Knowledge Sharing Pattern Language

Problem	A project manager is often very alone in a decision making situation and has to make a decision without adequate knowledge. The organization might have required knowledge elsewhere, but does not know how to make it available for projects in need.
Initial Context	Knowledge support for projects has not been systematically arranged at the organizational level.
Roles	A Project Manager and the Organization represented by a managerial actor responsible for multi-project management or manager of a project office function.
Forces	A project manager is very often alone in decision making situations. The decisions can not be made by others, but support can be given, for example in the form of discussions or expert advice. A project manager is in the middle of several knowledge flows and still can not have all the knowledge required in the project. (S)he needs to have persons with which to create the required understanding.
Solution	Implement the following actions: Initiate Continuous Support in the organization See: Named Experts, KSP02 Assure Project Specific Support. Look after that there are possibilities to arrange project specific support. (See: Assigned Experts, KSP03, but arrange this only after there is a specific project requiring this). Communicate (and study) support possibilities. Make sure that Project Managers know how the competence support can be arranged (continuous and project specific) and how the support can be requested. Use support possibilities, utilize those in a project. Give feedback and improve available support based on the feedback. The dash line from Improve Support to Communicate Support Possibilties is added to show that in practice the phases 3-5 are a continuous action.
Resulting Context	Project teams and especially Project Managers in the organization feeling that a support network exists and help is available from it.
Instances	This pattern is utilized to arrange required knowledge support in an organization.
Process Connection	Project management, competence development.