A HUB for LESSONS LEARNED


AMSAA establishes a place to collect successes, analyze failures, and share best practices from acquisition programs


by Alex Karahalis, James “Chip” Herrell, and John G. Thomas M 92 any different entities across the Army have


acquisition-like lessons learned, but the lack of   - riel acquisition enterprise leaves the acquisition


workforce with no realistic way to track successes, analyze failures, and develop best practices and lessons learned from past programs.


The Final Report of the 2010 Army Acquisition Review, Army Strong: Equipped, Trained and Ready (online at http://usarmy. vo.llnwd.net/e2/c/downloads/213465.pdf), reviewed seven key areas of the Army enterprise and provided recommenda- tions for improvement. One such area concerned acquisition program lessons learned.


The review stated, “There is no database to guide one to appropriate programs, issues, trends, solutions and successes in acquisition programs.” It highlighted the need to facilitate understanding and provide the basis for making improvements. Many companies in private industry have developed knowledge management (KM) programs to collect corporate wisdom, thus


preventing “brain drain” and enhancing effectiveness through collaboration. The value of KM is reduced when no analysis is done on the data collected. A successful KM program must show the user immediate value and encourage collaboration.


The Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) is a


       CALL has done an excellent job in its mission to “facili- tate rapid adaptation initiatives and conduct focused knowledge sharing.” A similar entity could work toward accom- plishing the same goal for the Army materiel acquisition enterprise. On Jan. 8, the Army Acquisition Executive (AAE), in response to the Army Acquisition Review’s recommendation, signed a memo- randum directing the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA) to “create a web-enabled database for Acquisition Les- sons Learned and provide analytical capability to conduct the analysis.” The memo tasked program, project, and product man- agers (PMs) of all Acquisition Category programs to conduct an after-action review (AAR) after all milestone events and program terminations, and to submit these lessons through the website, to share them with the acquisition community.


Army AL&T Magazine


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