Recording Lessons Learned in Projects: an Ontological Perspective

EasyChair Preprint 9791

Abstract

Although different organizations dedicated to the research and dissemination of Project Management recognize it as a relevant factor for improving this activity, the lessons learned recording don't commonly realize in projects. Although these lessons represent relevant knowledge obtained from living significant experiences, several studies show that establishing an effective and efficient format for recording them is complex. In this scenario, a conceptual modeling development can contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of this record, valuing it as a means of organizational learning. Thus, research with a qualitative approach, applied nature, exploratory objectives, and bibliographic procedures was carried out, which analyzed a conceptual model for recording lessons learned in projects. The model is of the Entity-Relationship type, elaborated from a sample of fifty-four project lessons learned record forms obtained in public or private organizations of Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ghana, Holland, India, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, United Kingdom, and the United States. The objective of the research was to evaluate the accuracy and integrity of the conceptual model against the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), a fundamental ontology widely used for building domain ontologies, and the Information Artifact Ontology (IAO), a domain ontology derived from the BFO and which addresses information entities and their bearers, processes, and relationships. By considering the recording of lessons learned in projects as a process and record (document), the research focused on the artifacts of these ontologies that are directly involved in the process of creating documents and their respective records. The research results demonstrated the accuracy and integrity of the conceptual model since its structure establishes correspondences between its entities and the BFO and IAO artifacts and contemplates the execution of the five fundamental processes to manage lessons learned.

Keyphrases: Ontology, conceptual modeling, knowledge, lessons learned, project

@booklet{EasyChair:9791,
  author    = {Mauricio Augusto Cabral Ramos Junior},
  title     = {Recording Lessons Learned in Projects: an Ontological Perspective},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 9791},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2023}}