"Project management has three important constraints: cost, time, and quality. Knowledge management also has three essential components: people, processes, and technology. But there's one big difference. In project management there's the option of choosing which of the three is most important for that particular project. In knowledge management, the defining constraint is always people."
--Shirley Funkhouser, PMP, in "Knowledge Management's Single Constraint"
Research conducted by the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management, Lotus Research, and Boston University discusses the challenges and benefits of CoPs, and provides some implementation guidelines. You can download a pdf of this report of the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management.
Go to http://www.ibm.com/ then place "Communities" in the search box at the RHS of the page for a comprehensive listing of study, research and reports on Communities of Practice..
David Curling
A Blog is a personal web publishing capability. You might think of a Blog as a web diary or particular log. And here I use the word log in the sense of keeping a record of information, events or observations.
The PMFORUM uses web logs for different of reasons. The Letters Blog is an quick way to capture the Letters to the Editor and post to the PMFORUM. With the PM Connect Blog we update with the latest PM vendor posting or press release. The PM Clarion Blog is posting of the PM World Today monthly hightlights.
Max's Musings Blog is a capture of Max Wideman's monthly update on what he has been up to with regard to his PM research and thinking for the month. The Blog is on the PMFORUM and the links are to his web site.
Frank Patrick' Blog is focused on expounding on the "Theory of Constraints" and if you are uncertain about what the TOC is you should spend some time on the "Focused Performance" Weblog. Hal Macomber is more ecletic and has an interesting Blog that ranges over variety of topics on "Reforming Project Management". Hal is into Lean Project Management skills and he has some interesting and thoughtful PM Blog postings.
These PM Blogs are listed on the PMFORUM's "PM Journals" web pages. If you know of any other PM Blogs please provide us contact information so that we can share this interesting and growing web PM information publishing initiative with the readers of the PMFORUM.
The Four Knowledge-Sharing Communities of the PM CoP are:.
Contract Management
The Contract Management Community is structured around supporting practitioners with the contracting processes, keeping them informed of changes within the contracting field, and offering a forum for communication and collaboration.
Risk Management
The Risk Management Community provides a resource for job performance support structured around the Risk Management Process and offers continued collaboration and information sharing among community members.
Systems Engineering
The Systems Engineering Community provides guidance in requirements analysis and standardization, presents a variety of Systems Engineering specific tools, and encourages communication and collaboration among community members.
Total Ownership
The Total Ownership Cost Community is focused on bringing community members together by offering collaborative areas for TOC disciplines, content centered around R-TOC, and communication and interaction across all areas of TOC.
The PM CoP site can be found at http://pmcop.ar.navy.mil. Join the community by creating your personal login name and password through an easy registration process. Once validated, members are able to take full advantage of the knowledge sharing capabilities offered.
The US Department of Defense Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Knowledge Sharing System (AKSS) was launched in October 2002 to replace the Defense Acquisition Deskbook . AKSS will continue to provide acquisition information for service components and across functional disciplines.
AKSS serves as the central point of access for all Acquisition, Technical and Logistics (AT&L) resources and information, and to communicate acquisition reform. As the primary reference tool for the Department of Defense AT&L workforce, it provides a means to link information and reference assets from various disciplines into an integrated information source.
The AKSS provides a reference source for US DoD policy documents and fosters the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics related US DoD communities of practice (CoP). These Communities of Practices, an integral part of the AKSS promote sharing of lessons learned, best practices and templates on a continuing basis. [ More on the AKSS ]