Managing Lessons Learnt from daily missions: Methodology and tool

The paper is aimed to present an approach to managing military experience and the software tool dedicated for this purpose. This approach (SIMS Lesson Learnt methodology) and the tool (SIMS Lesson Learnt tool) are one of the results of the European Defence Agency founded SIMS project focusing on force protection issues. The developed methodology is based on a recurrent and continuous lesson learnt process where phases of acquiring, analyzing and applying experience can be distinguished. In order to improve dissemination of knowledge, each phase of LL process is reached as soon as possible. Additionally, new information resulting from each phase is available for the widest possible range of all those concerned. To support lesson learnt process activities, a dedicated IT tool - SIMS LL - has been developed. The SIMS LL tool uses various methods of interactive, visual representation of the lesson learnt related data to enhance the operator cognition. The analysis of the data in terms of the SIMS LL tool refers mostly to identification of correlations between particular data entities (e.g. events, human terrain information) and drawing conclusions from such correlations. As a result of the analysis, lesson learnt related data entity with relevant correlations is being created (e.g. an observation with correlated events, lessons identified). In the end a recommendation which is a key product of analysing lesson learnt related data can be defined. Such recommendations may be a proposition of a certain change in regulations, the system of training and doctrines, based on the analyzed experiences and affecting directly safety and effectiveness of future military missions.