Tacit Knowledge
Know-how that lives in a persons head — beliefs, experience-based judgments, and insights — that is hard to express, document, or hand off to others.
Key Points
- Tacit knowledge is personal knowledge that can be difficult to articulate and share such as beliefs, experiences, and insights.
- It is gained through practice and context; you often learn it by doing, observing, and reflecting rather than by reading a document.
- Most effectively transferred via mentoring, shadowing, storytelling, pair work, communities of practice, and after-action reviews.
- Complements explicit knowledge; mature project environments encourage both capture of explicit artifacts and exchange of tacit insights.
Example
A senior project scheduler sits with a new team member during a live replan. The senior explains why they choose certain buffer sizes, points out warning signs in the network diagram, and shares rules of thumb from past projects. These beliefs, experiences, and insights are tacit knowledge being passed through coaching and observation, not just through a written SOP.
PMP Example Question
Which action best enables transfer of tacit knowledge on a project?
- Uploading the project management plan to the document repository
- Pairing a junior analyst with a veteran SME to shadow client workshops
- Distributing a detailed risk register to all stakeholders
- Publishing a comprehensive architecture specification
Correct Answer: B — Shadowing/coaching to share experience-based insights
Explanation: Tacit knowledge is personal and hard to codify, so it is best shared through direct interaction, observation, and mentoring. Documents (A, C, D) convey explicit knowledge.
