Lessons are learnt on every project that, if shared and applied will make things that much easier the next time round.
But, the foundations for what has become known as knowledge management need to be laid early in the project – and yes, we are talking about communication again!
In many cases a paper trail is a legal requirement. From a communication perspective, it enables us to capture, store and share the lessons learnt and solutions developed.
These are often lost after close-out because the project team has been “too busy” to record or document them.
Knowledge Management (KM) is the process of systematically and actively managing and leveraging the creation, capture, use, storage and dissemination of stores of knowledge in an organisation.
Tools and systems are available to ensure that this information is captured and can be retrieved so that one project builds on the next – rather than re-inventing the wheel each time.