Lesson Learned and Best Practice Management: A Tool to Support the Enterprise

Abstract

This paper describes SKILLS—Sharing Knowledge in Lesson Learned System, a solution composed by a web‐based tool and a business process that supports the enterprise in managing and sharing Lessons Learned and Best Practices. SKILLS follows a community based approach, increasing the percentage of explicit knowledge. The solution deals with real issues in Aerospace Company domain, following a methodology composed by three main phases: Analysis of operative contest; analysis of Processes and needs and Solution Development. Starting from a context analysis, conducted using interviews, we identify the company needs. Then, we propose a new Lesson Learned and Best Practice management process, and we explain the functionalities of SKILLS, a tool useful to solve the issues identified and satisfies the company needs. Several users can access to two types of services: the first one oriented to contents (discussion, lesson, lesson learned, best practice) creation and validation, the second one more oriented to horizontal functionality (advanced search, tagging and categorization, user profiling, user page, instant communication). SKILLS covers all activities of Lesson Learned and Best Practice management process, following a collaborative approach, where a community of knowledge workers share knowledge and know‐how and solve operative issue, enabling the externalization process of SECI model. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.