Lessons Learned Management

I am surprised with this thread: I thought most project managers encourage keeping track of lesson learned (ML). Certainly, at our company we have incorporated ML into our project management system for a long time.

As a CEO, I firmly believe in using Balanced Scorecards. ("Translating Strategy into Action") and one of its main perspectives is "Learning and Growth" / Employee Skills. In a project environment, ML is one of the main tracking components.

As you might expect, ML is formalized within ProjectContexts.

Quite the contrary. Most PMs do encourage keeping and using lessons learned.

The problem is that as the data accumulates, users find little value in the information. They have to wade full of mountains of lessons learned to find anything relevant if they can find it at all. At the working end, it's a value equation: How much work do I put in and how much value do I get out? If the second part of the question is: very little value, then people soon realize putting in extensive work on something that will never be used is wasted effort.

I think the fundamental problem is structuring the information so it is actually useful later.

My favorite aspect of encouraging a "Lessons Learned" frame of mind is that it takes out the blame game and keeps folks focused on future solutions.

One important part of the LL process is to recognize that, a lesson has been learned. How do you do this? what tools or circunstances do you recognize or indicate that a lessons has been learned?

Oscar: In our software, "lessons learned" comes with issues and actions items, each with a due date. An example of an action item could be: add or edit a procedure ( such as an ISO 9001 procedure). Then it has to be approved.
Roland