Five Keys to Project Knowledge Sharing Stacie Petter, Lars Mathiassen, and Vijay Vaishnavi S haring knowledge across projects can help ensure successful outcomes. A soft- ware project manager (we’ll call him “Sam”) is well aware of that fact as he sits at his desk, pondering what to do next. Sam has managed plenty of projects in the past, but this one is different. The future of the company and thousands of employees are relying on Sam to ensure a successful outcome. But he feels he’s missing something to effectively manage this soft- ware project; something seems to be spinning out of control despite his extensive efforts to keep it on track. Costs are rising and the reported per- centage of completion remains stagnant. Although Sam has the experience, he knows he needs additional technical expertise to fully understand some of the problems his team is experiencing. But more than that, this is the first project that spans several business units and includes two of the firm’s key business partners. Sam needs some new and creative ideas to motivate the team, ensuring sufficient coordina- tion across organizational boundaries, and how to report bad news to management. Sam could rely on his fuzzy memories of past projects, but given the crit- icality of this project, he wants to learn what worked and what didn’t for other projects that faced similar challenges. So how can he access such insights? Unfortunately, within the realm of software projects, failed and challenged projects that are over schedule and budget and that lack key func- tionality are more common than successful proj- ects (Extreme Chaos, The Standish Group Int’l, 2001; http://www.standishgroup.com).The recipe for achieving consistently successful projects is simply learning from experience (T. Cooke- Davies “The Real Success Factors on Projects,” Int’l J. Project Management, Elsevier, vol. 20, no. 3, 2002, pp. 185-190). However, learning from past projects is easier said than done. Knowledge reuse in software projects is critically important, but practically difficult. While by definition all software projects have an element of uniqueness to them (Project Manage- ment Inst., A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 3rd ed., 2004), there are simi- larities across projects (K.G. Cooper, J.M. Lyneis, and B.J. Bryant, “Learning to Learn, from Past to Future,” Int’l J. Project Management, Elsevier, vol. 20, no. 3, 2002, pp. 213-219), and knowledge can be reused and shared from project to project. Individual project managers and organizations have many tools at their disposal to enable knowl- edge reuse across software projects (see the “Using Knowledge-Sharing Tools” sidebar). A manager might choose a particular reuse tool because of its convenience, familiarity, or cost.Yet often the abil- ity to learn across projects, even with sophisticated tools, does not materialize in practice as intended (S. Newell,“Enhancing Cross-Project Learning,” Engineering Management J., vol. 16, no. 1, 2004, pp. 12-20). Therefore, individuals and organizations seeking to share knowledge across software proj- ects should systematically consider how tools can 1520-9202/07/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society 42 IT Pro May ❘ June 2007 B USINESS MANAGEMENT Here are the answers to a few questions that can help guide your tool selection for knowledge sharing across software projects. Using Knowledge- Sharing Tools Knowledge-Sharing Strategies Inside