Learning in the Workplace: Initial Requirements of a Lessons Learned Centred Corporate Memory

Abstract

Many organisations have recognised that the construction, communication and sharing of their corporate knowledge and know how is key to improving business effectiveness. This has lead to the design of a number of corporate memories. Such systems have so far failed to demonstrate how they can contribute to the effectiveness or learning of the organisation. This paper investigates the requirements of a corporate memory designed for promoting individual and collective learning within an organisation. Individual and collective learning are promoted by assisting the articulating and sharing of lessons learned. A set of initial functional requirements of a corporate memory centred around the lessons learned processing (L2Corp) is presented. Some consequences of such requirements are then presented in terms of knowledge modelling, authoring and associated architecture of L2Corp. This paper is a follow up to preliminary investigations in this area [Alem 97].