Lesson learning at NASA – video

From the AFAC lesson management forum last week, this video below from David Oberhettinger, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, talking about lesson learning in their human and robotic space exploration program

David makes some interesting points, such as

• the need to dedicate individuals for lessons capture (although NASA allows engineers to submit lessons themselves, he says he has never seen this happen in 25 years)
• lessons need verification and quality control – particularly verifying the facts of what happened
• lessons recommendations need to be “infused” into procedures and training to ensure closed-loop learning. The key documents are the JPL design principles and the JPL flight project practices, which are built up over time from the combined and synthesised lessons
• weekly meetings of the lessons learned committee, for the past 35 years