Managing Lessons Learned

Abstract

An organization’s knowledge is built on the experience of its human resources, such as individual competencies, group working experiences, problem-solving abilities, and the lessons learned, which these resources use during the execution of tasks or processes. This organizational knowledge is stored in individual minds, or implicitly encoded in organizational processes, services, and systems. In the context of knowledge intensive organizations or learning organizations, besides labor, capital, and land, this experience-based knowledge has been recognized as an important productivity factor. For example, Lessons Learned (LL) are crucial to the learning organization’s continued success. LL were originally conceived as guidelines, tips, or checklists of what went right or wrong in a particular event or organizational business process. A Lessons Learned System (LLS) is a type of knowledge management system that serves the purpose of capturing, storing, disseminating, and sharing an organization’s verified LL, but Lessons Learned Systems have not been well studied and researched. Based on the literature review, the authors develop an evaluation framework for understanding LLS research. The framework identifies six dimension areas of emphasis in LLS research: LL process, LL representation, LL content, LL architecture, organization type, and type of processes. This chapter introduces the evaluation framework and concludes with a discussion of emerging issues, new research directions, and the practical implications of LLS research.