Milton, N, Knowledge Management for Teams and Projects, Chandos Publishing, Oxford, 2005

This book started slowly for me. But once I could see where Nick Milton was coming from, quite a few things "clicked". Being a project and program manager myself, some of his concepts resonated tremendously and I will implement them in some of the areas I work in including some of my clients.

 For example:

• His "learning before", "learning during" and "learning after" is a very useful and practical concept in any environment, but particularly in a project environment. This is encapsulated in Figure 1.6 on page 12.

Adapted from Milton

• The techniques he offers to generate these learnings are grounded and realistically achievable.
• I particularly liked his discussion on knowledge engineers and knowledge managers because we actually use those terms in my business, but with slightly different roles.
• I am not enamoured with his Knoco Ltd 12-Component Framework for a Knowledge Management System. But if it works for him and helps him make sense of the issues including for his clients, then it is a good one.

His pragmatic approach through the whole book plainly means he has considerable experience and it is quite full of good ideas that can be implemented in any project/program. For such a slim volume, it is certainly worth the effort to read.

I learnt that I need to take a more structured approach to "learning" within a program of projects and within projects and teams. We already have mechanisms for it, but I suspect they aren't sufficiently structured and robust to make them as useful as they could be. The solid list of techniques and methods that Milton offers will certainly come into our work.

I also learnt that we aren't "off the pace" with our approaches. Indeed, we are certainly "up there with the best", albeit with some different approaches. But as it is with everything, there is always room for improvement and Nick Milton's work will certainly be part of our improvement process and our own learnings, before, during and after.