Lessons learned

This article is about the concept in project management. For other uses, see Lessons learned (disambiguation).

Lessons learned or Lessons learnt are experiences distilled from a project that should be actively taken into account in future projects.

There are several definitions of the concept. The one used by the North American Space Agency, European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency sounds as follows: “A lesson learned is knowledge or understanding gained by experience. The experience may be positive, as in a successful test or mission, or negative, as in a mishap or failure...A lesson must be significant in that it has a real or assumed impact on operations; valid in that is factually and technically correct; and applicable in that it identifies a specific design, process, or decision that reduces or eliminates the potential for failures and mishaps, or reinforces a positive result.” [1]

The Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development defines lessons learned as “Generalizations based on evaluation experiences with projects, programs, or policies that abstract from the specific circumstances to broader situations. Frequently, lessons highlight strengths or weaknesses in preparation, design, and implementation that affect performance, outcome, and impact.” [2]

In the practice of the United Nations the concept has been made explicit in the name of their Working Group on Lessons Learned of the Peacebuilding Commission.

References

  1. ↑ [Secchi, P. (Ed.) (1999). Proceedings of Alerts and Lessons Learned: An Effective way to prevent failures and problems (Technical Report WPP-167). Noordwijk, The Netherlands: ESTEC]
  2. ↑ [OECD – DAC (2002) Glossary of Key Terms in Evaluation and Results Based Management. Evaluation and Aid Effectiveness No 6. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/29/21/2754804.pdf]

See also

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, April 29, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.