributed decision knowledge documentation is difficult to access and use. Third, the documented knowledge can be of low quality, e.g., outdated, which impedes its use. The dissertation contributes a systematic mapping study on recommendation and classification approaches to treat the rationale management problems. The major contribution of this dissertation is a validated approach for continuous rationale management consisting of the ConRat life cycle model extension and the comprehensive ConDec tool support. To reduce intrusiveness and additional effort, ConRat integrates rationale management activities into existing workflows, such as requirements elicitation, development, and meetings. ConDec integrates into standard development tools instead of providing a separate tool. ConDec enables lightweight capturing and use of decision knowledge from various artifacts and reduces the developers' effort through automatic text classification, recommendation, and nudging mechanisms for rationale management. To enable access and use of distributed decision knowledge documentation, ConRat defines a knowledge model of decision knowledge and other artifacts. ConDec instantiates the model as a knowledge graph and offers interactive knowledge views with useful tailoring, e.g., transitive linking. To operationalize high quality, ConRat introduces the rationale backlog, the definition of done for knowledge documentation, and metrics for intra-rationale completeness and decision coverage of requirements and code. ConDec implements these agile concepts for rationale management and a knowledge dashboard. ConDec also supports consistent changes through change impact analysis. The dissertation shows the feasibility, effectiveness, and user acceptance of ConRat and ConDec in six case study projects in an industrial setting. Besides, it comprehensively analyses the rationale documentation created in the projects. The validation indicates that ConRat and ConDec benefit CSE projects. Based on the dissertation, continuous rationale management should become a standard part of CSE, like automated testing or continuous integration