Storytelling as Method for Sharing Knowledge across IT Projects

  • Authors:
  • Lene Nielsen;Sabine Madsen

  • Affiliations:
  • Copenhagen Business School;Copenhagen Business School

  • Venue:
  • HICSS '06 Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - Volume 08
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

This paper develops a novel perspective on and a method for capturing and sharing knowledge across IT projects. The existing literature seems to contain two perspectives on how to achieve and share experiences between projects; a reflective perspective that focuses on individual project involvement and a formal perspective that prescribes written project documentation. However these perspectives only provide limited support for the development of a shared understanding and learning from other peoples' experiences. Based on theory and supported by experiences and analysis of a workshop with practitioners the authors propose a third perspective - the narrative. The narrative perspective serves as a foundation for the development of a method that emphasizes collective sharing of knowledge through storytelling techniques. The suggested method lets the participants both reflect on their own practice through comparison with others' and creates a process through which they can learn from other partakers' experiences.