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Knowledge Management Practices in Managing Projects and Project People: A Case Study of an Indian IT Company

People knowledge, along with knowledge acquired from past and ongoing projects, provides valuable support to successful handling of the current projects. IT projects are exceptional cases of evidence. Since IT companies have high attrition rate, knowledge of the existing project people should be properly managed. Different IT companies may have different practices in managing the knowledge of projects and project people. In order to study such knowledge management practices in detail, a case study was taken up in a big Indian IT company. A unique mechanism was found to be in existence to identify and fill the knowledge gaps for successful management of projects. A learning center can play a vital role in enhancing, sharing and extracting knowledge of project people. The case study offers some important suggestions drawn from the people interviewed.

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People knowledge, along with knowledge acquired from past and ongoing projects, provides valuable support to successful handling of the current projects. IT projects are exceptional cases of evidence. Since IT companies have high attrition rate, knowledge of the existing project people should be properly managed. Different IT companies may have different practices in managing the knowledge of projects and project people. In order to study such knowledge management practices in detail, a case study was taken up in a big Indian IT company. A unique mechanism was found to be in existence to identify and fill the knowledge gaps for successful management of projects. A learning center can play a vital role in enhancing, sharing and extracting knowledge of project people. The case study offers some important suggestions drawn from the people interviewed.

Introduction

Knowledge is considered a significant asset for organizations, and organizations can become more knowledge-intensive by hiring minds rather than hands to maintain competitive advantage (Omerzel and Antoncic, 2008). Knowledge Management (KM) transforms the individual knowledge into collective and widely shared knowledge that can be used throughout the organization. In the KM environment of knowledge management, organizations obtain information, knowledge, and experience and optimize their use by making them available to every individual employee. The projectbased companies universally accept knowledge as one of the key competitive assets of the company. There, the job deals with the required skills and knowledge and their management with the help of self-learning, training and project-related documentations. Knowledge is found as a vital resource and critical factor for organizations contributing to their growth and maintaining competitive advantage (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998; Yi, 2009; and Asrar-ul-Haq and Anwar, 2016).

The Information Technology (IT) field has perceived dynamic changes with emerging technologies and this trend is demanding continuous updates with new skills and knowledge. Foote and Halawi (2018), while analyzing Project Knowledge Management (PKM) in IT software projects of an insurance company in the US, indicated KM to be applied in four major processes for the success of IT projects- requirements, code development, testing, and helpdesk. The project success is not directly related to project management (Munns and Bjeirmi, 1996); it is the result of how best each project task is performed in a coordinated way. This needs proper exchange and use of knowledge related to the tasks, in addition to the individual skills and orientation. This study is an attempt to understand the KM practices in managing project and project people and to assess the extent of implementation of learning in organizations, especially in IT firms. As an initial step, it took up a detailed case study in one big IT firm in India.

Theoretical Background

Rus and Lindvall (2002) viewed software development as a knowledge-intensive business involving different people with different skills engaged in different activities at different phases of development of a product. IT project management involves management of different activities at different phases of development. King (2009) indicated KM as a combined effect of relatively new organizational activities to refine knowledge, knowledge-related practices, organizational behaviors, decisions and organizational performance. KM is a combination of different processes of identification, creation, capturing, sharing and using of right knowledge. All these KM processes can contribute their support to various processes that lead to organizational growth. According to King (2009), KM can improve organizational behaviors, decisions, relationships, products and processes that ultimately results in overall performance of organizations. Marquardt (2002) reported that learning can happen simultaneously at individual, group and organizational levels. According to Smith and Lyles (2003), the focus of organizational learning will be on the process, whereas the focus of KM will be on knowledge. KM can provide systematic thought for long-term implications of knowledge to achieve the objectives of organizations along with short-term operational goals through effective incorporation of existing knowledge in the main development process.

According to PMBOK (2004), project management is the systematic application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities and processes in order to meet or exceed stakeholders' needs and expectations with respect to that project. Kang et al. (2008) considered project as comprising a variety of experts having diverse cultural, organizational and professional background working together and perceived effective KM as a vital task in project teams. Most of the development activities of IT companies are project-oriented. IT companies handle projects with the expertise of the existing project teams, and if new skills are in demand, they can look at hiring skilled people and also allow the existing employees to upgrade their skills by providing proper training and organizational learning. This is an ideal situation every IT person may look into while working in organizations. But in reality, IT companies that strongly support organizational learning are encouraging project people to enhance their skills and knowledge useful to handle the project tasks effectively. In order to understand such environment through deep interactions with the project people, this study adopted qualitative research method (a non-numerical method) in a leading India-based IT company. It is merely a case study conducted in a big IT company. To maintain confidentiality, the name of the organization is hidden by referring to it as simply IT company.

The IT Company Under Study

The IT company was incorporated in 1986. It offers IT services and solutions to telecommunications sector across the world. It provides various services such as solution integration, application development and management, consulting, infrastructure management, application management, and revenue management. Under Research and Development (R&D), it offers technological solutions like software development, hardware development, testing and network offering to the largest telecom equipment manufacturers across the globe. As a BPO, it has outsourcing services in the areas of human resources, finance and accounting, inventory management and order management. Through acquisitions, the IT company enhanced both its employee and client base and started diversifying its IT activities spread across the world in about 100 countries. With more than one lakh employees working all over the world, the company has been advancing in the IT field with a lot of innovations to address the problems of various industries. The present case study is limited to the Indian subcontinent only. Since it would be difficult to survey several branches of the company in India, the study was taken up in one of its big offices in South India. Based on a pre-designed questionnaire (see Appendix), the employees at both higher and middle levels were interviewed and their valuable feedback was collected to understand the KM practices.

After several attempts to make an in-depth study, the authors could interact satisfactorily with five project managers, three project leaders and one HR manager. The project leaders had more than 10 years of experience, whereas project leaders had more than five years of experience and HR Manager had nine years of experience. The nine employees were interviewed in detail based on a pre-composed research questionnaire consisting of eight questions on collaborative (team) learning, nine questions on KM process and leadership and four questions on KM culture in the organization, wherein they are currently working. The consolidated responses of the interviewed employees against the questions under the three categories are described in Table 1.

KM Stages

From the case study, it was observed that KM in the IT company is taking place in four stages. The first stage represents conduct of meetings, during and after the completion of projects to solve issues/problems and to share new ideas. The second stage involves identification of knowledge gaps. The organization has different mechanisms to identify knowledge gaps. In the third stage, knowledge sharing platforms and procedures are designed. The fourth stage manages documentation of the project successes.

First Stage - Meetings

It is observed that the organization has tie-ups with reputed Indian universities to enable its employees to pursue higher education in management. It also has service level agreements and partnerships with reputed multinational IT companies like Oracle and HP, while dealing with similar projects. In addition, the employees are encouraged to attend seminars and summits. The IT company runs its own management college under tie-ups with IIMs and universities.

The organization makes sure that information and knowledge is readily accessible for the individuals involved in project development/management because the process of project development/management is based on knowledge and creativity. The organization has global forums that help project members to share their experiences and best practices across the globe. Different types of forums are available in the system from general to technical where knowledge can be shared among teams and across teams.

Individuals involved in projects meet every day, and once a week with managers, to discuss new ideas. Brainstorming sessions are conducted to generate new ideas. These type of meetings help project members to exchange their problems, discuss alternate solutions and resolve project-related issues/problems. These meetings also help them in sharing their ideas about new projects and product developments.

The organization understands that knowledge is central to their strategy and the top management does its best to identify and fill the gaps. Generally, team leaders upload project-related queries for the required information/knowledge on the website of the organization. People with such knowledge contact those managers. While this is one way to fill the knowledge gap, there is a dedicated team that takes care of knowledge upgrades and designs programs/trainings/workshops and informs employees through LMS.

This stage acts as an exercise to identify new knowledge.

Second Stage - Identification of Knowledge Gaps

The organization has a mechanism to identify knowledge gaps through Capability Index (CI). During the time of performance appraisal, project leaders/managers observe and make a list of capabilities an employee possesses constituting the CI. CI is prepared for each employee, based on which personal goals are set for every six months.

The organization also has a learning mechanism called Skill Profile Management Systems (SPMS) wherein skills and experiences are updated regularly and knowledge gaps are identified. Once a month, the HR consults and competency level heads identify gaps. There is an internal audit team which checks the projects every 15 days/ 1 month based on the project sensitivity. The organization also observes knowledge gaps through audit reports and gives the maximum learning provisions to individuals for updating knowledge.

Third Stage - Knowledge Sharing

The project manager needs to maintain a file for the project, and once the project is completed, managers submit the project report to the head of the projects with the complete details including the problems encountered, lessons learned, experiences and problem-solving methods. These documents capture the knowledge gained by the individuals and the way they have solved the project problems. These are transferred to repositories for future reference. The knowledge thus stored is reused for subsequent projects. Authorized people are given permission to access these documents for future reference. Seminars are also conducted to share success stories of projects across different industries. Tacit knowledge is thus expressed and shared by generating and maintaining project documents.

Employees who have gained knowledge through projects are asked to share their experiences and are asked to train others. The knowledge gained in projects is documented as Proof of Concept (P°C). To fill the knowledge gaps identified in the earlier stages, project leaders plan and develop training programs and inform employees about the opportunity to learn and update knowledge.

Fourth Stage - Documentation

Knowledge is considered central to strategy, and thus knowledge gained by members is stored in the form of documents. Quality audit people take care of the project completion documents submitted by managers and know what is really learned. Team members share their experiences with their teams periodically in person, but the organization also has the practice of documenting the experiences, problems encountered, solutions offered, techniques applied to solve the problem along with the solution. This is one of the ways it gathers intelligence and knowledge.

If any employee at the managerial level plans to exit in the midst of a project, he/ she needs to submit a knowledge transfer document. He/she should submit the progress of the project, giving the details of the plan, tasks involved, completion period, and the pending work details along with the project handled methods.

This stage leads to creation of knowledge repository that can be used at any moment by the project people whenever they encounter problems in handling different project tasks.

All these four stages of KM practices in the IT company under study are included in the consolidated KM model given in Figure 1.

Role of the HR Department in Project Management

People are considered as knowledge assets and knowledge is managed as per the requirements of customers. The organization considers recruitment, compensation and performance management and recognition as part of its development strategies. It uses learning to support existing core competencies and create new ones and offers different courses through different platforms of learning. It trains employees internally rather than hiring experts. It encourages employees and recognizes talent and knowledge workers and develops marketing and selling strategies accordingly.

People with 5+ years of experience are given opportunity to work onshore and enhance their knowledge and hone skills. Employees at all levels are informed about the programs undertaken for learning through the LMS platform. Managers go for 40 hours of learning time in a year, according to their convenience and relevance, to upgrade their knowledge. It links compensation with contributions made for the development of organizational knowledge. It has a performance appraisal system wherein the learnings are listed and rewarded accordingly. The number of increments for managers depends on the time catered to learning. During performance appraisal and rewards/incentives, the level of learning is tested based on the hours of learning completed, especially for managers. Employees are updated from time to time with the happening/learning opportunities in the organization through mails/portal meant for learning. At individual level, a platform is provided on the LMS to share new ideas which are directly accessed by the top management.

In addition to HR's role as facilitators in knowledge acquisition and knowledge sharing, there is a dedicated team that takes care of knowledge upgrades and designs programs/trainings/workshops and informs employees through LMS.

Conclusion

The organization encourages employees, recognizes talent and knowledge workers and develops strategies accordingly. Knowledge workers are given opportunities to learn and update their knowledge through training programs and other unique mechanisms. Knowledge workers are recognized for their contribution in completion of projects, sharing new ideas and sharing knowledge with other team/project members, and are duly compensated. Knowledge workers are the focal point in the knowledge management system and are supposed to extend knowledge across the organization. LMS acts as a central platform for learning and also facilitates enhancing, sharing and extracting knowledge of project people. Project managers suggested that any knowledge created should be centralized and accessible to everyone with copyrights; there should be transparency of the documents without any need of formal approval; and learning should be a process without impacting the work in hand; and the benchmark should be learning at IBM.