Projects and Organisations - a Knowledge Sharing framework

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Please note, in this article you can replace the word "project" with "department" or "division" or "team" or "office" throughout.

The Boston Square here is one that I have used with projects as part of their Knowledge Management planning, and is a useful framework to allow projects to reflect about the knowledge sharing they need to do.

The thinking is as follows.

• The project knows some things
• The wider organisation (the centre, and other projects) knows some things as well.
• At the start of the project, they need to learn as much from the wider organisation as they can. If there are important things the organisation knows but the project doesn't, the project needs to learn these things.
• At the end of the project, if the project has learned things the rest of the organisation does not know, then the project needs to share this knowledge.
• At all times, the project and the organisation should be in synch - in the green boxes in the diagram.
• If there is any knowledge in the red boxes, then this is evidence of organisational silos, and of the lack of knowledge sharing.