How to get started? A simple template can help you prepare the necessary documents that will guide your KM plans and activities. A few examples are added here:
A KM PLAN
A basic KM plan should outline the purpose, together with the expected outcomes and outputs. It should include monitorable and achievable objectives, and also explain how project-level KM will contribute to scaling up, country-level policy engagement and partnership building. This annotated template will help you to develop your project KM plan.
TORs FOR A PROJECT KM OFFICER
The KM officer plays a key role in all projects and programmes. The person in this position is expected to help improve the project management process and results by fully integrating KM into all processes, including the regular M&E activities, the financial management, supervision and reporting. The following Terms of Reference could be used for outlining the specific tasks and responsibilities, or could also be used to complement those of a Monitoring, Evaluation and KM Officer.
KM Strategy for COSOPs
Here is an example of a KM component developed for the Mozambique COSOP.
CAPTURING INNOVATIONS
Most projects or programmes support the development of a specific innovation, and its use and dissemination. What is this innovation? What are its main characteristics, and where can it be found? A simple template can help state the key achievements/results attributed to the innovation. Give qualitative and quantitative details, as necessary, such as including numbers or statistics to strengthen the description and documentation of the results.
LESSONS LEARNED
This refers to the process of identifying learning points based on experiences and results achieved during implementation. These "lessons" may be positive (successes) or negative (failures). You should be able to state the lesson learned in a few sentences and provide verifiable results that are evidence of the lesson. Evidence could be quantitative or qualitative and from either internal monitoring and evaluation, or from formal evaluations. The template included here consists of the major fields (i.e., types of information) that together make up a complete, well-documented lesson learned. It can be very useful to use it during supervision missions, when a project is completed or during other major milestones during a specific initiative.
DISSEMINATION PLAN
Developing and disseminating knowledge products is one of the key steps in a project’s overall KM plan. This includes identifying the key stakeholders and audiences; deciding what knowledge products will be developed, their purpose and how best to package them; and then selecting the best dissemination channels and events. Having made the right choices, a team needs to develop a plan that will help it reach its target audience in an effective and efficient manner.