Remembering with the help of personal notes in a project work context

Purpose - Project team members frequently need to learn things already known in other projects, i.e. they need to acquire and assimilate organisational memory. The literature mentions numerous different types of repositories which form an organisational memory, and where organisational knowledge is maintained and into which newly-acquired knowledge is deposited for later use by other people and teams. However, only seldom does the literature mention individuals' personal notes as a repository of knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to deal with the question of what is the role of individuals' personal notes in remembering in a project work context.Design methodology approach - The conceptual part of the paper deals with the concepts of knowledge, organisational memory, knowledge sharing and motivation to share knowledge. The special focus in this connection is on the external memory aids and individuals' personal notes. Owing to the need to attain a better understanding of the role of individuals' personal notes in a project work context, results of an empirical study conducted in several Finnish project-based companies are described in detail.Findings - The results of the study suggest that the project team members' personal notes may play a very important role on the individual level and a rather important role on the team level of project work.Originality value - Personal notes making and utilisation of these notes as an external memory aid represents a challenge that many project-based organisations are only now beginning to acknowledge.