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Lessons Learned Management System (LLMS)
To explain the concept of Lessons Learned and how to manage them as simply as possible, it is first necessary to define what we mean by a Lesson Learned.

There are two categories of Lessons, positive and negative, as defined below:

- A Lesson Learned can be positive, such as an opportunity that can be taken advantage of and which should be repeated or replicated in future projects.

- Conversely, a Lesson Learned can be negative, such as a failure, error, oversight or omission that should be avoided or mitigated in future projects.

Potential Lessons.

An error, oversight or omission in a project or project activity, that is subsequently identified or discovered by some means, cannot simply be considered as a 'Lesson Learned' because, at this point, nothing has yet been learned and therefore until it has been developed, it can only be truly called a 'potential' Lesson.

A large number of potential Lessons may be identified on any given project, but not until these are analysed, quantified, categorised and evaluated, will a smaller number of Lessons Learned be created.

Lessons Learned produced from a project should be included in an administration, storage and retrieval system. Not all Lessons Learned will be applicable to every project, so some method of context sensitive sorting and evaluation methodology or system is also required.

Identification of a Potential Lesson
Identification of a potential lesson (or a Best Practice) is usually achieved by one of the following means:

- The consequences of the error, oversight or omission are manifested in the outcome of the project (failure);

- The consequences of the error, oversight or omission cause loss or harm (incident);

- An error, oversight or omission identified by a project activity such as a health check, review or audit;

- As a result of a good idea or an innovative concept that subsequently resulted in a positive outcome for the project (this is referred to as a Best Practice, but is treated the same way as a Lesson);

- Formally, in the context of a Lessons Learned Workshop or similar activity;

- Informally, as part of a discussion that is not part of a formal Lessons Learned exercise (see Knowledge Management).

Collection of Potential Lessons
Lessons can be collected in a variety of ways and simply noting them down does not make them a 'Lesson Learned' because, at this point, nothing has yet been learned. Typically, there is no standardised process for collecting and storing lessons and therefore many are lost along the way.

In any given project a large number of potential Lessons are likely to be identified, resulting in the creation of a number of potential Lessons for consideration and to ensure these potential Lessons are not forgotten, a system is required where they can be easily recorded (with as much detail as possible).

It is not difficult to accept that without this functionality, thousands of such lessons have been lost from hundreds of projects over the last 20 years, causing many of the same mistakes to be repeated.

OR&A Lessons Learned Management System (LLMS)

Lessons Learned Management System (LLMS)
Typically, potential lessons are recorded in some form of document or register at the end of a project because the value of Lessons Learned has already been recognised. Unfortunately, the variety of lessons found and the inconsistent way they are recorded often makes them difficult to retrieve in a usable format.

However, the LLMS from OR&A can be easily populated with lessons from any source which are then validated and made available in the on-line Lesson Repository. Users can then search, sort and select relevant lessons before exporting them as Word, Excel or PDF files for deployment on a Project.

OR&A Lessons Learned Repository

The lesson repository is where all of the potential and validated lessons are stored, however only those lessons that have been validated for use are visible to the user.

The repository currently holds over 3,000 lessons, a number which will grow exponentially as the system is used and those users add their own lessons. Every lesson is carefully vetted so that client companies can be assured that only the essence of the lesson is shared with the users and any information that might be considered contentious is removed during validation.

Those users with enterprise level access may also have a nominated ‘super-user’ who is able to validate lessons put forward by their company.

When a selection of lessons has been made, they can be deployed on a project and an ‘Action Party’ nominated. Nominated parties are informed by e-mail.

LLMS Widgets

The Lessons Learned widgets illustrated above enable users to see the status of lessons deployed on the project, but also show potential lessons that have been identified by the Project or Operations teams and whether they have been 'harvested' (i.e. uploaded to the LLMS for validation and inclusion in the LLMS Database.

Lessons can also be exported, using the EXPORT tab, as Word, Excel or PDF files.