Project management is an important business process that includes creating and finishing various unique services or products for clients, under resource and real-world time constraints. Creating a plan for the whole project is one of the essentials of project management. Although it is the first step that must be done, it is also the toughest one and creating a good plan for certain project demands a lot of expertise and experience. 

Today we are going to talk about knowledge-based project management and how knowledge base systems can be used by both managers and people working on projects directly to efficiently take care of each task, while at the same time making the most out of their resources and having the ability to monitor the whole project. 

One of the biggest problems when creating projects, organizing and managing them is having the information necessary to get proper insights and come up with appropriate solutions. This is where a knowledge-based approach comes into play. 

Knowledge base software at the center of it all 

The first thing a business organization needs to do in order to take this approach in handling their projects and organizing themselves properly is to implement a knowledge base software or a knowledge management software. This is a platform that is filled with a valuable database and information important to a business organization and their projects. 

This platform will be the foundation of all of your projects and managers will rely on it daily to manage projects efficiently. The first thing you should know about knowledge base software solutions is that, if implemented, organized and maintained properly, they will contain a lot of relevant information for managers to use. 

This information is easily accessible and can be searched through the whole database in no time. Giving managers the ability to find important things that can help them organize projects and manage them as effectively as possible. 

Organizations that take care of their knowledge base and maintain it constantly add new information and update old things in order to always possess fresh facts that can help them in their business processes and the same rules apply when using a knowledge base for project management. 

Information within reach 

Project managers need to know a lot and this can sometimes be very difficult, even for the biggest professionals and the best experts in this field. They must know how to motivate people, be leaders, manage a lot of people and teams, learn to communicate with different people and across all levels, manage conflict situations, incorporate changes to projects etc. They also need to know about the work that has to be done and all tasks that a certain project should include. 

An experienced manager will know a lot of these things, but even a highly-skilled manager can only know so much. This is where a knowledge-based project management comes into play. A manager that has a good knowledge base solution at his disposal, and knows how to use it, will have all the relevant facts at their disposal. 

For example, if they want to see how much time they would need to finish a project, everything the manager has to do is go through the knowledge base and find previous projects, results and all other important metrics that revolve around that project. 

In the case of conflict situations between members of a team, the project manager can rely on the knowledge base to see who completed a certain task and what their performance was in the past. This allows the manager to make an easy decision on whose fault it is when something isn't done properly. 

Learning 

Not only will employees and managers always be able to access the knowledge base and get all the information they need very quickly, but they will also be able to learn a lot more by using the knowledge base over time. Managers will constantly monitor progress, see what people are doing and how they approach tasks, comment, edit etc. When you streamline projects using a knowledge base, all of these things will be done within your platform. 

During these actions, managers will remember a lot of things without even trying and they will be able to make a quicker decision and estimate things much easier. On the other hand, employees will also learn a lot about other roles by collaborating through the knowledge base and by seeing what work somebody else did. 

On the other hand, there are knowledge base solutions specifically designed for learning. They are engaging and allow people to learn quickly. If a company is starting a new project and needs to educate people on certain things that they will need to get the project done, it can use its knowledge base to provide the employees with everything they need to know and avoid organizing meetings. 

In a way, a knowledge base which is used by a lot of people at a business organization forces the whole company to be more transparent and open to criticism. Additionally, having a clear overview of things will also make it much easier to spot mistakes and correct them, and this helps people learn their lesson and never repeat them again. 

In the end, when all of your projects are spread across your knowledge base, people working on them will find it easier to fix mistakes, collaborate better and see what needs to be done. Remember that you must find a suitable, professional knowledge base solution for your organization and structure it properly so that you can get all of the benefits it has to offer.

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