Management of project knowledge in a project-based organisation : a case study of research enterprise

Knowledge Management (KM) is vital factor to successfully undertake projects. The temporary nature of projects necessitates employing useful KM practices to reduce any issues such as knowledge leakiness and rework. The Project Management Office (PMO) is a unit within organisations to facilitate and oversee organisational projects. Project Management Maturity Models (PMMM) show the development of PMOs from immature to mature levels. The existing PMMMs have focused on discussing Project Management (PM) practices, however, the management of project knowledge is yet to be addressed, at various levels of maturity. A research project was undertaken to investigate the mentioned gap for addressing KM practices at the existing PMMMs. Due to the exploratory and inductive nature of this research, qualitative methods using case studies were chosen as the research methodology to investigate the problem in the real world. In total, three cases selected from different industries: research; mining and government organisations, to provide broad categories for research and research questions were examined using the developed framework. This paper presents the findings from the investigation of the research organisation with the lowest level of maturity. From KM process point of view, knowledge creation and capturing are the most important processes, while knowledge transferring and reusing received less attention. In addition, it was revealed that provision of “knowledge about client” and “project management knowledge” are the most important types of knowledge that are required at this level of maturity. The results also revealed that PMOs with higher maturity level have better knowledge management, however, some improvement is needed. In addition, the importance of KM processes varies at different levels of maturity. In conclusion, the outcomes of this paper could provide powerful guidance to PMOs at lowest level of maturity from KM point of view.