Active Delivery for Lessons Learned Systems

Lessons learned processes, and software systems that support them, have been developed by many organizations (e.g., all USA military branches, NASA, several Department of Energy organizations, the Construction Industry Institute). Their purpose is to promote the dissemination of knowledge gained from the experiences of an organization’s employees. Unfortunately, lessons learned systems are usually ineffective because they invariably introduce new processes when, instead, they should be embedded into the processes that they are meant to improve. We developed an embedded case-based approach for lesson dissemination and reuse that brings lessons to the attention of users rather than requiring them to fetch lessons from a standalone software tool. We demonstrate this active lessons delivery architecture in the context of HICAP, a decision support tool for plan authoring. We also show the potential of active lessons delivery to increase plan quality for a new travel domain.