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5 - Project Knowledge Model: A Differentiator

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2018

Manoj Kumar Lal
Affiliation:
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
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Summary

Having introduced PKM in chapter 4, this chapter presents its uniqueness in the project delivery environment.

Digitisation of the project knowledge is the core proposition of PKM. This chapter continues to identify and detail the differentiators provided by PKM that accelerate the project delivery with enhanced quality. This chapter identifies the reasons why this model could not be visualised much earlier. Finally, it summarises the benefits that project delivery would accrue from the model.

Project Knowledge Model Characteristics: Traceability and Flexibility

Digitising project knowledge via traceability and in-built flexibility are the main characteristic of PKM.

The completeness of the project knowledge is ensured by:

  • 1. Building block inventories (such as for requirement building bock, the inventory may be Requirement_01, Requirement_02) that can be completely specified by its mandatory and optional attributes (Requirement Id: mandatory field, Related department: optional field).

  • 2. Exhaustive traceability (171 to be precise, for a typical implementation) capturing links between the two inventories keep the knowledge digitised and integrated in a single repository. In a traditional project there may be up-to ten relationships of traceability. PKM provides the capability to manage up-to 171 relationships (for example) of traceability in the project helping specify the project knowledge completely.

  • There is a significant difference between relationship of the Project Knowledge Model and traceability used in traditional sense. In PKM, the inventory that is traced, represents the lowest logical unit of information. Its completeness is to the extent that when inventories are combined with linkages, it represents complete project knowledge. In traditional traceability, it is a challenge to represent inventories at the lowest and logically complete information, as they are unstructured sentences and paragraphs in sections of the documents, difficult to be traced unambiguously.

    In addition to being complete and fully traceable project knowledge, it is also flexible enough to cater for subjectivity as explained in the following:

  • 1. The number of building blocks is subjective and can vary based on the context and subjectivity of the SME.

  • 2. Attributes defining building blocks completely may be different for different organisations as they need to be evolved by the relevant SMEs.

  • 3. Many of the 171 relationships may not have much practical usage and hence can be de-scoped for greater speed of project delivery by the project SMEs. One example may be the relationship between the building blocks ‘Non-functional attributes’ and ‘Communication’.

  • Type
    Chapter
    Information
    Knowledge Driven Development
    Bridging Waterfall and Agile Methodologies
    , pp. 97 - 120
    Publisher: Cambridge University Press
    Print publication year: 2018

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