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Project management in IT organisations is leading
to numerous KM initiatives. Kim Sbarcea and Rui Martins call for
a change in conceptualisation of project management befitting the
transition from an industrial age to an information and knowledge-driven
age
After you’ve done a thing the
some way for two years, look it over carefully.
After five years, look at it with suspicion.
And after ten years, throw it away and start over.
—Alfred Edward Periman
This paper explores a new concept for the
disciplines of project management and knowledge management—the
‘temporary knowledge organisation’ (TKO). The concept
of TKO is applicable to IT companies as well as other sectors. The
authors offer the concept as a means of understanding the complexities
of project management and knowledge management as implemented in
contemporary organisational settings.
In recognising that knowledge management
and knowledge economy have largely replaced industrial age organisational
practices and thinking, the authors call for a similar replacement
of traditional project management thinking with an organisational
form that acknowledges the paramount role of humans as co-constructors
of knowledge and reality via sense-making processes.
Project Management (PM) has been reconceptualised
in literature as the ‘temporary organisation’ (TO). This
paper extends the notion of the TO to that of the TKO and in the
process, distinguishes between the two.
Project Management and the TO view the
individual and knowledge as objects external to the complex social
practices inherent within project management. Both PM and the TO
adopt a modernist, linear process towards problem solving which
does not allow for multiple discourses or multiple knowledge paradigms.
Leading practice or the best solution for projects is achieved through
systematic, objective and rationalist management.
Order/structure/predictability is given
and once these are discovered, knowledge and individuals can be
applied to solve the project problem.
In contrast, the TKO recognises that linearity
and predictability are not the realities of PM. Projects occupy
a messy, chaotic world and the best means of navigating through
this terrain is by acknowledging the central role of the individual
who constructs reality and meaning which allows that individual
to make sense of the project, its outcomes and expectations.
The authors take a post-structuralist perspective
and suggest that a shift in emphasis needs to occur so that order
and reality are recognised as something which is co-constructed
by individuals as ‘sensemakers’ rather than externally
imposed.
The paper concludes with a preliminary
exploration of the typologies of knowledge specific to the TKO.
The identified typologies extend mainstream knowledge management
thinking and explore the implications for projects of the knowledge
types.
From traditional project management to the
knowledge organisation
The current rate of change in society is
driving organisations to engage in learning activities in order
to create new knowledge to solve new emerging problems. This is
due to intensified competition, globalisation and the growing public
concern about issues concerning the environment, health, communications,
privacy and protection.
A feature of modern management literature
is the growing emphasis on ‘change’. Across disciplines,
there is broad agreement that innovation emerges from collaborative
work that has a project or ‘problem’ focus.
Project management (PM) is increasingly
adopted for the implementation of strategic change. The contention,
however, is that the body of knowledge is rooted in orthodox management,
in particular, the literature on project management holds that PM
is a rational discipline. The rational instinct is to make the project
less vulnerable by reducing uncertainty. This results in a project
being less efficient, conservative and to a degree, unable to deal
with true change and innovation.
The traditional, professional model towards
solving problems does not harness the full potential of ‘getting
the job done’. The project objectives are achieved but not
necessarily at optimum level. The traditional linear approach to
problem solving is rooted in a mechanistic view of the universe.
This view has served humans well for centuries
but no longer allows us to meet the demands of the world as it is
now—a rapidly changing and increasingly networked world, where
the ‘client’ (society) is intolerant of poor performance
by professionals.
With this in mind, projects, as an organisation,
not only need to be re-conceptualised as a ‘temporary organisation’.
but should further be reconceptualised as a ‘knowledge organisation’.
The knowledge organisation cannot force
its clients to adapt to it so it must therefore adapt to clients.
The rapport between the client and the team is important.
The ‘production’ of the knowledge
organisation is solving problems that are hard to solve in a standardised
manner. The agents (team members) tend to be very competent, highly
educated and/or with long experience in a profession often involving
information processing.
The temporary knowledge organisation—a
new concept
The theoretical proposition of this paper
expands the notion of a ‘knowledge organisation’ by reconceptualising
the ‘project’ as a ‘temporary knowledge organisation’
(TKO).
The TKO shares characteristics with the
traditional project management organisation, namely:
- Projects which are unique events and
will not reoccur in exactly the same form.
- Finite life span.
- A project is an organisational form
which allows for change management since team members are able
to rapidly and effectively mobilise to address organisational
and environmental conditions.
- Conditions of the project need to be
maintained in a state of disequilibrium for innovation, emergence
and creativity to occur (whilst permanent organisations perpetually
wish to maintain a state of equilibrium).
- Transient resources.
- Projects need to be flexible and adaptive
to engage with the high levels of risk and uncertainty which epitomise
our competitive age.
- Projects have to be effective in contrast
to permanent organisations which need to be efficient.
- Significant knowledge needs and flows.
The distinction, however, between the TKO
and traditional PM is that the former focuses on the generation
of new knowledge to enable it to solve multi-causal problems within
a complex and chaotic environment project problems have no clear
or simple solutions, nor do they demonstrate a tolerance for nuance
and ambiguity.
The traditional view of a project is that
it is a linear, modernist construct wherein projects can be managed
by systematic, objective and rationalist approaches. The TKO takes
issue with this perspective and recognises that linearity and predictability
are not the realities of PM.
Excerpt from ‘The Temporary Knowledge
Organisation…’ by Kim Sbarcea and Rui Martins, from the
book ‘Leading with Knowledge’ edited by Madanmohan Rao;
Tata Mcgraw-Hill
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