5.12 The main purpose of evaluation is to ensure good practice is perpetuated, lessons learned and costly mistakes avoided. Existing guidance is clear on its importance and benefits. Despite this, the Department has not systematically gathered and distributed lessons from experience (LFE) from programmes. In December 2020, it established a central register of LFE. The Department told us that, by April 2022, it plans to enhance central assurance of major programmes, improve evaluation capability, embed cross-Department lesson learning and learn more from NATO allies.
5.13 Programme teams' current analysis of the risks they face indicates that they are aware of many of the challenges discussed in this report. In the programmes we examined, most had identified lessons, although some much more systematically than others, including from relevant programmes in other Commands. The Warrior upgrade team reflected that earlier collaboration to learn lessons between different parts of the programme team and with the Ajax armoured vehicle team would have improved the delivery of the programme. We identified examples of the same lessons being identified across programme teams, including a lack of appreciation of programme complexity, establishing requirements, users changing their requirements, the need to have sufficient resourcing and skills in place (Part Four) and shortcomings in delivering Government Furnished Assets (paragraph 3.16). We also identified some good practice in learning from previous programmes, including how the Challenger 3 tank programme drew from the experience of the Warrior and Ajax armoured vehicle teams around control of the design phase. In addition, the Fleet Solid Support programme is capturing and incorporating LFE from within the Department and 70 external sources, with 25% of lessons resulting in changes to the specification.