Learning from experience

We've discussed the value of sharing lessons learned before. Here is another good example of a team that took the time and trouble to write up their experiences from real life. Earthquake monitoring is, by its nature, a very distributed activity and a project to support the service involves a very widely distributed set of stake holders.
Lessons learned from the NEES Cyberenvironment project

This paper really points up several critical aspects. Everyone will find something of value. For me, the section on the criticality of effective communication contains some quotable nuggets. For instance "We recommend, in fact, that on the very first day of the project, the project team should make a "mockup" - in as simple a form as a set of presentation slides - available to the user community". The effective use of prototypes as a communication tool across the stakeholder community is described well.