Sharing Project Experience through Case-based Reasoning

Today, most knowledge-based companies organize work in projects. Due to different reasons knowledge gained in projects is not documented and shared in an appropriate manner resulting in the problem that critical knowledge is lost. We propose case-based storage of relevant knowledge and an appropriate reasoning about this knowledge to support organizations in new projects. In order to achieve this objective, we have analyzed which kind of critical knowledge is gained in projects or other way round, which missing knowledge results in the failing of projects. A case is a pre-defined knowledge structure filled out by potentially different stakeholders of the project. After the first planning of a new project, if the project characteristics are entered, case-based reasoning is used to find similar old projects and derive from them additional attributes and to make potential risks visible. This is useful to better estimate the effort of a project, the required human competences and the required communication between stakeholders. This knowledge transfer can support also other phases of a project such as scheduling activities. In a closing phase, individual problems solved in the project can be documented as a kind of lessons-learned attempt.