Knowledge management for metrics: Enabling analysis and dissemination of metrics

The need for a measurement regime to enable effective project control is well recognized. Additionally there is an increased need to understand the technical progression of projects, especially where projects have high levels of inherent complexity; have to develop solutions in complex environments; or both. Investigations have shown the difficulty in both the implementation and the use of a measurement regime, especially in reference to the display and dissemination of the results to the organization. This is highly desirable in order to control both the projects themselves, as well as the process of monitoring project portfolios. We hypothesize that the application of results from both the knowledge management and information flow literatures to this problem will allow the development of a tool to improve this dissemination. This would allow the measurement system to be better at assisting with project control. We therefore present a proposed design for a knowledge management tool that enables projects operating in a complex environment to maintain better control. In this paper we discuss the design of a tool to collect, store, and display this information to the required audience. Designed to support the metrics program, we focus on the design of the Knowledge Management system, using reasoning from research into the metrics program to support choices in the functionality. We will use this model to outline the benefits of such a system to the projects, and use a case study of a piloted system to review these benefits.