An effective Lessons Learned system or Organizational Learning system involves collecting quality lessons and processing them until they are embedded into organizational practice, and requires many separate elements. If links in the system are missing or inadequate, then lessons may be missed, relearned or repeated.
Purpose
The purpose of the Lessons Learned Assessment is to identify the gaps and weaknesses in your lesson learning system, which need to be addressed or improved. The Assessment covers the whole life cycle of lessons, and looks at the elements of accountabilities and roles, processes, supporting technology, and governance.
Method
The Lessons Learned assessment is conducted through interviews with a representative selection of staff from the projects, functions and KM team; either as individual interviews or as a workshop. In addition, we review the content and quality of existing lessons, and the functionality of your lessons database or lesson management system.
During the interviews and the system review, we are looking for evidence that the key stages of lesson development are present, working and managed. As an output of the assessment, we will write a report identifying the required improvements and making recommendations for action and development.
Benefits
The benefits of the assessment are that it will clearly define areas for improvement in your current approach to lesson learning. This will enable you to make the system more rigorous, more effective, and more valuable in terms of continuously improving performance .