This chapter suggests established research approaches to capture and validate project lessons learned. Past research indicates that due to the temporal nature of projects, improper management of knowledge, especially lessons learned, constitutes a risk for present and future projects. The authors argue that case study research is appropriate for developing lessons learned and that an inductive methodology can be used to generate hypotheses. These hypotheses are validated through an analysis of their Goodness of Fit into learning related business questions. Quality assurance in a lessons learned process should include a formalism to avoid loosing knowledge in the coding process, a formalism to avoid equivocality in the knowledge transfer to third parties, and validation techniques for the identified knowledge items. Furthermore, the authors argue that a common understanding should be achieved before organizational learning influences decisions and/or actions.
This chapter is designed to serve as a comprehensive introduction to a few aspects of knowledge management (KM) practices of particular relevance for temporal knowledge-intensive organizations. The aspects considered are the contribution of KM pratices to value creation, the dissemination and adoption of KM practices and the enabling role of KM practices in the interpretation of states of affairs. The value creation aspect focuses on the impact of KM practices in temporal knowledge-intensive organizations creating value for their customers/users. The behavioral nature of KM practices is of critical relevance for temporal knowledge-intensive organizations as there are attitudes that will be very influential in individuals’ intention to adopt such KM practices. Finally, because the individuals in a temporal knowledge-intensive organization should share the same interpretation on a given state of affairs or about the data at hand, the interpretative aspect of KM practices focuses in the enabling role of KM practices in reaching common understanding.
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