Exploring Knowledge Management Practices and Implementation Barriers in Sri Lankan IT Projects

Knowledge is a critical asset in an organization. IT projects are purely knowledge base projects. It is important to practicing knowledge management within IT projects to capture, store and review knowledge created while doing the project. The level of Knowledge Management parties within IT projects is unknown and what are the barriers to implement knowledge management within the IT projects is known in Sri Lanka. Further what are the prerequisite need to establish to make the successful knowledge management within IT projects is unknown in Sri Lanka. A qualitative research approach uses in this research and data collected using structured interviews from 15 IT project managers. The data collected from completed IT projects in telecommunication industry. The code matching method use to analyze the data. The results reveal that the level of knowledge management practicing within IT projects is low. Further main barriers to implement knowledge management are, limitation of time, additional resources required for knowledge management activities, project culture, lack of leadership and project organization. When considering the prerequisites to implement knowledge management within IT project environment, it is revealed that designate a knowledge managers role in IT project organization and assign responsibility to capture and manage the knowledge will support to successful knowledge management within IT projects. Further it reveals that when removing barriers to implement knowledge management practices and implementing prerequisites will increase the level of project knowledge management practices within IT projects, at the same time it affected the project cost and project timelines. Hence when addressing the barriers to implement knowledge management and addressing prerequisites, project managers need to mindful not to compromise the project management performance.