Learning Story
Building on existing knowledge
At a Glance
Germany and Egypt have been longstanding partners in development cooperation. On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), GIZ Egypt implements projects in Egypt in a variety of focal areas. One key focal area is technical education and youth employment. In fact, the two countries have been cooperating in this area for over two decades.
This year, two projects working on technical education and youth employment have merged to form one big project. Hence, a lot of expertise and experience is merging and shuffling around. Building on the previous years of implementation, the question the new project found itself confronted with is: How can the knowledge from the previous projects serve the new one?
Over the past years, a great amount of valuable knowledge has been accumulated. However, in the midst of the re-organisation into the new project, with new teams forming and people leaving and joining the project, the risk of losing valuable experience became omnipresent. Additionally, with so much knowledge around, it appeared to be a challenge to make sure everyone in the project could tap into the existing knowledge.
To overcome these challenges, it was essential that the project team could access the existing knowledge, engage in knowledge sharing with each other to learn from their past experiences and build upon them in the new project.
The aim: ensure knowledge is managed systematically and anchor knowledge sharing and learning into the project’s work practices.
STRHIVE's Approach
The guiding thread for us to approach the project’s challenge and achieve the learning goal was to address the following points:
- How can the project access existing knowledge?
- How can the project learn from the existing knowledge?
- How can knowledge management and learning be sustained?
These three points were tackled through a multilayer approach. Firstly, it was necessary to ensure that the project team had the ability to use the project’s knowledge management system in their own work. Secondly, premises for knowledge sharing and learning from one another had to be designed and established. The knowledge sharing and learning concepts draw on formats such as Peer-Assists, After-Action-Reviews and Retrospects.
The key to ensure that the knowledge sharing and learning practices are weaved into the fabric of the project and sustainable was to integrate them into existing work practices.
What this means is that a number of intersection points between knowledge sharing, learning and existing processes were identified. The formats for knowledge sharing and learning were then tailored to be coupled with existing practices, so that they can feed into one another. This approach fosters the take-up and automatisation of knowledge sharing and learning within the project. The project team is now equipped with the framework to build on existing knowledge and apply leanings in their work.