Knowledge management

Making use of an organization's knowledge

Knowledge management encompasses all operational activities and management tasks carried out within an organization that are aimed at capturing, preserving, and making knowledge available as a competitive advantage.

Definition and History

The term knowledge management was established in the late 1980s within the field of international management consulting and evolved into a distinct management discipline during the 1990s. Among the pioneers of the field are Karl M. Wiig, Thomas H. Davenport, and Laurence Prusak.

Today, knowledge management refers to the systematic process of capturing, organizing, sharing, and applying knowledge. It encompasses all organizational strategies and practices designed to ensure that employees have access to the knowledge they need at the right time, thereby improving both organizational performance and effectiveness.

Its objective is to consolidate the experience of individuals into insights, best practices, and lessons learned that become a permanent part of the organization. At the same time, knowledge management promotes a seamless flow of information between employees, stakeholders, processes, and technologies while ensuring long-term access to accumulated knowledge. This makes both tacit and explicit knowledge available for continuous improvement and ensures that valuable expertise remains within the organization even when employees leave.

Knowledge Management at a Glance

RECOMMENDED READING What is knowledge? What types of knowledge exist? Read our article Knowledge Management: Why Knowledge is the most important Resource in your Organization.

Knowledge Management in Project Management

In the context of project management, knowledge management means systematically capturing, documenting, sharing, and reusing project experience, proven practices, and valuable insights throughout the entire project lifecycle. Knowledge gained during project planning, execution, and closure is systematically documented, evaluated, and made available for future initiatives. This ensures that both documented project knowledge and the practical experience of project participants can be leveraged in future projects. As a result, organizations can avoid recurring mistakes, adopt proven approaches, and continuously improve the efficiency and success of their projects. At the same time, valuable project knowledge remains within the organization even after a project has been completed or when project team members leave.

Ideally, the organizational framework for effective knowledge management is established by a Project Management Office (PMO). The PMO ensures that project experience is systematically captured, evaluated, shared, and reused. It acts as an enabler and facilitator by providing appropriate knowledge management processes, methods, standards, and tools, promoting their use, and supporting project teams in preserving and sharing knowledge. In addition, the PMO ensures that insights from lessons learned, retrospectives, and project closure reports do not remain isolated within individual projects but are incorporated into best practices, templates, and project management standards, making them available across the organization for future projects.

The PMO is therefore not the owner of knowledge, knowledge is created within projects. Instead, the PMO creates the conditions that ensure this knowledge is preserved, continuously developed, and transformed into innovation that benefits the entire organization.

RECOMMENDED READING Read our blog article on the Project Management Office: PMO: Have it, improve it, or be one of the 90% left behind.

Benefits: Why Is Knowledge Management Important?

The primary value of knowledge management lies in transforming individual experience into organizational knowledge that can be used over the long term. By separating knowledge from individual people, projects, or specific situations, organizations can reuse it for future decisions, processes, and initiatives. This enables companies to avoid repeating mistakes, preserve proven practices, accelerate decision-making, and establish the foundation for continuous improvement. Knowledge management makes organizations more adaptable, resilient, and less dependent on the expertise of individual employees.

Effective knowledge management also enables organizations to:

• improve collaboration and idea generation
• foster a stronger culture of knowledge sharing
• protect intellectual capital
• recognize human capital as a valuable asset, making employees feel respected for their expertise
• capture and preserve knowledge for future generations of employees

Ultimately, knowledge management reduces an organization's dependence on chance, individual employees, and the repeated loss of valuable experience. As a result, organizations become not only better informed but also more capable of learning, more resilient, and able to act more quickly.

RECOMMENDED READING What are the objectives of knowledge management? Why should you manage your knowledge? Read our article Knowledge Management: Why You Should Manage Your Knowledge (Digitally).

What Are the Benefits of Knowledge Management in Projects?

The purpose of knowledge management in projects is to use information as a valuable resource to ensure successful project delivery. Since knowledge is created individually by employees, knowledge management ensures that it is shared with other project participants.

Its key functions include:

• defining the channels through which knowledge is shared
• making employees' competencies transparent
• documenting project results and intermediate deliverables
• supporting knowledge transfer through employee training
• creating opportunities for informal knowledge exchange

Every project generates new insights and creates new knowledge. Knowledge management captures, structures, and processes these insights, making them available throughout the organization.

Why Is Knowledge Management So Important?

Although it may not appear directly related to knowledge management practices at first glance, the primary objective is to increase organizational efficiency and improve decision-making.

The underlying idea is to build expertise within your organization and make it accessible to employees. This knowledge enables them to make better-informed, faster, and ultimately more profitable decisions.

Of course, knowledge management offers many additional benefits. Successful knowledge management enables organizations to:

• improve collaboration and idea generation
• strengthen a culture of knowledge sharing
• protect intellectual capital
• recognize human capital as a valuable asset, making employees feel respected for their expertise
• capture and preserve knowledge for future generations of employees

Why Is Knowledge Management in Projects So Important?

Although it may not seem directly related to knowledge management practices at first glance, the primary objective is to improve the efficiency of project planning, project execution, and project evaluation while enhancing decision-making.

The idea is that building and documenting organizational expertise, and making it available to employees, helps reduce planning errors, avoid cost overruns, and prevent project delays. Access to this knowledge enables project teams to make better-informed, faster, and ultimately more profitable decisions.

Knowledge management also proves invaluable when project personnel change. Documentation in the form of lessons learned, templates, and best practices facilitates a seamless transition and helps ensure project continuity.

Finally, knowledge management makes project administration faster and more efficient. Employees do not have to start from scratch, but can instead build on the documentation generated from previous projects, saving valuable time.

RECOMMENDED READING How can knowledge be used efficiently? Read our article Knowledge Management: The Path to a Smarter Organization.

Knowledge Management in Large and Small Organizations

Knowledge management can be implemented across organizations in virtually every industry. However, the way it is introduced depends on factors such as the industry and the size of the organization.

Small and large organizations often use knowledge management in different ways.

Small businesses and startups need to establish a competitive advantage as early as possible. They therefore benefit from implementing knowledge management from the outset by documenting, codifying, and preserving internal knowledge before it is lost.

Large organizations, including those that have been successful in their markets for decades, use knowledge management to remain agile in today's digital economy, where business conditions can change rapidly and often without warning. Without a reliable system for preserving existing knowledge while continuously capturing new knowledge, responding effectively to these changes would be extremely difficult.

Both large and small organizations benefit from knowledge management because it recognizes every employee's knowledge as a valuable organizational asset. This not only strengthens organizational capabilities but also makes employees feel respected and appreciated for their expertise.

Organizations that wish to introduce knowledge management within a specific department can also tailor it to particular business functions. Knowledge management is most commonly applied in:

• IT and information systems
• information science
• project management
• organizational management
• business administration
• sales and customer success management
• human resources
• content management
• personal knowledge management

How Does Knowledge Management Work?

Knowledge management is based on the principle that employees must be as well trained and qualified as possible in order to make the best business decisions.

One of the most effective ways to create a highly skilled and continuously learning workforce is to promote organizational learning. Organizations achieve this by implementing knowledge management practices. This approach not only ensures that existing knowledge, both explicit and tacit, is captured, codified, and stored, but also that it can be shared with other employees, enabling them to expand their own expertise. This prevents the formation of knowledge silos and creates a broad foundation for collaboration.

TOP Model: Three Approaches to Knowledge Management

The literature on knowledge management generally distinguishes between three fundamental approaches: the technology-centered, organisation-centered, and people-centered approach. They differ primarily in whether they place their emphasis on supporting technologies, the organizational processes involved in managing knowledge, or people, and their needs.

1. People-Centered Approach

This approach focuses on people, relationships, and the ways in which individuals create learning communities and other informal networks for sharing knowledge. It is also known as the ecological approach to knowledge management.

2. Technology-Centered Approach

This approach focuses on technologies that facilitate the storage and transfer of knowledge. Its objective is to develop technological systems that encourage and support knowledge sharing throughout the organization.

3. Process-Centered Approach

This approach examines how organizational structures and business processes enable and promote knowledge sharing and organizational learning. It encompasses production processes, organizational hierarchies, and the organization's cultural framework.

The approach you choose depends largely on how your organization currently operates. Your organizational structure, corporate policies, management style, and existing processes determine what type of implementation is most practical.

Regardless of which approach serves as your primary focus, implementing knowledge management will inevitably affect your people, your technology, and your processes. In practice, these three approaches are therefore combined, and a successful knowledge management strategy should address all three areas simultaneously.

Strategies and Tactics in Knowledge Management

Beyond the theoretical approaches, there are several well-established methods and practical strategies for managing organizational knowledge. The most common include the following.

Knowledge Storage vs. Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge storage focuses on collecting, codifying, and maintaining knowledge in a reliable repository. This is an essential first step. However, effective knowledge management also requires a system for distributing and sharing the stored knowledge so that it can be put into practice throughout the organization.

Codification vs. Personalization

The distinction between these strategies is similar to the one described above.

Codification refers to all activities involved in collecting and documenting knowledge, for example, creating and maintaining databases, developing information architectures, or training employees to use knowledge repositories effectively. It also includes raising awareness of these systems throughout the organization.

Personalization, on the other hand, is about connecting people with this codified knowledge. This is achieved by building communities of practice, encouraging active discussion and knowledge transfer, and facilitating interaction and collaboration across teams.

Push vs. Pull

These are two contrasting strategies for knowledge sharing.

With a push strategy, individuals proactively document and share their knowledge so that it is readily available to others.

With a pull strategy, team members actively seek out subject matter experts when they need specific knowledge. In this case, knowledge is shared on demand rather than proactively.

The SECI Model

The SECI model for knowledge transfer and knowledge creation was first proposed by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi in 1995/1996 and is regarded as one of the cornerstones of modern knowledge management theory. It describes four modes through which knowledge is created and transferred:

• Socialization
• Externalization
• Combination
• Internalization

Socialization

Tacit to tacit

Knowledge is transferred intuitively through observation, mentoring, shared experience, and practice. Individuals learn directly from one another without formally documenting what they know.

Externalization

Tacit to explicit

Implicit, intuitive knowledge is articulated, documented, and transformed into explicit knowledge that can be taught to others. This is considered the most challenging form of knowledge transfer because tacit knowledge is often difficult to express in a structured and understandable way.

Combination

Explicit to explicit

Existing documented knowledge is transferred, organized, combined, or integrated with other documented knowledge. Since all knowledge already exists in an explicit form, this is generally the simplest type of knowledge transfer.

Internalization

Explicit to tacit

Individuals absorb documented knowledge by applying and practicing it until it becomes second nature. Over time, explicit knowledge is internalized and transformed into personal experience and expertise.

Methods of Knowledge Management

Barcamp

Classification: Knowledge processes: Develop, Share, Apply | Design dimension: People

A Barcamp primarily supports knowledge sharing and knowledge creation by enabling participants to collaboratively develop and exchange their expertise. The method is mainly associated with the People dimension and promotes cross-functional knowledge transfer, contributing to the achievement of organizational goals through open collaboration.

Best Practice

Classification: Knowledge processes: Share, Apply, Preserve | Design dimension: Organization

Best practices help identify, document, and disseminate proven approaches so that existing know-how can be reused across the organization. This method primarily belongs to the Organization dimension and supports the development of a company-wide knowledge base that serves as a foundation for continuous improvement.

Checklists

Classification: Knowledge processes: Apply, Preserve | Design dimension: Organization, Technology

Checklists help preserve and consistently apply knowledge in daily operations by documenting essential tasks, procedures, and experiences. They contribute to knowledge retention and reduce the risk of knowledge loss, particularly in recurring processes and during the onboarding of new employees.

Communities of Practice

Classification: Knowledge processes: Develop, Share, Apply | Design dimension: People

Communities of Practice foster the continuous exchange of experiential knowledge and the collaborative development of expertise within a professional community. This method is primarily associated with the People dimension and is often facilitated by a knowledge manager to ensure sustainable knowledge sharing.

Lessons Learned

Classification: Knowledge processes: Share, Apply, Preserve | Design dimension: Organization

Lessons Learned provide a structured approach to reflecting on completed projects in order to capture valuable insights and make them available for future initiatives. The method primarily supports knowledge retention and helps prevent knowledge loss after project completion or when employees leave the organization.

Microarticles

Classification: Knowledge processes: Share, Apply, Preserve | Design dimension: Organization, Technology

Microarticles enable the rapid documentation of concise knowledge units, making them easy to access and reuse in everyday work. They are typically stored in a knowledge database or wiki and contribute to the continuous expansion of the organization's knowledge base.

Mind Mapping

Classification: Knowledge processes: Identify, Develop | Design dimension: People

Mind mapping supports the organization, development, and visualization of knowledge while helping users recognize relationships between concepts. It enables the systematic capture of existing know-how and can be combined with AI-powered tools to support brainstorming and knowledge structuring.

Newsletter

Classification: Knowledge processes: Share, Apply | Design dimension: Organization, Technology

Newsletters facilitate the regular distribution of relevant information and support organization-wide knowledge sharing. They are delivered via internal emails and can be used to highlight new content in a knowledge database or communicate important organizational updates.

Retrospective

Classification: Knowledge processes: Develop, Preserve, Apply | Design dimension: People

Retrospectives encourage teams to reflect on workflows and experiences in order to identify improvements for future projects. They play a key role in knowledge retention by documenting insights and making them accessible to future teams.

Process Modeling

Classification: Knowledge processes: Identify, Apply, Preserve | Design dimension: Organization, Technology

Process modeling documents workflows in a transparent and structured manner, making organizational knowledge accessible over the long term. It supports knowledge identification, retention, and application while providing the foundation for a structured knowledge base that can be analyzed and optimized using artificial intelligence (AI).

Wikis

Classification: Knowledge processes: Share, Apply, Preserve | Design dimension: Organization, Technology

Wikis enable the collaborative creation, maintenance, and dissemination of structured knowledge across the organization. As a centralized knowledge database, they support knowledge retention, streamline the onboarding of new employees, and can leverage AI or artificial intelligence to improve information retrieval and the ongoing maintenance of the organization's knowledge base.

^{Image: Some knowledge management methods categorized according to the building blocks model by Probst et al and the TOM model by Bullinger. Image creation aided by artificial intelligence, checked by a human. ©InLoox, Inc.}

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