This book offers a fresh perspective on how to cultivate learning within a project environment. It provides a framework to facilitate project practitioners' systematic reflection on their learning activities and to help them build a project learning practice. Combining theory and data, it will appeal to a wide academic and practitioner audience.

This book offers a fresh perspective on how to cultivate learning within a project environment. It provides a framework to facilitate project practitioners' systematic reflection on their learning activities and to help them build a project learning practice. Combining theory and data, it will appeal to a wide academic and practitioner audience.

Today's marketplace is fueled by knowledge. Yet organizing systematically to leverage knowledge remains a challenge. Leading companies have discovered that technology is not enough, and that cultivating communities of practice is the keystone of an effective knowledge strategy. Communities of practice come together around common interests and expertise- whether they consist of first-line managers or customer service representatives, neurosurgeons or software programmers, city managers or home-improvement amateurs. They create, share, and apply knowledge within and across the boundaries of teams, business units, and even entire companies-providing a concrete path toward creating a true knowledge organization. In Cultivating Communities of Practice, Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder argue that while communities form naturally, organizations need to become more proactive and systematic about developing and integrating them into their strategy. This book provides practical models and methods for stewarding these communities to reach their full potential-without squelching the inner drive that makes them so valuable. Through in-depth cases from firms such as DaimlerChrysler, McKinsey & Company, Shell, and the World Bank, the authors demonstrate how communities of practice can be leveraged to drive overall company strategy, generate new business opportunities, tie personal development to corporate goals, transfer best practices, and recruit and retain top talent. They define the unique features of these communities and outline principles for nurturing their essential elements. They provide guidelines to support communities of practice through their major stages of development, address the potential downsides of communities, and discuss the specific challenges of distributed communities. And they show how to recognize the value created by communities of practice and how to build a corporate knowledge strategy around them. Essential reading for any leader in today's knowledge economy, this is the definitive guide to developing communities of practice for the benefit-and long-term success-of organizations and the individuals who work in them. Etienne Wenger is a renowned expert and consultant on knowledge management and communities of practice in San Juan, California. Richard McDermott is a leading expert of organization and community development in Boulder, Colorado. William M. Snyder is a founding partner of Social Capital Group, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As the discipline of project management has matured so too has it become integrated with the discipline of knowledge management: Today's project professionals and executive sponsors increasingly understand the value of capturing, disseminating, and applying the knowledge generated from implementing projects. This paper examines how project managers can effectively integrate knowledge management into their project management practice and provide their organization's executives with the guidance they need to establish knowledge management across the enterprise. In doing so, it discusses knowledge management's key concepts, defining epistemology and identifying positivist and constructivist epistemologies; it discusses two key learning approaches--cognitive and situated learning. It also explains the concept of communities of practice and the similarities between communities of practice and project teams, analyzing the two types of capital--the social and the moral--which these two groups create. It then details three key problems involved in applying knowledge management as part of project management initiatives.

This paper offers a conception of a project team from a learning perspective. This conception includes project teams being considered "learning generators" by being an amalgam of many different "communities of practice" (Love & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002), which simulate an embryonic form of a new community of practice. Barriers to situated learning between project team members within the project environment are also illuminated. This paper presents practical structural attributes that form "learning bridges" to overcome these learning barriers within project teams. Additionally issues for research into project learning are explored.

The development of the Agile Movement, whatever the area of application or discipline, comes from the famous “faster, cheaper, better" maxim. As such, the agile manufacturing paradigm rests on four principles: response to change and uncertainty, supplying highly customized products, synthesis of diverse technologies, and intra-enterprise and inter-enterprise integration. For the reader interested in agile project management applications, response to changes, and transformations and its impact on managing projects, this book is a must-read. Various insights are covered, including: how to master complexity and changes in projects, economy, and society; how interaction between the project management team and project owners can influence risk management; how to move beyond the traditional mechanistic project management approach; how to include agile principles into an improved Logical Framework Analysis structure; what the impact is of agile principles on project management organizations what kind of innovative project management practice supports agile principles; and much more.