114
Chapter 7
The Relationships between
Project Management and
Knowledge Management:
Where We Can Find Project
Knowledge Management in the
Project Management Process
Cláudio Roberto Magalhães Pessoa
Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
Fabiana Bigão Silva
Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
Mônica Erichsen Nassif
Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
ABSTRACT
All companies work nowadays at pursuit of innovation, because that will bring better results. The high
demand for innovative products and services has led companies to a permanent state of change, either
launching a new product or improving the current, enhancing or changing production line, or making administrative change. According to Davenport and Prusak (1998), organizations recognize that
knowledge is the only source capable of generating sustainable competitive advantages. Gattoni (2000)
corroborates the authors defending that enterprise knowledge management becomes a new strategy to
be matured in terms of competitive gains in projects. Models and theoretical approaches show that the
relationship between project management, and information and knowledge management generates significant improvements to organizations. This chapter makes a link of both themes aimed at significant
improvements in the organization.
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-7536-0.ch007
Copyright © 2015, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
The Relationships between Project Management and Knowledge Management
INTRODUCTION
According to Vargas (2006), the high demand
for innovative products and services has led
companies to a permanent state of change, either
launching a new product or improving the current,
enhancing or changing production line, or making administrative change. All strategic changes
in organizations aim to make the company more
competitive and are implemented through projects
and programs.
Drucker (1998) states that companies value is
created by productivity and innovation, which are
knowledge application to work. Carvalho (2006)
points out that economy has become predominantly service based and knowledge has become
one of the most important economic factors in the
competitive environment, applied to daily life of
organizations.
According to Davenport and Prusak (1998),
organizations recognize that knowledge is the
only source capable of generating sustainable
competitive advantages. Dalkir (2005) quotes,
among reasons why organizations implement
knowledge management initiatives, the need to
have an organizational memory, the search for
greater agility in problem solving, the need to
disseminate better practices and the pressure to
innovate and quickly adapt to changes.
For Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), organizations need individuals to create knowledge. Thus,
the organization must provide the conditions for
creative individuals to create knowledge, supporting them. Carvalho (2006) adds that organizational
knowledge creation is a process that extends to
organization sphere the knowledge created by
individuals. Organizational knowledge is not
intended to replace individual knowledge, but to
complement it and make it more coherent and
capable of wide application. (DALKIR, 2005,
page 2.)
Gattoni (2000) corroborates the authors defending that enterprise knowledge management
becomes a new strategy to be matured in terms of
competitive gains in projects. The author points
out that an approach focused on projects can be
used for conducting unprecedented organizational
initiatives of great relevance to companies.
Levin (2010) argues that knowledge management must become part of daily work of professionals working on projects. She suggests that it
is necessary to integrate project knowledge bases
so that people involved in the project can combine
individual contributions to project objectives
aligning to organization’s strategic objectives.
Projects face difficulties in identification,
storage and distribution of knowledge that, when
collected and documented is published in a way
that makes its recovery complex and slow or
not available in an appropriate manner to other
members of the organization. According to PMI
(Project Management Institute) data, over 13 trillion dollars are spent on projects, accounting for
20% of global GDP. Companies have been facing
many challenges related to low maturity of project
management what has affected their performance.
The PMSurvey.org (2013), a global initiative of
benchmarking survey conducted annually in hundreds of companies, showed that 39% of surveyed
companies never or rarely achieve their goals of
time, cost, quality and stakeholder satisfaction.
In 59% of cases, organizations are at levels 1 and
2 of maturity, in a scale of 1 to 5. Half of these
companies do not have a methodology or an
unique process to manage their projects. Among
those who have formal standards, in 51% these
patterns are little, seldom or never used in projects
conduction. Information to be highlighted in this
research is the fact that 69% of companies do not
have any knowledge management tool.
According to international annual report for
project management profession - Pulse of the
Profession (PMI, 2013) – around fifteen million
new project management functions will be created
globally in seven industries considered projectintensive up to 2020. One of the biggest challenges
115
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