On the Implications of Lessons Learned Use for Lessons Learned Content

Authors:
Tanja Buttler;Stephan Lukosch
Affiliations:
Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management, P.O. box 2015, 2600GA Delft, The Netherlands;Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management, P.O. box 2015, 2600GA Delft, The Netherlands
Venue:
Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies
Year:
2013

Citing 3
Cited 0

The New Science of Management Decision

The New Science of Management Decision
Postmortem: Never Leave a Project without It

IEEE Software
Rethinking lessons learned capturing: using storytelling, root cause analysis, and collaboration engineering to capture lessons learned about project management

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Project-based organizations (PBOs) collect and use lessons learned (LL) in order to prevent reinventing the wheel or repeating mistakes. LL can be defined as documented "knowledge gained from experience, successful or otherwise, for the purpose of improving future performance" [4]. Their content influences how they can or cannot be applied, but so far research on the requirements on LL has focused on usage after retrieval from information systems, and ignored potential alternatives. Therefore, this article investigates how LL are used in organizations and what implications the use of LL has for their content. For this purpose, a literature review and a series of interviews explore existing processes for using LL. The results suggest that the usage of LL varies: they are applied in the next project, or used directly within the organization. In both cases, LL can be used in the intelligence or design phase of an (organizational) decision making process. These phases influence the required content of a LL. For the intelligence phase, LL should provide a detailed understanding of a problem; for the design phase, they should include an approach addressing the problem.