Lot of Software development companies have very good processes in place with the use of appropriate Project Management methodologies. As a part of these processes, one of the task Project Managers do is write/submit Project closure report. This report contains a section on Lessons Learned during the project.

I really wonder what happens to the submited reports over time? What is done to the lessons learned section? Companies that I have worked with so far seems to have very little if at all anything in place to use this collectively.

How many times, lessons learned are shared beyond the core project team. How many organisations have taken proactive actions on using these lessons learned data?

After every Project, the Team including Project Manager obtains a rich experience into not only a particular technology platform but also the domain expertise and client relationships along with what worked and did not worked in the project.

I have observed, what gets documented as "lessons learned" is the area where something went wrong and its like a hindsight. But there would be lot that may not get documented.

The question I have is, whatever lessons are documented, are they utilised before the start of the next project by another project manager? Is there any repository where these lessons learned are combined and available for use in the future?