Using a lessons learned process to develop and maintain institutional memory and intelligence

The process of collecting, disseminating, and applying lessons learned (LL) is critical to the development and maintenance of any organization's institutional memory and intelligence, perhaps its most important resource. This is especially true for the NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), a research and development organization that develops systems meant to operate in high risk environments. However, the ARC environment being extremely diversified posed several challenges for implementing this process. These included; limited resources, employee turn over, many diverse communities of practice using unique sets of nomenclature, and employee anxiety over identifying problems or criticizing their organization. Thus, the Center developed a LL process based on interviews that successfully addressed these challenges and increased its LL submittal rate from two to thirty per year. In particular, it was found that the key to a successful LL program was the process of decomposition and re-integration of tacit (as represented by the anecdotal and contextual) with explicit information throughout the collection and dissemination steps. Furthermore, it was found that interviewers possessing corporate and technical experience/knowledge/access and excellent writing abilities were necessary for success. This combination of skills enabled the interviewer to accurately capture the LL explicit information while maintaining as much of the tacit as possible. In addition, by choosing interviewers that were involved in Center wide activities, the propagation of the tacit information was ensured. These findings in addition to the tools used to manage both the process and the LL will be described in his paper

1. Introduction

The projects undertaken by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center (ARC) cover a wide range of technological and scientific topics. This range includes fundamental to applied research and targets applications for space hardware/software, astrobiology, air transportation, and information technology. Additionally, they are implemented in many diverse political, administrative, and contractual environments. Therefore, the Center must use a combination of standard practices and constantly develop new approaches to successfully implement its projects. The knowledge generated and retained from and applied to the implementation of these projects is as critical to the Center's business as is the knowledge gained from its technical and scientific results. This is so because it allows the Center to operate at peak effectiveness and efficiency, and because it minimizes the probability that a negative outcome will occur or not be repeated. Thus, to ensure that this institutional knowledge was captured, retained, and applied the Agency had implemented a Lessons Learned Information System (LLIS). Unfortunately, the LLIS had some shortcomings which precluded some information, particularly that which was tacit³

While the authors recognize the many meanings applied to this term, in this paper tacit information is defined as the combination of anecdotal and contextual information.

, from being captured and applied. Therefore the Center's Systems Management Office (SMO) developed a process to augment the LLIS which was aimed predominately at project management and systems engineering related LL. The SMO's process was based on interviews of project personnel using a combination of Subject Matter Experts (SME)s and technical writers. This approach had several significant advantages. First, the projects were able to meet their LL requirements using a minimum of their own resources by using those of the SMO. Second, the SMO gained additional Center wide awareness and expertise which could be applied in other situations. Third and most important, the story telling or tacit aspect of the LL was retained by transferring it to the SME interviewer such that it could be shared with others. This paper summarizes the historical approach the Agency applied towards LL, its recent developments, and the process developed by the ARC SMO along with its results.