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110 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

>> SHARING KNOWLEDGE ACROSS PROJECTS
The above indicates that exploiting knowledge that arises from projects is not
easy. However, this does not mean that organizations do not try hard to facili-
tate this. Thus, organizations have recognized the importance of cross-project
learning, and most project-management methodologies include practices aimed
at exploiting knowledge that is created within a project. This typically involves
maintaining project documentation and conducting project learning reviews.
In these, project members are asked to capture the knowledge and learning
from their project in the form of ‘lessons learned’ (Raelin, 2001). Often these
reviews are done at the end of the project or when a project has met a par-
ticular milestone (Kotnour, 1999). Once the knowledge has been captured, the
reviews are entered on databases, alongside other project documentation. The
idea is that other project teams or organizational members more generally can
then search these documents by project title, staff or keywords, assimilate the
knowledge they contain, and so learn from them. These databases are typically
computerized and, in larger firms, accessed via a corporate intranet. In this way,
it is assumed, knowledge and learning can be shared across projects and reinven-
tion can be avoided (Sharp, 2003).
However, evidence is accumulating that this kind of project review practice is
not very helpful (Von Zedtwitz, 2002). For example, Keegan and Turner (2001)
studied 18 project-based companies and found that all had post-project review
practices in place. They also report that: ‘In no single company did respondents
express satisfaction with the process’ (p. 90). These authors highlighted the main
problem as a lack of time. Clearly if no ‘lessons learned’ are placed on the data-
base because of pressure of time, then the exploitation of the knowledge will
not occur as anticipated. It is also apparent that, even when databases exist, and
time is available, there are limits to the extent that ‘lessons learnt’ are actually
used (Kotnour, 1999). This suggests that we need to consider problems with the
actual practice, not just the time available. For example, there is accumulating
evidence that the medium for capture and transfer – that is through databases and
intranets – is limited in terms of how far such technology can actually facilitate
knowledge sharing (e.g. Walsham, 2002). We cover this more fully in Chapter 7,
where we look at the use of ICT to share knowledge (i.e. Knowledge Manage-
ment Systems – KMS). Here, we focus on the more general problems associated
with sharing learning across projects, over and above, the problem of the existence
of learning boundaries between projects and organizations, already discussed.
There seem to be a number of reasons why sharing learning across projects is often
problematic, even when there are specific mechanisms in place to facilitate this:

Belief in uniqueness of context: It is not unusual to fi nd several projects of a very
similar nature going on in different parts of the organization but, typically, indi-
viduals do not necessarily see the connection between projects. The perceived
uniqueness of projects means there is often a view that learning in the project is
too specifi c to be relevant to the rest of the organization.

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