For any initiative to succeed and be accepted across an organization it requires some level of leadership buy-in, Knowledge Management is no different.

There are certain things that leaders can do to promote the sharing of knowledge in the organization.

• Tie your initiatives to your vision:
• Create and publish an integrated mission, vision, and values statement that endorses and sustains learning and transfer. It’s very important to showcase success stories at each executive meeting. Unless there is a clear indication of progress the executive backing for an initiative like this will quickly die out.
• There has to be an emphasis on re-enforcing management commitment to identifying new ideas and removing barriers to progress.
• This has to be built on top of a robust rewards and recognition program, and most importantly, make sure you have the right people working on this.
• The management as a rule is always looked up to for direction, and its the same with knowledge management, lead by example and show commitment to learning through action. Tell employee groups that the most important thing is to share and use best practices.

Once this has been accomplished start rolling out these initiatives across the rest of the organization.

Aggressive Marketing, Rewards and Recognition programs are but the first steps to spreading awareness on KM. However if are in the business of Knowledge Management for the long haul, culture changes need to be made as executive backing can only take you so far.

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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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Managing customer expectations is a very challenging job that requires constant attention. However, just as important is keeping track of all the customer complaints that are raised and what was done to address them. Over time this is a great way of understanding what went right / wrong with the project.

While there are a number of companies out there that have a defined process in place to capture and address customer complaints there are instances where information falls through the cracks. So it becomes the onus of the project manager to ensure that a record is kept of all such interactions ( both good and bad ).

To Automate or Not?

Another question you need to ask yourself is whether it would make sense to automate a process that captures and keeps track of customer complaints.  The idea is to track, step by step, the escalation route a customer complaint takes when entered into the system.

I do understand this is a question that should be directed to the team handling process automation within the organization instead of project managers, however being the end users of such a system it would be interesting to understand what you think of it.

Now lets presume you agree, and that you have a system up and running, how do you think this information should be handled?

Being confidential in nature you might want to consider closing off access to only allow certain people within your team from interacting with this system.  Senior Managers and group heads can then pull out reports that could give them an idea of how well / or badly a customer’s perception of the project is and can be invaluable in providing early warnings of when a projects starts to fail.

What are the Benefits of putting such a system / tool in place?

• Greater control over the format of complaints coming in
• Ability to track how complaints are being handled and the escalation routes being taken
• Provide early warning signals to senior managers
• Ability to understand what went wrong / right with the project.
• Transparent communication / Improving client relations

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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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How important is it to get the Customer Involved during the execution of a project? And I don’t mean superficially. Instead, have the customer working with you every step of the way to ensure that together a solid solution is delivered.

Now, while I do understand that this is very difficult to accomplish in most cases as you have to deal with a variety of customers. For e.g: Those that expect to hand over everything to you and wash their hands of things, those that haven’t the faintest idea of what they want and so on.

Having experienced a bit of both there is something to be said about working hand in hand with that one customer who wants to build a partnership rather than just a client - vendor relationship and develop something that both parties can be proud of.

Domain Knowledge and an understanding of how the customer does business plays a huge role in delivering a successful service. Therefore it is in the best interests of the project team to get the customer involved in the building process. Soliciting inputs and clarifying positions are a necessity of doing such work and while we do try to restrict everything to the first phase of the project there are cases where issues need to be revisited during the course of development.

Visualization sessions are another great tool to use when doing business with the customer, integrate this into your project plan and at fixed intervals show the customer how the solution is evolving. This will give them a great understanding of what the end product will look like as well as helping you clarify questions that your team might have.

We have all dealt with changes that crop up right at the end of a project and this becomes a powerful tool to maybe mitigate some of that risk.

Some of the benefits of developing a close working relationship with the customer:

• Greater project success
• Increased ownership from the customer
• A decrease in the potential for misunderstandings.
• Greater value-adds and possibly better outputs as a result of more people working together.
• Less effort wasted in last minute changes.

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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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Gridlock has got a new Tag Cloud and a Wall for you to leave your comments on. They are both located on the sidebar.

The Tag Cloud plugin is called “WP-Cumulus” so if you do like this feel free to set it up . (A Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress By Roy Tanck.)

The Wall Plugin used here can be downloaded here.

“Wall” widget that appears in your blog’s side bar. Readers can add a quick comment about the blog as a whole, and the comment will appear in the sidebar immediately, without reloading the page. By Vladimir Prelovac.

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