The open exchange of information during all the phases of a project improves the quality of the project management processes and deliverables (Gardiner, 2005). Traditional projects may lose important knowledge if the information exchanged during informal discussions or formal meetings is not captured in the project documentation.

Global projects face the same threat, with the additional challenge of having e-mail threads as an important source of project discussions, decisions, risks, issues, changes and meeting minutes. Some project managers are comfortable with using e-mail as the project knowledge repository, but what happens when key people are absent, or leave the project? A good part of the knowledge is often lost, or transferred to other people, using an unstructured format that makes it difficult to find information when needed.  

A knowledge-sharing suite should be deployed for the major projects in the organisation, and then a ‘project virtual room’ must be defined for each project, with a structure that represents the usual project documentation in your company, like ‘project plan’, ‘project standards’, ‘project monitoring and control’ and ‘project deliverables’.

The chapter 24 of the Global Project Management book discusses some formal and informal communication guidelines that can stimulate the global team members to exchange, capture and combine tacit knowledge, by using the knowledge-sharing infrastructure to foster collaboration with team members in other locations.

Types of good practices for knowledge sharing:

-          Standards and guidelines for knowledge sharing

-          How to lead people to share information

-          How to close the project virtual room

Sources:

Gardiner, P. D. (2005) ‘Project Management: A strategic planning approach’ (Palgrave MacMillan, UK).