2014 / 2015

Critical ReviewReviewed paper: “Systematizing Knowledge Management in Projects”

Submitted to:Mr. Thomas Roth-Berghofer Mr. Christian Sauer

Submitted by:Younes Hamdaoui(St_ID 21266804)

Table of contents 

Abstract:...............................................2

Motivation:.............................................2

Summary:................................................2

Introduction:...........................................2

Findings:...............................................3

Critics:................................................5

Conclusion:.............................................7

Group collaboration:....................................7

References:.............................................7

Bibliography:...........................................8

Appendix: Group template................................9

1

Abstract:

This report is a critical review that looks at the work of

Paul Davidson and Jillian Rowe, a conceptual paper, titled

“Systematising Knowledge Management in projects”. The reviewed

article illustrates a methodology that applies the systems theory

approach to the process of knowledge management (KM) within

organisations in general, and specifically within the different

projects conducted by firms. The discussed paper gives a general

explanation about KM during specific phases of a project with an

emphasis on the role of KM in enhancing management and the

continuous improvement of organisations. Several resources were

consulted in order to analyse the KM model proposed by Paul D. and

Jillian R.

Motivation:

During the internship I have undertaken in order to complete

my previous master degree, I was in charge of the implementation

of the incident management process which was part of the

integration of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library

version 3 (ITIL V3) best practices to the IT department of the

organisation. The process of incident management, along with

change and problem management are closely related to the KM

process described in ITIL V3. Therefore, the chosen article gives

interesting insights about the implementation of KM within

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projects and reviewing the article is the best way to get complete

understanding of the ideas it presents.

Summary:

Knowledge management is a key factor that allows organisations

to enhance their performance and cut down the projects durations.

Systematizing KM in projects by applying a systems theory approach

to the methodologies used in KM implementation is the main point

proposed by the reviewed paper. The concept is to align the

projects goals with the process of KM. This alignment, completed

by integrating knowledge capture and sharing into “decision

gates”, provides knowledge to the organisation at an operational,

tactical and strategic level.

Introduction:

Management of knowledge is a fundamental condition for project

accomplishment. Still, implementing the process that will enable

an effective knowledge creation in organisations is not simple. It

is based on changing the way knowledge is regarded by the

different members of the firm. Accordingly, the following report

depicts and investigates the ideas presented by Paul D. who

proposed an interesting model for KM implementation by focusing on

reviews conducted at the end of each project phase. The main

insights provided by the author are illustrated in the findings

section, and an analysis of those insights is completed in the

critics’ part. The critics are based on research and real case

studies from other related authors about the systems thinking

approach to KM.

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Findings:

Paul D. and Jillian R. in their theoretical application of the

system thinking approach to knowledge management cover two main

aspects; system theory or system thinking and KM. The methodology

followed in this paper is joining systems theory approach with

knowledge management by designing a model to spot, gather and

ameliorate knowledge within organisations projects and implement

it into the management mechanism.

The author starts by providing the reasons why system thinking

is effective when applied to the management process. “Systems use

inputs, which get transformed into outputs through processes,

tools, or techniques to produce outputs, and these outputs are

often inputs to other components within the system or to other

systems entirely” (J. Alex Sherrer, 2010). From a managerial point

of view, an organisation matches impeccably this definition since

every firm encompasses various parts. Owners, managers, engineers

and employees are all members of a structure and are all linked in

a way they operate according to their organisations goals and

principles.

Next, the paper states that “decision gates” are applied to

control the progress of projects. During those gates the

management team verify the alignment between what was achieved and

what was planned. The KM process is integrated to the “decision

gates” where significant amount of knowledge is generated,

captured, then organised and stored. This knowledge captured

facilitates the next phase of the project and is available for the

tactical and strategic levels of the organisation. The ‘figure

1’ bellow is the model proposed by the author to implement KM.

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Figure 1- Decision gate (DG) reviews, lessons learned, the KEP and the corporate KMS

Paul D. and Jillian R. define the “Knowledge Empowerment

Process (KEP)” as the mechanism in which the knowledge captured

“empowers” the next stage of the project, future projects and the

people working within and outside the project. Moreover, the paper

gives a series of questions to ask during each “decision gate” in

order to produce effective knowledge. Those questions are:

“What did we say we were going to do?”

“What did we do?”

“Where are we relative to the objectives?”

“What did we learn?”

“What external knowledge is it now appropriate to

incorporate?”

“What are we going to change?”

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“Who are we going to tell?”

“How will we capture and store this knowledge for present and

future application?”

The KM process is divided into three levels. First, the KM1

provides learned lessons that support the next phase of the

project at an operational level. Second, KM2 which gives knowledge

at a tactical level and where some organisations may search for

external sources of information to consolidate the captured

knowledge. Finally, KM3 is the combination between KM1 and KM2 and

contributes in the development of the firm from a strategic point

of view.

Afterward, the paper discusses the importance of considering

the role of a knowledge manager in organisations especially when

the project manager is sometimes more focused on the direct goals

of projects and may be ‘overwhelmed’ by the day to day management

tasks. A knowledge manger ensures that the knowledge produced is

effectively used and avoids the loss of tacit knowledge.

Critics:

The concept of applying system thinking approach to knowledge

management can be very productive for organisations. A system can

be defined as the combination of multiple elements that function

collectively to form a complex aggregation (Johnson, R.A., Kast,

F.E. & Rosenzweig, J.E., 1964). System thinking means that when

studying a system, in this case the organisation, multiple

attributes are identified when looking at each part of that system

individually. Those attributes contribute to a better

understanding of the whole system (Rubenstein-Montano, B.,

Liebowitz, J., Buchwalter, J., McCaw, D., Newman, B. & Rebeck, K,6

2001).

Accordingly, the reviewed paper applies the above definition

to the outputs of “decision gates”, where reviews are done on each

completed phase of the project, to the KM process in order to

extract the lessons learned and to transform them into knowledge.

However, it is proposed to consider applying system thinking

approach to teams before projects. A team can also be treated as a

complex system, they are composed of individuals that come from

various backgrounds and have different knowledge. Therefore, it is

essential to emphasise on the role of continual interaction

between team members, this interaction empowers “tolerating ideas

of others to interacting meaningfully at a cognitive level”

(Newell S, .2009). To put it more simply, a good knowledge

management implementation should rather start a team level, by

defining a common way of communication and unified measurement and

work methods, than directly in the “decision gates” at the end of

each phase of a project. This way the lessons learned established

by the author are easy to withdraw.

The model proposed by the reviewed article can be described as

general and it is not proved to be successful. Alternatively, the

method used at “Pratt-Whitney Rocketdyne” (PWR) - a world leading

firm specialized in producing aircraft engines - to implement KM

in a system thinking context, allowed the company to reduce

significantly the duration of projects and to make savings of

approximately $25 million (Mark W S Chun, Sohn, K., Arling, P. &

Granados, N. 2009). The following figure shows the procedure

adopted by PWR in order to implement KM.

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Figure 2 - Source: Mark W S Chun, Sohn, K., Arling, P. & Granados, N. 2009, "APPLYINGSYSTEMS THINKING TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF PRATT-WHITNEY ROCKETDYNE", Journal of Information Technology Case and ApplicationResearch, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 4

As shown in Figure 2, there is a clear difference between PWR

implementation of KM and Paul D. model. Paul D. gives a general

description of practices to be followed without focusing on the

basic levels of the organisation. As for PWR, the process started

by investigating the entire company and distinguishing the

behaviours that can lead to the malfunction of the KM system. They

concentrated on changing the way knowledge sharing was regarded by

the members of the firm to enable the transferability of both

tacit and explicit knowledge.

Another important point is the consideration of knowledge

limits that can affect the integration of KM in organisations.

According to Sue Newell there are three knowledge boundaries that

need to be carefully analysed. First, syntactic boundary which

occurs when people try to develop a personal language in order to

simplify their own interaction. Then semantic boundary in which

the knowledge of some project members is more specialised, so it

needs to be translated to an understandable and common language.

Finally, the pragmatic boundary where knowledge needs to be8

transformed in a way that makes people improve their practices

(Newell S., 2009).

The author recommended the mind mapping software that enables

project members to store their knowledge in a personalised manner

and that contains a database of shared knowledge accessible

through all the company. However, considering a technical solution

should be the last phase of implementing the KM process.

Finally, Paul D. discussed the importance on considering the

role of a knowledge manager. This is a solid idea on the ground

that completely relying on a project manager to do the knowledge

work can disturb the KM process. Regarding large and complex

organisation, a knowledge management department is more suitable.

For instance, the department of “Knowledge Management and Sharing”

adopted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) which holds three

distinctive services; “WHO press”, “Library and Information

Networks for Knowledge” and “eHealth” (World Health Organisation,

Knowledge management and health).

Conclusion:

Looking at the implementation of a knowledge management process

from a system thinking point of view, enables organisations to

obtain the complete value of the knowledge generated during the

day to day tasks conducted within projects. The work of Paul D. in

systematizing KM in projects gives bright ideas about how this

implementation can be conducted, by integrating knowledge reviews

in the decision gates at the end of each stage of a project. Those

reviews serve as creation point of knowledge and transfer it to

higher levels in the organisations’ structure. However, because

the presented concept is very general, it should be modified9

according to the type of the organisation and projects. An

alternative is the implementation method conducted at PWR, which

proved to be more effective and gives clear steps about how an

organisation should operate in order to conduct a knowledge

management implementation.

Group collaboration:

The members of the IS group worked effectively in order to

produce the template that our individual reports follow. We

started by a first meeting and discussed the different sections

that should be included in the template, we came up with a basic

template that we developed through sharing ideas after each class

and by emails. Each member was responsible of providing a

description of specific sections, bright ideas were suggested by

the group. The experience of sharing and discussing within a group

was interesting and is related the KM discipline. Mr Christian

Sauer advices were also helpful in designing our template.

References:

Davidson, P. & Rowe, J. 2009, "Systematising knowledge management

in projects", International journal of managing projects in

business, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 561-576.

J. Alex Sherrer, A Project Manager's Guide to Systems Thinking:

Part I, 2010. Available from:

http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/project-managers-guide-to-systems-

thinking-part-1.php [2 March 2015]

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Johnson, R.A., Kast, F.E. & Rosenzweig, J.E. 1964, "Systems Theory

and Management", Management Science, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 367-384

Mark W S Chun, Sohn, K., Arling, P. & Granados, N. 2009, "APPLYING

SYSTEMS THINKING TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF

PRATT-WHITNEY ROCKETDYNE", Journal of Information Technology Case

and Application Research, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 4

Rubenstein-Montano, B., Liebowitz, J., Buchwalter, J., McCaw, D.,

Newman, B. & Rebeck, K. 2001, "A systems thinking framework for

knowledge management", Decision Support Systems, vol. 31, no. 1,

pp. 5-16.

Sue Newell, Maxine Robertson, Harry Scarbrough, Jacky Swan (2009)

Managing Knowledge Work and Innovation, 2nd Edition, : Palgrave

Macmillan.

WHO | Department of Knowledge Management and Sharing (KMS).

Available from: http://www.who.int/kms/en/ [2 March 2015]

Bibliography:

Conti, T. 2006, "Quality thinking and systems thinking", The TQM

Magazine, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 297-308.

Checkland, P. 1994, "Systems Theory and Management Thinking",

American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 75-91.

http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Editorial/What-Is-.../What-is-KM-

Knowledge-Management-Explained-82405.aspx [2 March 2015]11

NONAKA, I. 1991, THE KNOWLEDGE-CREATING COMPANY, Harvard Business

Review, Boston.

Senge, P. 1996, "Systems thinking", Executive Excellence, vol. 13,

no. 1, pp. 15.

Appendix: Group template

Group members: Younes Hamdaoui, Ayodele Victor Akintoye, Mandeep

Kaur, Md Abdul Rahim

Template:

Abstract

An Abstract is vital part of critical review and often used by

bibliographic services and scanned by readers to determine the

nature, type and worth of the paper. Abstract in our review would

be a concise summary of the article or paper chosen. It will

provide overview of research that describe research problem,

methods used to solve it, main findings and the recommendations.

The word length would be 150-200 words.

Motivation

This is a short description about the reason for choosing our

choice journals, papers or articles. This gives an inclination to

the development our interests in our respective topics of choice.

This will be 80-110s.

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Summary

Summary is a short description of the writings which gives the

reader an idea about the article what the writer going to discuss

in his writing. Moreover it says specific points which is kinds of

hint for the reader and makes curious the reader to go further

reading of the article. The length of the summary could about 70-

100 words.

Findings

This is the result of our research that will be presented in line

with our respective chosen journals. At this stage we will not

comment or analyse our respective journals but give a brief

description of our findings using visual methods such as graphs or

tables if appropriate.

Critiques

Critiques refers to criticise, compare, find similarities or non-

similarities or opposite opinion about the topic in the chosen

article. It does not mean that what the writer agree or disagree

it is a manner to rectify the topic with an advanced idea or

current situation about the topic in the article. Most of the time

it is about compare and find different idea about the topic which

is standard and proved by research. It is the important point of

the critical review article. It shows the expertise of the

reviewing writer. More or less it is the main part and the length

could be about 400-500 words out of 1000words.

Conclusion

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Conclusion is an important part of any writings or articles. It is

overall logical ending of the report and will restate the main

idea discussed in the dissertation. It will also summarize the

principal aim of the article or paper selected.

Group collaboration

This section will cover the work done by the IS group in order to

elaborate a template for the report with an emphasis on the value

of group work and coordination between the members. This part will

also provide a description of the tasks undertaken by each member

of the group.

References

The references will mention all the books, journals and web-sites

cited in the report. The references will be listed using the

Harvard Referencing format. It helps the writer to illustrate his

own idea and establish his idea by making witness previous

expert’s ideas. It has no word count.

Bibliography

Bibliography always contains the books journals or sources where

the writer collected ideas or had some information about his

working topic. It is those sources which has not been cited in his

writing but influenced him to support his writing or helped the

writer to establish his idea about the field the writer describing

about. It has no word count.

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