Page 295 - Project+

follow through.

Knowledge Management Tools

Throughout the book I’ve talked a great deal about communication, project documents,
and other artifacts. The amount of documentation on a project can be overwhelming,

so I recommend setting up a systematic approach for storing and retrieving all of this
information. It’s great to have project documents describing the scope, deliverables,
schedule, and so on, but if your stakeholders and team members don’t know where to
find the documents or don’t know how to access them, it’s as though they don’t exist.

The CompTIA Project+ objectives highlight the following knowledge management
tools: intranet sites, Internet sites, wiki pages, vendor knowledge bases, and
collaboration tools. Let’s take a brief look at each.

Intranet and Internet Sites Intranet sites are internal to the organization and can

be accessed only by employees (or authorized personnel) within the organization. They
can provide communication mechanisms among and between employees as well as
host collaboration sites where project documents can be stored.

Internet sites are external to the organization and are accessed from the intranet via a
firewall. Internet sites provide a wealth of information, collaboration tools, and other
useful items for managing your project.

Wiki Pages Wiki pages are typically internal to the organization. Project documents,

change control documents, and general information about the project can be posted to
the wiki site. A wiki site is generally dedicated to a specific topic or project.
Stakeholders, team members, and the project manager should be granted access to the
wiki pages to review content. Some team members, depending on their roles, may also
have the ability to update documents and post new information. For example, the
project coordinator would upload and post project documents as they are approved.
The project scheduler would update the project schedule with completed milestones

and so on.

Vendor Knowledge Bases A knowledge base is a collection of information about a
product or process that is continually kept up to date. A vendor knowledge base
contains information about their products or services. For example, Microsoft has an
extensive knowledge base for its products that allows users to query on “how to,”
various uses of the product, and so on.

Collaboration Tools Collaboration tools allow project team members to work on the
same documents while maintaining version control so only the most recent document
is available for review. For example, you might post an SOW and alert your team
members that you’d like them to review and make their additions and changes to the
document. The collaboration tool provides a check-in and check-out process so that
team members are always reviewing and updating the latest version of the document.

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