Many researches have highlighted the important role of investigating various measures of experience and their relationship to the project performance. They related experience and improvements through the time in different business contexts and in most of these researches, measurement methods such as cumulative production volume, or prior completed projects were used for experience quantification. Others focused mostly on learning-by-doing, which proposes that multidimensional observation of experience is necessary in the team settings.
There are different types of experience such as individual experience, organizational experience, and experience working together on a team. Team familiarity and the role experience of individuals within a team (e.g., project manager) progresses operational performance through time. An earlier study of the role of individual experience, organizational experience, team leader experience, and experience working together on a team (team familiarity) in the context of improvement teams was presented. The findings of the study showed that out of four experience variables that were studied, team leader experience displayed the strongest relationship with project success; the variable that followed was organizational experience and then team experience.
Therefore, prequalification process should put more focus on individual experience, team experience, and organization experience. For example, individual experience in a particular industry may be exactly what matters to project success rather than experience in general. This is important especially when various team member roles require different technical skill sets. Accordingly, it is expected that as an individual’s experience increases, so too does the possibility of project success. Aspects of individual experience include technical requirements, quality standards and environmental regulations. Being without knowledge in the three areas, a project may be significantly delayed; it may have major cost overruns, or have major legal problems, etc. Experience with project-related activities provides individuals with opportunities not only to build upon, but also to learn from prior mistakes, which reduces the possibility of repeating already made mistakes. Therefore, with growing experience, individuals are expected to become more proficient and to develop effective routines for successfully completing improvement projects.
Another example is on the organization experience. The archived project documentation can provide an effective organizational memory of both “hard” and “soft” task-related information and knowledge. This gives more opportunities for individuals to access and make use of a variety of prior project-related materials, including project planning documents, detailed description of analyses conducted, documented learning, etc. This kind of culture of creating and disseminating project-related knowledge is definitely pervasive. When it comes to soft information, individuals can have access to the project database to identify experts with respect to a particular issue. Using access to such organizational experience, team members can have a better sense as to what it is that works and what does not, and therefore they do not have to experiment with every possible routine.
Therefore, as organizational experience grows, the opportunities for individuals to benefit from knowledge accumulated grows too. Another example is on the team familiarity. This type of experience influences the project team planning capability, which can be one of the determining factors that had an influence on project success. Under specific circumstances when team members have spent some time working together formerly, coordination losses may be diminished and factors such as team unity may rise since any associated issues will probably be “worked out” formerly. Moreover, this understanding will possibly encourage trust among team members, which enables the quantity and quality of information shared. Team’s familiarity in the industry could help encountering the indicated quality. This team familiarity factor can support implementation planning.
