What are Lessons Learned?

For the purposes of this course, lessons learned are defined as knowledge or understanding gained by experience. The experience may be positive, such as a successful test or mission, or negative, such as a mishap or failure.

In general, lessons learned can be related to specific technologies or disciplines such as flight controls, structures, etc., as well as high level broad applicable lessons that tend to cut across many disciplines, and are relatively timeless. Both forms of lessons are important to understand and most accidents have at least one example of each of these forms of lessons (i.e., specific technology and broad, high level).

The degree of applicability of the lessons learned to other circumstances or events can vary depending upon the issues in question, level of commonality to other designs, or other factors. In each case, however, being aware of the previous lessons will enable the courses of actions chosen, regardless of the task at hand, to be much less likely to result in repeating the mistakes of the past.

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