Knowledge Transferred across Projects and Its Characteristics in an IT Service Enterprise

In order to carry out effective cross-project knowledge transfer to enhance project performance, it's necessary for an IT service enterprise to understand what is transferred beforehand. To resolve this problem, we identify the types and characteristics of knowledge transferred across IT projects by qualitative analysis. We conclude that knowledge required to be transferred across projects in an IT service enterprise includes two main categories of project process knowledge and project product knowledge, the former of which involves subcategories of business domain knowledge, project engineering knowledge, project management knowledge and organization management knowledge. These categories of knowledge are characterized by tacit ness, generality, hierarchy and valuability. Our study contributes to existing research by focusing on cross-project knowledge transfer and what is transferred, different from the existing studies mainly investigating knowledge transfer within the same project team. Results of the study can provide not only managerial implications to the development and utilization of knowledge and skills for IT service enterprises, but also theoretical preparation for further research on cross-project knowledge transfer.