Price of poor knowledge management = $31.5 billion

Thirty one billion dollars is not not a small number. That is price of knowledge management, to be precise, poor knowledge management. It speaks volumes by itself. Every other software company is doing the lessons learned exercise at least at the end of the project, if not at the end of every phase. Thanks to CMM and ISO. With the adoption of agile, every team is doing the sprint retrospective at the end of every sprint. That means at least once in a month, every agile team is performing a lessons learned exercise.

For most of the teams, the awareness of root cause analysis and corrective actions are there and at the same time When I ask questions alike;

1. What is the one problem you elimated from this company forever?
2. What are the requirements management related lessons learned by the organization during the past 5 years?
3. What are the design related lessons learned during the past 5 years?
4. Can I see all these, category wise at the press of a button?
5. Do you refer back to these, while planning for the next phase / project?
6. Are these part of the induction programs?

none have a satisfactory answer, and the same problems continues at lest as potential problems, sprint after sprint.

It is more like a person who wants to improve and goes to the guruji for advice. He leaves with a lighter heart and with firm resolution to improve. After a period of time, he comes back again, and repeats the same old story. After some time he gets ashamed to meet the same Guruji again and goes to a new Guru.

In a way organizations / teams / individuals are like this. They want to improve and excel, and at the same time do not have the conviction on the ROI from these. Hence they end up adopting models after models from consultants after consultants, without much of a transformation. The story repeats again and again, with different actors.

Before venturing into any initiative, understand the need and have a business case which is in alignment with the project / organization strategy. Have only limited initiatives but focus on them with whole might.