What to Do With All These Project Documentations? - Research Issues in Reusing Codified Project Knowledge

Project-based organizations invest a lot of time and effort into the extensive documentation of their projects. These project documents usually contain innovative knowledge and represent a significant source of information for the continual development of a learning organization. However, this codified project knowledge often remains untapped afterwards. A central problem in this context is the sheer information overload due to the often very large documentation stocks in project-based organizations. Against this background, this paper poses the following question: what can be done with the extensive project documentation after it has been created? To answer this question, two methodological approaches are combined. First, a literature review summarizes the current status quo of research in this special area. Then, expert interviews with IT project managers provide a deeper understanding of common practical problems. The combination of respective findings makes it possible to uncover research gaps and subsequently to define future needs for research. In sum, this paper formulates six research issues, which represent a starting point on the path to more comprehensive solutions for practically coping with large stocks of codified project knowledge.