Knowledge Sharing Pattern Language

Problem	An organization not knowing how to make available the knowledge and experiences of some of its members to benefit many projects and the whole organization.
Initial Context	An organization having a need to make the existing experience of people more easily available to the whole organization.
Roles	Organization represented by some managerial actor responsible for competence management, and a project manager needing knowledge support from the organization.
Forces	Establishing an official support person / expert network gives visibility to the knowledge sources and offers better possibilities to utilize those. To share knowledge in an organization, the employees need to know what kinds of knowledge sources are available. Pulling together persons having similar kinds of problems (like project managers) can give rise to new unofficial support groups in the organization. The fellow employees most probably have already solved some of the problems you have. The role of an unofficial organization should not to be underestimated and it should be treated as a possibility in giving this kind of support. Through cooperation with identified experts it is possible to share tacit knowledge in an organization. Some general rules of using the support are required to avoid a situation where a person tries to delegate his or her tasks to others.
Solution	Implement the following actions: Define core competences and other important competences in the organization. (See also Assured Resources, KSP19.) Define expert roles. Define what competence areas are important enough for naming an expert. Define also what the role of an expert means in practice. The expert role here is a line management role, not project specific role. Name experts. Assign the expert role to certain persons in the organization. In very small companies, think of the possibility of using externals for support roles as long as one’s own experts have achieved an adequate competence level. Note that a person named to an expert role does not need to know everything, except the person needs to be skilful in acquiring new knowledge when required. Remember also the need to train experts. Define terms of use. Define general rules how to utilize these experts. Initiate Sub-Communities. Support the emergence of positive unofficial co-operation. (See Initiated Communication, KSP20.) Communicate Network and Study and Involve. Assure that people know the existence of named experts and supported sub-communities. Make it possible to be involved in those.
Resulting Context	Project teams and especially Project Managers in the organization knowing that knowledge support exist and help can be got from named experts.
Instances	This pattern is utilized once to arrange this support in an organization and after that always when it needs to be redefined (e.g. changes in core competences). One potential pitfall is that experts are named but they do not have any time to act in this role while being 100 % assigned to their own projects.
Process Connection	Human resources process, competence development.