On the Technological, Human, and Managerial Issues in Sharing Organizational Lessons

Lessons learned systems (LLS) are systems that support a lessons learned process (LLP) to collect, verify, store, disseminate, and reuse organizational lessons. In this paper we examine technological, human, and managerial problems that contribute to the limited reuse of lessons in deployed LLS. This analysis results in the identification of a set of requirements that when met tend to improve the reuse of lessons. These requirements are mainly related to the identification and representation of a lesson’s reuse components, i.e., what in a lesson is essential to promote reuse. We present and demonstrate a standardized format for lessons and a lesson elicitation tool (LET) that uses this format to collect lessons from human users and addresses some of the requirements while contributing to the satisfaction of other requirements. This tool illustrates how technological solutions can impact human and managerial problems.