Sources of Knowledge Management Project Failures

Knowledge management system (KMS) projects have historically resulted in high levels of failures. Back in 2003 KMS failure rates were around 80%. Even those that were successful were still limited due to lack of captured knowledge. Over time however, reported KMS project failures have improved to 70% in 2005 and 50% in 2011.  Even with significant improvements to KMS implementations, we are only likely to be successful half of the time.

Given such a poor performance of KMS implementations, it would be wise to determine where we failed in the past to ensure we don't replicate these issues in future implementations.  Fortunately, there has been research done in this area to determine the common sources of KMS implementation failures.  The sources of these failures can be categorized as technology, people, and organization issues.

Over the next few days I will post more details about the issues for each of these three categories of KMS project failures and the steps that can be taken to mitigate these issues.

References

• Akhavan, P., Jafari, M., & Fathian, M. (2005). Exploring failure factors of implementing knowledge management systems in organization. Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, 6. Retrieved from http://www.tlainc.com/jkmp.htm.
• Bishop, J., Matsumoto, I., Glass, J., & Bouchlaghem, D. (2008). Ensuring the effectiveness of a knowledge management initiative. Journal of Knowledge Management, 12(4), 16.
• Butler, T. (2003). From data to knowledge and back again: Understanding the limitations of KMS. Knowledge and Process Management, 10(3), 144.
• Mason, D., & Pauleen, D. (2003). Perceptions of knowledge management: A qualitative analysis. Journal of Knowledge Management, 7(4), 38.
• Rathor, N., Thapliyal, M.P, Gupta, V.K., & Gupta, A. (2011). Knowledge management systems & it's failure factors. VSRD International Journal of Computers Science and Information Technology, 1(5), 321-327.
• Riege, A. (2005). Three-dozen knowledge-sharing barriers managers must consider. Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(3), 18.