The role of project management office in developing knowledge management infrastructure

Abstract

PurposeKnowledge management (KM) is regarded as an essential factor in project-based organizations (PBOs), leading to organizational learning across projects. Over recent years, most PBOs have inserted project management offices (PMOs) into their hierarchical charts to manage their projects much more coherently. These offices can correspondingly provide KM facilities in PBOs. Thus, this study aimed to analyze the relationship between PMO functions and KM infrastructure, as KM enablers in organizations, in Iranian oil and gas upstream PBOs.Design/methodology/approachA two-phase quantitative survey strategy was exercised in this research. The first phase was to investigate the relationship between PMOs and KM infrastructure and to prioritize PMO functions and KM infrastructure based on their existing implementation/establishment status in Iranian oil and gas upstream PBOs. The research participants, identified through the website of the National Iran Oil Company (NIOC), were comprised of 46 oil and gas upstream PBOs which applied for exploration and production (E&P) certificate in Iran in 2016 and 2017. Accordingly, a total number of 46 questionnaires were submitted to the aforementioned companies with a return rate of 41 cases. The second phase was fulfilled questioning 19 Iranian oil and gas industry experts to determine the one-to-one effect of PMO functions on KM infrastructure and to verify the first-phase results.FindingsThe results indicated a strong relationship between PMO functions and KM infrastructure. This relationship was significant with regard to “practice management” and “technical support”, having the most considerable connections with KM infrastructure. According to the first-phase results, the main functions of PMOs in Iranian oil and gas industry were “practice management” and “technical support”. Considering KM infrastructure, “structure” showed the lowest mean value while “culture”, “human resources” and “processes and procedures” obtained the highest scores. The results also demonstrated that PMO functions could lead to more improvements in “processes and procedures”, as a sub-component of KM infrastructure, compared with other sub-components. Furthermore, the oil and gas industry experts believed that “organizational culture” in KM could be shaped by most of PMO functions.Originality/valueThis study fulfilled the need for exploring the relationship between PMO functions and KM since academic literature lacked a thorough investigation, to the best of authors' knowledge, pertaining to the effects of PMO functions on KM development in oil and gas PBOs.

Revitalising project management office operations in an engineering-service contractor organisation: a key performance indicator based performance management approach

“…Regarding the knowledge management (KM) mandate, Pemsel and Wiewiora (2013) explored the PMO's role of creating a knowledge repository from lessons learned to improve PM quality and competitive advantage. The onus of providing PM training, mentoring and education was argued by Arabi et al. (2020), together with promoting a continuous improvement culture (Adesola and Baines, 2005).…”

“…Regarding the knowledge management (KM) mandate, Pemsel and Wiewiora (2013) explored the PMO's role of creating a knowledge repository from lessons learned to improve PM quality and competitive advantage. The onus of providing PM training, mentoring and education was argued by Arabi et al (2020), together with promoting a continuous improvement culture (Adesola and Baines, 2005). For the project portfolio management (PPM) mandate, the PMO must ensure that an adequate number and mix of project proposals that meet organisational strategic objectives are generated (Unger et al, 2012).…”

The contribution of project management offices (PMO) to the strategy implementation in Project-Based Businesses: systematic literature review and proposal of a model

“…Regarding the last, the bibliography on the models and functions performed by them is vast and multiple. Analyzing recent studies, it is possible to know PMO supporting the transformations of the business environment (Lavoie-Tremblay et al, 2017); integrating the product life cycle; being the key elements for knowledge management (Arbabi, Taleshi & Ghods, 2020;Nadae & Carvalho, 2017;Pauli & Sell, 2019); connecting long-term to specifical projects (Sandhu, Al Ameri & Wikstrom, 2019), among other activities.…”

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