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Web 2.0 Technologies to Support Lessons Learned (LL) in Project Management (PM) Marcirio Silveira Chaves Master of Business Administration - Project Management Universidade Nove de Julho – UNINOVE São Paulo – Brazil http://mchaves.wikidot.com

WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORT LESSONS LEARNED IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

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Lessons learned remain a complex problem in the Project Management field. Although the processes to deal with lessons learned are well established in the community, in practice, organizations still fail to manage this type of knowledge. To facilitate the knowledge management in project-based organizations, emerging web 2.0 tools, technologies and applications start to gain visibility and use by project managers to better support daily tasks. This paper presents a proposal to manage lessons learned through web 2.0 technologies. The proposal includes the lessons learned processes (e.g. capture, share and dissemination), the process-based (e.g. project review and after action review) and documentation-based (e.g. micro article and learning histories) methods. This theoretical paper brings together aspects of knowledge management and information technology. Results show how web 2.0 tools can help project managers to cope with the main lessons learned processes and methods to learn from experience. Moreover, recommendations are made for the effective use of web 2.0 components to support lessons learned in Project Management.

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Page 1: WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORT LESSONS LEARNED IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Web 2.0 Technologies to Support Lessons Learned (LL) in

Project Management (PM)

Marcirio Silveira ChavesMaster of Business Administration - Project Management

Universidade Nove de Julho – UNINOVESão Paulo – Brazil

http://mchaves.wikidot.com

Page 2: WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORT LESSONS LEARNED IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Motivation• Little incentive or structure for long-term

organizational learning (Hobday, 2000).

• Research in PM has highlighted the relevance of LL to support and improve results of projects (Weber, Aha and Becerra-Fernandez, 2001; Schindler and Eppler, 2003; Petter and Vaishnavi, 2008; Williams, 2008; Jugdev, 2012).

• Emerging web 2.0 technologies and applications start to gain visibility and use by project managers to better support daily tasks and processes (Boulos, Maramba, & Wheeler, 2006; Cleveland, 2012; Grace, 2009; Shang, Li, Wu, & Hou, 2011).

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Objective

Propose the use of web 2.0 technologies to support

lessons learned in Project Management.

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Outline• LL Processes

• LL Methods

• A Proposal of Use of Web 2.0 Tools in PM– A proposal of use of web 2.0 technologies to support the

most relevant LL processes– Web 2.0 tools-centered LL processes– Web 2.0 tools-centered LL methods

• Final Remarks

• Discussion

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LL Processes• Capture: The process of bringing together information or

knowledge from different sources.– It includes to gather and collect LL. – LL can be captured through text, audio, video or image.

• Storage: to define the environment where LL will be stored.– It should consider a range of formats to allow the capture

process to collect • talks (audio and video), • technical procedures (image and video), and • formal and informal documentation (text).

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LL Processes• Share and Verify: Share LL means to make them available at the

same time for a team of experts who, according to (Weber et al., 2001), focuses on validating them for correctness, consistency, redundancy, and relevance. – Each lesson need to meet the following criteria: to be

significant, valid and applicable (Secchi, Ciaschi, & Spence, 1999).

• Distribute or Disseminate: To spread the knowledge contained in the LL by a team, department or organization.

• Apply or Reuse: To make useful the LL on current and further projects.

• Withdraw: To recognize when a LL is no longer useful on current and further projects.

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LL Methods• Project Review– participants are project team and third parties that are

involved into the project.– Its purpose is status classification, early recognition of

possible hazards, and it has also a team-internal focus.

• After Action Review– has as participant the project team and its purpose are

learning from mistakes and knowledge transfer inside the team.

– The main benefit is the immediate reflection of the own doings to improve future actions.

– The interaction mode is cooperative team meetings.

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LL Methods• Micro article– It is written in an informal style with a framework that

consists of a topic, an introductory short description of its content and a keyword part for indexing the article.

• Learning history – Learning history is a written story consisting of the main

events of a project arranged in a chronological order. – Contrary to micro article that has at most one page, a story

can contain between twenty and one hundred pages following a story-telling approach.

– Once compiled, learning histories are validated in discussions with the people involved.

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LL Methods• Journaling – An articulated narrative that follows from the reflective

and critical thinking about one's learning experiences or specific learning events. Three-stage model of reflective learning

1. awareness, the present situation, 2. critical analysis, which connects present with the past

and future, and 3. learning, the development of a new perspective

based upon one's critical analysis and the application of new knowledge to the learning situation under reflection.

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A proposal of use of Web 2.0 Tools in PM

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A proposal of use of web 2.0 technologies to support the most relevant LL processes

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Web 2.0 tools-centered LL processes

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Legend: St: Storage, C: Capturing, Sh: Sharing, V: Verification and D: Dissemination.

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Web 2.0 tools-centered LL methods

• Legend:– PR: Project Review – AAR: After Action Review– JML: Journaling, Micro article and Learning history

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Final Remarks• There is no “one size fits all”– Each web 2.0 technology -> profile of the project members.– Technologies implemented in a project -> organizational

learning.

• Future Work– The proposal should be validated on project-based

organizations using the action-research and/or case study research methods.

– Validation process • to find the main limitations of the proposal • its extension with regards the processes, methods and

the introduction of other web 2.0 technologies.

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Discussion• The implementation of a new technology in an organization.

• Motivation of the stakeholders to share their knowledge with the pairs.

• “Projects are complex entities, and learning from complex systems needs a more sophisticated approach than simply writing down lessons”. Williams (2003, p. 253)

• Web 2.0 technologies have also a significant impact on the cost, duration and scope of a project. – Instead of spend thousands of dollars in commercial LL

applications, web 2.0 tools provide an affordable solution to manage LL.

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