While there are a number of ways to engage in knowledge sharing one of the most powerful ones are of course the Brown Bag Session.

Brown bag seminars are generally offered to update the researching community about ongoing research. Usually held by schools and universities and governmental institutions, they involve lectures, presentations, or talks by researchers, mostly professors about their ongoing research. Professors may visit from other universities to talk about their research.

Brown bag seminars normally run an hour or two. Originally they were scheduled around lunchtime and participants were encouraged to bring their own lunch in a bag, explaining how the practice got its name. - Wikipedia

Why do this?

While there is no doubt that formalized learning, like trainings,  contribute heavily towards professional growth within an organization, however, the single biggest learning tool at our disposal is on-the-job learning. This allows people to leverage existing processes to create a structure around the way they work, while enabling a level of flexibility and creativity. The benefits of this approach would lead to new ways of successfully capturing, storing and share of tacit knowledge. Eventually leading to changes being made to existing processes, introducing new ones and in some cases doing away with the old.

Face-to-Face sessions are always important when it comes to knowledge sharing, this is because there is only so much knowledge a document can impart. Creating a platform which allows people to engage with one another is a very powerful tool.

How would you do this?

At the start of every project team members should be encouraged to present thoughts and ideas based on there previous experience and allow other team members to ask questions.

Some benefits of this approach are:

1. Allows the project manager to get a better understanding of his team and figure out where best to user them
2. Allowing team members to get to know one another.
3. Creating a platform that enables team members to showcase their knowledge and expertise .
4. Ensuring that knowledge and Best Practices from previous projects are re-used.

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Is there a way to ensure that Best Practices are identified for re-use at the beginning of a project? Not to mention following through with this idea across the entire length of a projects life?

We all know that in medium / large IT organizations there are a lot of changes made to the project delivery approach depending  on a variety of factors ( new environment, client request, new ideas, crunched timelines, etc ).  Invariably during the course of this change people stumble across newer and more efficient ways of doing work that deliver higher value.

So the question really is how do we capture these best practices and make them readily available to the next set of people trying to start a new project?

This is a great way of creating a process that allows new project members to bring themselves up to speed with the current project.

What is also important to understand is that capturing best practices alone, while effective, is not the best way to ensure the value spreading through your organization. Capturing critical resource information is just as important, which means once you’ve identified a resource you can update your best practices records to indicate who the “go-to” person for an identified best practice or lesson learnt is. This will start dialogue between people and drive knowledge sharing.

Over time you will see a steady shift as more and more people start using this as a platform to do a quick “read” before getting started with a project.

Stumbling Blocks:

You need to figure out creative ways of getting project members to translate the experiences they have gained into best practices. There is an effort to this, however you need to judge whether this investment in time is justified in the long run for your organization.

Benefits  of doing it correctly :

This will enable to achieve detailed task in projects faster, and also ensure quality in those tasks, as it reduces rework effort, and brings in consistency in work across different members.

Eventually it should help achieve better productivity, and lower defect density both at in process, and post delivery stage.

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I presume that a number of us agree that Knowledge Management is a necessity when running a project. This might be a formal process ( like a knowledge management initiative) or something that has, over time,  become an ingrained part of your project management approach.

During the course of a long running ( generally support / maintenance )  project there is a good chance that you will see team members leave and new people come on board. Whether by accident or design.

Great pressure is put on projects to ensure that they start delivering more value with less cost year on year. So how do you do this? Traditionally you figure out a way of delivering the same quality of work using a resource with less experience ( i.e : cost saving ). This would involve rotating your resources to ensure that your project expenses stay under control.

This is where an induction plan becomes very important.

In order to effectively manage the induction of every new member while ensuring that the time and effort spent in doing so is kept under control a well documented, and managed , induction training plan is necessary.

When the project is first started there is a lot of effort put into planning and executing a well orchestrated knowledge transfer, that way when you finally take over the work from your client you encounter as few hiccups as possible. Unfortunately this focus is generally lost after the project starts running properly and in a number of cases new team members are not given the same quality knowledge transition that the original people experienced. Needless to say this causes a lot of problems, including a gradual reduction in your service quality.

Using a simple document to map out ( day by day ) what a new team member is supposed to learn will allow you to keep track of how he / she is progressing and to ensure that every element of the transition process is covered.

Benefits of doing this correctly :

1. Increased service levels on a sustained basis
2. Reduces lead time for a new resource to be effective
3. Ability to track training progress and make changes as necessary
4. Increased client satisfaction
5. Creating a knowledge base that can be grown over time.

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The Project Portal has become an integral part of the project team’s work model, and while some projects do rely on internal shared drives to host information ( essentially code and documentation ) there is a strong case to move content to a platform that promotes collaboration.

The need to make this transition is stronger when you have a large team that is distributed across the globe.  With the large volumes of documentation that a project generates over its life it’s imperative that data sanctity is kept.

Why do we need to do this?

Well, a portal that’s accessible to teams across the globe allows them to interact with one another and increase synergy levels.

1. Becomes a quick reference for important documents and reduces confusion when multiple versions of the same document exists in different places.
2. Promotes interaction between team members across geographies and acts as a content guide for future issues.
3. Reduces learning time by promoting sharing online and improving productivity by reducing time required to identify relevant content and experts.
4. Can be used as a platform to communicate with team members regarding issues related to the project / company and client.

What should a project portal have?

There are a number of features that could find it’s way to a project portal, including:

• Project Announcements
• Client Information / News from the Client / Client Appreciation
• Contact Information of the PM, Tech Leads, Key Resources
• Calendar
• Tracking of Tasks and Issues
• A Resource Management Section
• Document Libraries for project artifacts
• Best Practices / Lessons Learned
• Discussion Forums
• The Project Wiki

Project Office.net has a great tool that allows you to perform a number of activities that are required during the execution of a project. In future posts we will do a walk through of the product and understand how its various features can be put to good use.

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As a Project Manager you are expected to know the strengths and weakness of the people in your team. While this is great in theory it generally takes a while before you gain a fairly good understanding of these skills and where best to use them ( unless of course you’ve worked with the very same team members before ).

This is of course challenging when you are in charge of a fairly large project, here you would probably bestow this responsibility on your project leads in the hope that they will have a better understanding of the skills of the team members.

I”m sure we all agree that is an unstated expectation to running  a successful project, it will allow you to speed up reaction times and ensure that the right people are chosen for specific tasks thereby saving you a lot of stress when the going gets tough.

While most organizations do mandate that their employees update their skills fairly regularly this is a practice that is for the most part overlooked.by the average employee. So it might make sense for you to create a small database ( this could be an excel ) which allows you to keep track of your teams skills.

The Benefits of implementing such a system are self evident:

• Ability to keep track of the skills of various team members
• Faster reaction time in case of project emergencies
• Ability to leverage team members better
• Perform a skill check for the team as a whole
• Create individual development plans for team members

This list needs to be updated at least once every quarter, to ensure the skills are current. While this is a tedious and time consuming task it is necessary for the long term success of the project.  in extreme cases make it a mandate for your team to update this with their information. Just keep in mind that the sheet should capture only information essential to you ( technical / functional knowledge , soft skills , etc ).

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In a previous post i talked about how useful a Wiki is within a project and how opening up a wiki and expecting team members to use it productively will probably not give you the best results.

Once you figured out which wiki tool to leverage ( if any ) and have rolled it out within your project the next big challenge is to promote its use.

Some considerations:

• Well, the biggest step to overcome is the inertia. Users seldom want to contribute when they see a completely blank space. Start putting up some of your own content and talk to a few of your team members to help build it into something substantial that you can then showcase to the rest of your team.
• Please keep in mind that being a corporate wiki every contribution made to it is tracked, there is no such thing as anonymity. Once you get over this hurdle you can leverage the fact that it is a great way to promote an individual as a knowledge creator.
• Don’t put too many rules and structures in place at the beginning, this is a sure way to derail the entire process. Allow your team the flexibility to grow the wiki the way they want it to. If you feel at any point that it is getting unmanageable you can always step in.
• The Wiki should be the first place your team looks for information, which means do not keep copies of this information sitting around in other places.
• Don’t expect an immediate return - A wiki takes time to grow.
• Educate your team - Take them through the entire process of creating an article on the wiki so they understand how it works. Do not make the mistake of assuming that just because everyone has seen Wikipedia they know how to use a wiki.
• Allow people to make mistakes and deviate from the “norm” - This is a creative process that will take some time to evolve, encourage a level of experimentation and allow your team to make mistakes. That is the only way they will learn how to use this effectively.
• Promote the wiki whenever you can

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Doing things better and in less time seems to be a standard requirement of most clients in long term maintenance engagements.

The thought process here is - you’ve spent the past year figuring out what we do and how we do it so now you need to to it little bit better - and this story continue year in and year out.

So while the organization at large agrees to this in principle ( i.e: the wordy contracts and service level agreements ) its’ up the Project Manager to actually make good on this promise.

The challenge now is to fine tune existing processes and this is where your team comes in. The more heads you put together to figure out a better way of doing things the better your results are going to be ( well most of the time anyway ).

In one such project they set up something called the innovation challenge. Here, employees were asked to suggest process changes that could improve the efficiency of the system and in some extreme cases suggest which processes could be retired.

This serves two purposes, your team can now speak up about changes they feel need to be made or archaic and impractical process that need to be done away with, and the fact that if their change is accepted they get the recognition of helping to achieve a few goals.

You can do this both informally or formally, you might need to put together a panel that evaluates these suggestions before any of them are put into place. Let’s face it, changing an organization process is not the simplest thing to do!

The benefits of doing this correctly:

• Improvement to the processes within the project and hopefully within the organization as well
• Will lead to meeting and in some cases exceeding the service level agreements in the project
• An increased understanding of the process in the organization by your team.
• Motivation by your team as they are contributing to something larger than the project and the recognition that comes with getting it right.
• Appreciation from the client.

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Ensuring that you execute projects on time and with high quality is just a small part of making sure your customers are happy. A lot goes into managing a successful engagement apart from what is “stated”.

Setting expectations is one such activity, ensure that the client knows exactly what you are going to deliver. This does not mean having someone sign off on requirements documentation, while contractually you might be in the clear it does not mean the client is happy with what he got.

Unstated expectations can ruin an engagement and the next time this customer has some work he will look to someone else to carry it out.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Transparency and constant communication is essential as this ensures everyone is on the same page.

If there is a problem let the customer know and also make sure you have a plan in place to handle the issue. Leaving issues to the last minute and then telling your client will only make matters worse.

While formal communication forums like weekly status meetings are important it does not mean these are the only times when issues should be brought up. Clearing the air earlier will solve a lot of headaches instead if you were to unload a whole host of issues on them during the weekly status meeting.

Establishing a well planned operational process with customer’s concurrence where you clearly identify roles/ responsibilities and dependencies is essential to a project success.

Thing to keep in mind

Always work with the customer to meet his needs instead of just what they’ve put down on paper, this will result in higher satisfaction and an opportunity to perhaps get more business down the road.

Ensure that you have the necessary authorization to proceed at various stages in the project, do not assume. Decisions like these can come back to haunt you later.

Never shirk responsibility or play the blame game. Step up and take ownership of problems that arise, your customers will respect you for that.

Conduct workshops/ brainstorming sessions with active participation from the customer’s organization when faced with issues that requires inputs/ concurrence from multiple stakeholders.

Be Proactive!

Benefits:

• Increasing Client Satisfaction
• Increasing the chance of ensuring your project is successful ( on-time and within the budget )
• Strengthens the relationship with your customer. ( Promotes a partner ship with the customer instead of just a client - vendor relationship )
  
• Increased awareness amongst your team on what the client wants ( stated and unstated expectations )

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