Improve Performance Through Reflective Practice and Knowledge Sharing In Project Management—Shan He

Improve Performance Through Reflective Practice and Knowledge Sharing In Project Management
It becomes increasingly crucial for organisations to make improvement in such a competitive environment. Being adaptive to the changing market can be acquired through enhancing competence of organisation members and improving the collaboration of whole organisation. Therefore, reflective practice can be perceived as an efficient and simple approach for either organisation or individual to promote performance improvement and learning process while knowledge sharing can provide an easy access for members to exchange knowledge information and make improvement.

This paper will focus on how reflective practice and knowledge sharing enable organisation to improve performance and learning. Reflective practice can be applied through many tools and techniques, which need to be tailored within different organisational context. With respect to knowledge sharing, the most challenging aspect is the process of converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, where can create a collaborative and dynamic environment for organisation to make improvement. There will be a project case that author involved with during working experience to illustrate how the project was managed using reflective practice tools while advantages, problems, lessons learnt are identified through the application of reflective journals. An improved outcome will
be demonstrated if the ‘Gibbs reflective cycle’ could have been applied into the project.

Through the reflection analysis of the project case, it is found that reflection becomes effective when applying theory into practice and knowledge sharing can bring an improved outcome. In organisation, learning to make improvement comes effectively from reflecting on experience.

Author: Shan He
Review status: Postgraduate assignment (University of Technology Sydney)

Communities of Practice—Chenxi Zhu

Communities of Practice
The aim of this essay is to describe how a community can approach a project goal and what project knowledge is shared in an architectural project. The knowledge exchange is a social process contingent on histories in project management. It indicates the tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge in the architectural area and also how these transfer and how to spread from the individual to team.

First section of this article is to introduce the background of the project. This architectural project is a serious and great Chinese government project. The requirement of this government project is to build a community building on a public site with a limited space areas of building. In this project, there are some issues to influence the project delay or out of control because of the situation of project. Some of these are related to the communication and some of these are related to the leadership.

The second part indicates some reflection of this project and how to solve some problems, and it also presents the how to make a combination of the different culture knowledge. I explain some previous factors that influence this project. Simultaneously, it presents the methodology of the knowledge transferring and sharing, because this project is transfer from another team in the architectural company. This section also shows the influence of leadership. A good leadership led the project success.

Overall, the main issues are included the leadership, communication and knowledge sharing. In the
conclusion, all issues belong to the whole community.

Author: Chenxi Zhu
Review status: Postgraduate assignment (University of Technology Sydney)

Application of KRAs Theory—Meng Jia

Application of KRAs Theory in Concept Design Phase of a Banknote Plate-making Workshop Construction Project in China
The uncertain nature of modern society results in a complex project management context, especially in the concept design phase. There is a critical demand to focus on key areas which can directly contribute to short-term objective and assist in long-term success of project.

This reflective paper analyzes key failing factors of a construction project which relates to the Banknote Plate-making workshop in China. Based on the actual condition, the technique of KRAs is applied to identify essential management areas and performance gaps between project team and benchmark. Some measures are recommended to fill the gaps and improve performance in the future projects.

Author: Meng Jia
Review status: Postgraduate assignment (University of Technology Sydney)

Project Performance Improvement—Mohammad Rahim Sidiqi

Project Performance Improvement
Project performance improvement is the concept of enhancing the effectiveness and effectiveness of a project. It is a gradual process, which should be undertaken by all the stakeholders within a project. There are various techniques, which are adopted and implemented in the project performance improvement. These include performance drivers, learning to perform, the project context, performance techniques, practice improvement, and performance improvement.

This paper addresses the concept of performance techniques as they are applied in the completion of a particular project. The project, in this case, is the construction of a residential 12 apartments building. The contractor responsible for undertaking the project was Afghan Reconstruction and Development Unit (ARDU) under the management and leadership of Mr. Zia, the project manager. The project team applied various performance techniques. These include the reflection, reflection strategies, collective reflection, reflective journal and reflective assessment. They included reflecting on the previous experiences and recorded knowledge and used it as a basis on improving the current performance. These performance techniques significantly improved the outcome of the project. However, the company needs to implement more effective strategies. The reason is that it failed in time management and operation within the budget.

Author: Mohammad Rahim Sidiqi
Review status: Postgraduate assignment (University of Technology Sydney)

Social learning theory in construction—Neroshan Devakumaran

Application of social learning theory to boost technician skills and performance in a construction project
Skilled labour force is an essential part of a construction project. Every construction project has different phases. Transitioning between phases dictates the need for different skill sets and it is crucial that every organisation manages its labour resource efficiently to avoid skill gaps that could lead to its downfall in this highly competitive world. Being constrained by a limited labour force with a significant skill imbalance during the transitioning of two phases, the author had to come up with a plan to alleviate this situation by training the unskilled technicians within a short period of time due to the steady increase of tasks and multiple end dates. The author created a strategy to train them within a month while steadily increasing the pace of work. Using the modelling process of a social learning theory with other learning styles incorporated in parts, the author was able to eventually fill the skill gaps necessary for the next phase within the planned time. The author eventually provides a reflection on the methods used by him that proves that although the techniques were efficient, there is room for improvement.

Author: Neroshan Devakumaran
Review status: Postgraduate assignment (University of Technology Sydney)

The Art of Story—Michael Morrison

The Art of Story – “An Ancient Tool for Modern Projects”
In our modern fast paced society, technology has given us so many new ways to share information with tools such as email, smartphone, social media and skype and so many reasons not to take time out to reflect. Too often we communicate electronically, we tabulate, we diarise, we list, we number, we bullet point, however too seldom in the modern world do we engage in face to face informal discussions where we share knowledge, too seldom do we reflect.

We sit bolt upright in uncomfortable chairs around rectangular tables, in dull grey vinyl boardrooms and we recite line by line information in the form of meeting minutes which have been on the agenda for weeks. Are we engaged? Are we actively listening? Do we remember anything when we walk out of the room? Do we take this explicit invaluable knowledge and use it to add value to our work for decades to come? In my experience, I would say no and that a large percentage of this knowledge and lessons learnt is lost in translation.

The paper I have written talks about how we can improve the way we practice Project Management through reflection, and how art of storytelling can be used as a tool for modern Projects. In addition, I explore how we can become more powerful leaders by using story as a way to reflect, share knowledge and get our message across, it has been said that if “a picture is worth a thousand words, a story is worth a thousand pictures” (Dan Pink). It is this improved practice of leadership through reflection and storytelling which will improve performance at an individual, project and organisational level.

Author: Michael Morrison
Review status: Postgraduate assignment (University of Technology Sydney)

History of project management in Australia

“Any profession of any standing knows where it came from and why.” The Australian Institute of Project Management is documenting the origins of modern project management in Australia, writes Adeline Teoh.

6 mistakes lean practitioners make

The most common cause of ineffectiveness in lean projects comes from the inability or unwillingness to learn from past experiments. Zach Nies outlines six common mistakes of lean practitioners and how you can avoid them.