What do the terms "Lessons Learned" and "Best Practices" mean ?

[Matrix45]

- When does a lesson learned become Best Practice? Are similar Lessons Learned compiled to produce a best practice?
- Lesson Learned Committee. Do these need to be competent personnel i.e. technical authorities to evaluate the lessons?

 

[v9991]

Re: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

hope there is more formal definition of the grading the processes!!!
{
What are Best Practices and Lessons Learned?
A practice that represents the accumulation of all lessons is the best practice available at the time.
}

- When does a lesson learned become Best Practice? Are similar Lessons Learned compiled to produce a best practice?

personally, i see them in following order.
* standard practices....common minimum (or general) set for processes/systems for executing any project/operation.
* lessons learned....leading to improvising/configuring/customizing the current processes/systems towards specific project/operations etc.,
* best practices...&benchmark .... equal or ahead of the peers or industry leaders. this is more of a proactive set of

(i.e., best practices are supposed to leave minimum opportunity/need for lessons learned!!!)

I guess, best practices, come out of situation where there are minimum to learn from what went wrong.....but how future was built. (the point is , best practices deliver/meet requirements ....not avoid pitfalls!!!)

when the contribution of lessons learned + current processes/practices lead to certain level of performance.

- Lesson Learned Committee. Do these need to be competent personnel i.e. technical authorities to evaluate the lessons?

Certainly they ought to be competent, but not necessarily, Its more important to be application&improvement oriented, rather than delivery/execution oriented. the point is, anyone can do it, with proper perspective., (but yes, the competency/experience could speed-up things, and certainly more pro active!!!)

 

[somashekar]

- When does a lesson learned become Best Practice? Are similar Lessons Learned compiled to produce a best practice?
- Lesson Learned Committee. Do these need to be competent personnel i.e. technical authorities to evaluate the lessons?

No.
Lessons learned are unique to your organization, from which learning is taken not to repeat a wrong act or method. With lessons learned, you may still decide not to adopt best practices and can continue to make your practice more effective to yourself.
Best practices is more across similar industries and in tune with current trends and use of state of the art technologies. Nothing is best so to say, as improvements keep happening at a very fast pace. You still continue to learn your lessons even in the so called Best Practices.
Any committee needs to have competent personnel to the purpose of the committee formation.