Lessons Learned System Research Articles

‘Transformation in contact’: learning the lessons of modern war

The US and British armies have faced intelligent and adaptive enemies in Iraq and continue to do so in Afghanistan. While both armies have proved adept at fighting high-intensity conflict, their initial performance against asymmetric threats and diffuse insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated how much each army had to learn about conducting counterinsurgency operations. This article examines one important means by which the US and British armies have transformed themselves into more flexible and responsive organizations that are able to harness innovation at the front effectively. It traces the development of the lessons-learned systems in both armies from the start of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq to today. These changes have resulted in significant development within the organization of both armies. Reform of US and British army learning capabilities offers an important insight into the drivers of military change. The reformed lessons-learned systems have been better integrated into training, experimentation, and doctrine and force development. While there are still challenges to be overcome, both armies have created robust structures that facilitate the movement of knowledge from recent experience at the front to the rest of the organization. As such, these reforms provide us with a useful case-study that enhances our understanding of the role of ‘bottom-up’ initiatives in military innovation.

Lessons learned system in construction management

Learning lessons from past experiences, thereby avoiding the same mistakes and repeating successes achieved in the past can enhance a construction company's competitiveness in the marketplace. Almost every existing lessons learned system in the construction industry either tries to solve design-related problems or is limited to a specific type of project. The construction industry has been inadequate in capturing the lessons learned from its projects relative to construction management practices. The objective of this study is to create a lessons learned system that allows a construction company to acquire, store, retrieve, and disseminate lessons learned about construction management practices. For this purpose, construction management practices were categorised into 12 main categories that were in turn broken down into five hierarchical levels of subcategories; the relationships between the subcategories were systematically identified; and the information was organised into a database named 'CMAID' that allows easy input and retrieval of construction management-related lessons.

My Top 10 Lessons on Lessons Learned Systems

In view of recent interest in lessons learned information systems, I thought it may be helpful to discuss some lessons learned about lessons learned systems. Part of my knowledge stems from being actively involved in the testing, operations & maintenance, and future development of the agency-wide NASA LLIS (Lessons Learned Information System—now called NASA Engineering Network; http://ildp1.nasa. gov/offices/oce/llis/home/), when I was the Knowledge Management Officer at NASA Goddard.

Mobilizing The Minds of Research/Technology Managers

You don't need be told that what you learned in a university about technology has long been out of date; however, you may not be aware that compared with even a generation ago, the logic of productivity and organizational effectiveness you were taught is just as outdated. And while you've probably noticed that the professionals you manage have different ideas about leadership, you're not always sure how handle them. After all, you got where you are because of your technical skill and can-do attitude. But succeed in today's global market, you may need help in revising your thinking, especially about organization and leadership. In their new book, Mobilizing Minds, Creating Wealth from Talent in the 21st Century Organization (McGraw- Hill), Lowell L. Bryan and Claudia I. Joyce of the McKinsey consultancy point the considerable organizational inertia in large corporations. They write that organizational design and change are hard and timeconsuming. It may run up against stubborn personalities and corporate politics. But in a business environment where talent, not capital, is the scarce resource, productivity and innovation call for remaking the corporation to mobilize the mind power of the workforce and tap into its underutilized talents, knowledge, relationships and skills. Many companies are still organized according 20th century industrial bureaucratic logic. This is a logic of mass production and standardization as contrasted the logic of the knowledge-service workplace, which includes partnering and co-production, continual innovation and learning. Rather than defining quality purely in terms of meeting specs, the 21st century logic demands an offering that helps customers succeed according their own definitions of success. This implies an organization that can learn from customers, and that in turn requires empowered frontline employees rather than formatted roles; cross-functional teams rather than stovepipes; networking and partnering rather than vertical command and control. Clearly, the linear bureaucratic industrial logic is easier apply than the complex holistic thinking of the knowledge-service workplace. It's easier because it assumes a relatively stable market for standardized products and a workforce with uniform motivation, managed by rules and incentives. This contrasts the knowledge-service market, which demands innovation and strategic learning, plus a workforce with diverse personalities, talents and values, and leaders who create collaboration by gaining commitment a common purpose. for How can research/technology managers with a 20th century outlook reprogram their organizational and leadership thinking? There are many courses and programs aimed at transforming 20th century bureaucracies into learning organizations, and I'd be surprised if most readers haven't participated in one or more of them. I invite those readers send me descriptions of courses they've found useful, and I'll summarize whatever I receive in future columns. In this article, I shall describe a 31/2-day course called Leadership for Learning, which was mainly designed by Richard Margolies, vice president of the Maccoby Group, for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Course material is based largely on my work, much of it first published in The Human Side columns I've written over the years for Research * Technology Management, and, quite naturally, I consider it a promising model! The course was designed in 2003 as the work of the Office of Force Transformation of the Defense Department was starting, and it supports the Army's 2006 counterinsurgency doctrine, which states: Learning organizations defeat insurgencies; bureaucratic hierarchies do not. Promoting learning is a key responsibility of commanders at all levels. The U.S. military has developed first-class lessons-learned systems. . . . But these systems only work when commanders promote their use and create a command climate that encourages bottom-up learning. …

Towards a lessons learned system for critical software

Failure can be a major driver for the advance of any engineering discipline and Software Engineering is no exception. But failures are useful only if lessons are learned from them. In this article we aim to make a strong defence of, and set the requirements for, lessons learned systems for safety-critical software. We also present a prototype lessons learned system that includes many of the features discussed here. We emphasize that, apart from individual organizations, lessons learned systems should target industrial sectors and even the Software Engineering community. We would like to encourage the Software Engineering community to use this kind of systems as another tool in the toolbox, which complements or enhances other approaches like, for example, standards and checklists.

An Investigative Study of the Application of Lessons Learned Systems in Construction Projects

AbstractConstruction projects in Hong Kong involve huge investments of capital, resources and time. Good management practices can maximize profits in construction projects. However, almost no organizations have adopted formal systems to manage such practices. Lessons learned systems (LLS) supported by knowledge management and organizational learning principles have achieved many success stories in other countries. The LLS includes the process of acquiring, handling and verifying good or bad practices from projects in different stages, disseminating the verified and approved lessons to related parties, and recording such practices in appropriate ways for future reuse. Construction professionals are not concerned with how data is recorded. In fact, project professionals mainly transfer management practices among those team members involved in a project, but do not do so to the larger organization. Needless to say, organizational learning does not exist in these construction organizations. More often than no...

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Statewide System for Lessons Learned

A system for collecting, archiving, and disseminating lessons learned is a critical component of experienced-based processes, such as the design and construction of roadway and bridges. The construction section of the Kentucky Transportation Center developed a centralized, web-based lessons learned system for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Other state transportation agencies have recognized the importance of formally documenting lessons learned that result from postconstruction and con-structability reviews. The cabinet believes it is critical to expand its efforts of capturing lessons learned on all projects and to make that information available to current and future project participants anywhere and at any time. Thus a web-based lessons learned system that can receive text and any form of multimedia data was developed for cabinet personnel, designers, contractors, and other project participants. The project also ( a) developed a process for maintaining the lessons learned system that includes the role of a gatekeeper to ensure the quality and accuracy of the submitted and stored lessons and ( b) addressed implementation of the system into the cabinet’s project development process.

Intelligent delivery of military lessons learned

Lessons learned systems (LLS) are a common knowledge management (KM) initiative among the American government agencies (e.g., Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy (DOE), NASA). An effective lessons learned (LL) process can substantially improve decision processes, thus representing an essential chapter in a knowledge-sharing digital government. Unfortunately, these systems typically fail to deliver lessons when and where they are needed. In this paper, we introduce, describe, and empirically evaluate the monitored distribution (MD) approach for the active delivery of lessons learned. Our results show that this just-in-time information delivery approach, embedded in a decision support system (DSS) for plan authoring, significantly improved plan execution performance measures.

Intelligent lessons learned systems

Lessons learned processes have been deployed in commercial, government, and military organizations since the late 1980s to capture, store, disseminate, and share experiential working knowledge. However, recent studies have shown that software systems for supporting lesson dissemination do not effectively promote knowledge sharing. We found that the problems with these systems are related to their textual representation for lessons and that they are not incorporated into the processes they are intended to support. In this article, we survey lessons learned processes and systems, detail their capabilities and limitations, examine lessons learned system design issues, and identify how artificial intelligence technologies can contribute to knowledge management solutions for these systems.

Lessons-Learned System for Highway Constructibility

A 14.5-km (9-mi) stretch of the North Central Expressway in Dallas, Texas, was reconstructed to increase capacity and improve the geometric design of the freeway. The decade-long reconstruction project is considered by many industry experts to be one of the most complex ever undertaken by the Texas Department of Transportation. Much was learned concerning constructibility of urban freeway reconstruction projects, presenting the opportunity to document lessons and store them in an electronic format. A relational database using Microsoft Access was created to classify and store the lessons for easy retrieval and distribution.

2 System Issues Related to Implementing on the Internet

ABSTRACTImplementing capabilities on the World Wide Web should never be taken lightly. A good systems engineer is able to examine such implementations from all points of view, including political, legal, security, access, technical deployment, and quality.The evaluation discussed in this paper was conducted to ensure that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was proceeding in a correct direction by implementing RECALL a Lessons Learned System on the Web and, subsequently, did so successfully. The systems approach extended well beyond technical implementation to several issues that are not often addressed by an implementation team. The resulting evaluation increased the team's sensitivity to such issues and, in fact, the authors believe that the evaluation provided as much benefit as the system itself.

IMPLEMENTING RECALL: A CASE‐BASED REASONING SYSTEM FOR THE ACCESS AND REUSE OF LESSONS LEARNED

AbstractThis paper discusses the activities of an ongoing project to develop and field the Reusable Experience with Case‐Based Reasoning for Automating Lessons Learned (RECALL) system. RECALL captures and reuses lessons learned at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center's Mission Operations and Data Systems Directorate (MO&DSD). Primarily, systems and software engineering lessons learned are captured. Lessons learned describe positive experiences and successes that need to be reinforced, as well as problems faced and ways to avoid them in the future. We believe that lessons learned would be reused more often if others confronted with similar problems could locate them quickly and easily.Therefore, the case‐based reasoning (CBR) approach is being tried as an alternative to more conventional or other intelligent software methods. A proof‐of‐concept prototype was developed and demonstrated to evaluate the applicability of CBR to this problem. This paper describes subsequent work, which includes making RECALL operational and fielding the system on the World Wide Web to facilitate user access. Because the system will be available to a diverse set of users, a process for incorporating lessons into the database has been defined. This paper describes the process and the actual execution of this process during RECALL implementation.

Making Effective Use of Construction Lessons Learned in Project Life Cycle

Expert knowledge and lessons learned in the construction phase of a project are not systematically incorporated into the design and construction phases of subsequent projects. The advancement of construction since ancient times has been predicated on the communication of lessons learned. Although past efforts have focused on the design phase, opportunities for the collection and utilization of lessons learned exist in all phases of a project life cycle. Constructability, the early integration of construction knowledge into all phases of a project, can be improved by effective use of lessons learned. This paper identifies feedback channels in a project life cycle and describes previous and current efforts to develop lessons-learned systems. Next, the paper describes the design and implementation of a constructability feedback prototype called interactive knowledge-intensive system (IKIS) for constructability improvement (IKIS-Constructability). Finally, the paper highlights the operation of this system and its potential benefits.