What Are the Knowledge Needs during the Project Lifecycle in an Expert Organisation?

Every organisation has to acquire, create, store, distribute and use knowledge in order to operate effectively, or simply to be able to operate in the first place. Knowledge is needed during projects and tools can be used for supporting projects’ knowledge management. However, it has proven to be difficult to find the best suitable tool for a specific project and to determine the requirements for a knowledge management tool that would enable supporting projects in an efficient way. This paper describes how knowledge needs for supporting the project lifecycle have been defined in an expert organisation and what the knowledge needs are in the different roles of the organisation. It was found that the main knowledge needs were the experiences and the main results from ongoing and closed projects, along with project specific information like used tools and methods.