A project knowledge management framework grounded in design science research

摘要

Knowledge management (KM) dynamics have caused a lack of traceability and loss of explicit and tacit knowledge during a project's lifecycle. In addition, individuals desire ease of use and accessibility, suggesting that social media (SM) should be integrated. For this purpose, this research analyzed a solution with a technical instrument, through a design science research approach, with the intention of answering the research question: How well does knowledge project management work with the integrated use of project management tools? The Social Media for Project Management (SM4PM), a prescriptive framework for guiding the integrated use of SM in project management (PM), was instantiated to evaluate KM in PM in a public security organization. Data collection was done through interviews, direct observations, document analysis, and focus group. These data were analyzed using MaxQdaPlus. After the implementation, SM4PM was refined and redesigned. Results showed that SM support KM in activities related to PM, giving strong evidence that SM4PM can be generalized to solve a class of problems, such as collecting lessons learned naturally during the project lifecycle, managing the knowledge in PM, and understanding the relationship between processes and their integration. As a contribution, the study empirically applied "theory to practice" by instantiating a technical instrument based on the "theory of doing well" and applied "theory from practice" to refine this technical instrument. This applied research solves a class of problems involving KM in PM during the whole project lifecycle with a unique artifact.