Determining the benefit of knowledge management activities

The contribution of this paper is a process for determining the benefit of knowledge management tools such as a lessons-learned system. Knowledge management is defined as the set of human, process, and tool interventions to support the creation, assimilation, dissemination, and application of knowledge. Determining the benefits of knowledge management is based on understanding the organizational-learning process which is the process knowledge management aims to support. The aim of organizational learning is to increase an organization's performance through the application of better knowledge in decision making which leads to the performance of tasks. The benefit of knowledge management is composed of three factors: change in knowledge, change in decision making performance, and change in task performance. The change in knowledge should lead to a change in decision making performance which will then increase the performance of the task a person or organization is completing. The process to determine the benefit involves collecting quantitative, as well as, qualitative data. The process is being developed for a project environment in a technical organization.